Moving Poems’ latest production takes advantage of a new free-audio site that other filmmakers might be interested in, too: pizzicati of hosanna: dead poets’ poems read by Nic Sebastian in English & other languages. The footage is from Blackwater Falls State Park, West Virginia. I blogged all about it at Via Negativa.

Directed by Julian Harriman-Dickinson at HarrimanSteel. Unfortunately, it’s kind of low-resolution, but the soundtrack helps carry it.

Julianna Castigliego notes that this was an “Emerson College Film 1 final film project. 16mm. Shot on Bolex. Edited on Steenbeck.” This is the same poem, translated by Stephen Tapscott, that was featured in the motion picture Patch Adams.

This is poem XIV from Veinte Poemas de Amor y Una Canción Desesperada (1924), envideoed by Will Jardine.

This is a film called Saccharine, directed by Raivan Hall with camera work by Josh Hittleman.

The poem is not from Neruda’s Odas Elementales, but the later Plenos Poderos from 1962. Here’s the Spanish and here’s an English translation by Jodey Bateman. The film uses the translation by Alastair Reid, which carries a less literal title: “In Praise of Ironing.”

As with any popular poet, there are a ton of Neruda videos on YouTube, but most of them are, um, not so good. So it’s a real pleasure to see a professionally made film with a Neruda poem in the soundtrack.

“Perhaps one of Neruda’s more disturbing poems, Walking Around, comes to life through a mosaic of classic silent horror films featuring among others the great John Barrymore,” says Four Seasons Productions. Recitation and translation by Robert Bly.

There are a number of videos for this poem on YouTube, but I find all of them flawed in some way — it’s one of my favorite poems. The approach here is at least original.

Four Seasons are, by the way, mistaken about the date: it was published in 1935 in Residencia en Tierra II, not in 1971 as they claim. The title is in English in the original.