~ December 2010 ~

An Elm We Lost by Marvin Bell

On 30 December, 2010 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Animation
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I’m not sure why I haven’t shared this MotionPoem before: a charming, very short poem by Marvin Bell, read by Todd Boss, with animation and music by Antonio Cicarelli.

This will be our last post of 2010. Happy New Year!

Del vacío de la voz (Of the Emptiness of the Voice) by vanvelvet

On 29 December, 2010 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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Vanvelvet is an Argentinian filmmaker currently living in Barcelona. For this videopoem, she had assistance from Federico Rasenberg and Florencia Peitrapertosa. The English translation is O.K.; the only egregious error is “whom” for “womb” (vientre), the final word of the poem.

Ode to Typography by Pablo Neruda

On 27 December, 2010 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Videopoems
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Directed by Julian Harriman-Dickinson at HarrimanSteel. Unfortunately, it’s kind of low-resolution, but the soundtrack helps carry it.

The Space Between Burned Out Suns by Emily Kendal Frey and Zachary Schomburg

On 22 December, 2010 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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Zachary Schomburg’s film for a poem from Something Should Happen at Night Outside, a collaboration with Emily Kendal Frey.

Vimeo unveils video school

On 21 December, 2010 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - video hosting

The freemium video sharing site Vimeo, source of the majority of videos featured at Moving Poems, has just unveiled what it calls Vimeo Video School, “a one-stop shop for Vimeo Lessons and user-made video tutorials about a variety of video-making topics.” For those of us who didn’t go to film school, this looks like a great way to get up to speed on professional filmmaking techniques.

Ghost Haiku by Susan Cormier

On 21 December, 2010 by Dave Bonta with 1 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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Susan Cormier A.K.A. queen of crows is both author and director. In the notes at YouTube, she says:

The guys in the foreground seemed kinda creeped-out by me and my camera — obviously, they couldn’t see what I was actually watching. If anyone knows who they are, please send them a link. I generally don’t use people’s images without their permission, but this shot was too precious to discard.

Nicholas Was… by Neil Gaiman

On 20 December, 2010 by Dave Bonta with 1 Comments - Animation
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A prose-poem from Gaiman’s collection Smoke and Mirrors animated by the Beijing motion graphics studio 39 Degrees North to serve as a video Christmas card. Gaiman himself was enthusiastic, and encouraged people to make and post more video adaptations of the poem to be featured on his blog on Christmas day.

All This Day Is Good For by Tom Konyves

On 17 December, 2010 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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A spam lit videopoem! Tom writes,

In this ode to the simultaneous, true and false perceptions collide in a 360-degree panoramic sweep of a moment in time, rendering life and art in equal measure.

The text in this videopoem was assembled from hundreds of spam/scam e-mails I have been collecting over the years, representing the lies we are confronted with every day; yet the random phrases extracted from these passion-laden letters cannot help but also contain unintentional glimpses of truth. In between mundane and altered reality lies that precious essence of life I see as poetry.

Alex Konyves assisted with — well, almost everything, it seems. And Robin Pittman helped with the motion graphics.

Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein

On 16 December, 2010 by Dave Bonta with 1 Comments - Animation
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A wonderfully dystopian interpretation by student animator Aleksandra Korecka.

Heather Haley reports on Visible Verse festival

On 15 December, 2010 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - festivals and other screening events

The organizer and instigator of Visible Verse blogs about this year’s special restropective of the first ten years of what has become the premiere videopoetry event in North America. A sample:

Friday night’s Vancouver Videopoem Festival 1999-2002 retrospective screening was the biggest challenge as we had to mediate the clunkiest and oldest formats: ¾ inch tape and beta. I rolled up my sleeves and got down to business around 9 AM. At 6, PC Art Director Steve Chow expressed shock that I was still there. “Real time, my man!” I said. “No way around it. And remind me never to do this ever again.” It was nerve wracking!

Read the rest.

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There Were Two Girls Who Looked A Lot The Same by Ellyn Maybe

On 15 December, 2010 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Videopoems
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Veronika Bauer directs, and the music is by Harlan Steinberger and Tommy Jordan. The audio track as a whole was created for the album Rodeo for the Sheepish from Hen House Studios. Ellen Maybe was named one of ten poets to watch in the new millennium by Writer’s Digest, and Henry Rollins has described her as “an irresistible force.”

Jupiter by Diana Syder

On 14 December, 2010 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Animation
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Sally Fryer animates a poem by Diana Syder for the Version Film Festival in Manchester. The poem is from the recent Comma Press title Planet Box, a collaboration between Syder and artist Laura Daly.