The Polish Language by Alice Lyons
This is just about the most inventive typographic animation I’ve even seen — a gorgeous and moving tribute to the power of Polish poetry by American-Irish poet and artist Alice Lyons and Irish artist Orla Mc Hardy. The film has its own website at thepolishlanguage.com, whence the following description:
The Polish Language is an animated film-poem about the subversive force of art and the renewal of poetry in the whispery language of Polish.
Based on the poem of the same title, the film pays homage to the revitalization of poetry in the Polish language in the 20th century. Using hand-drawn, stop-motion and time-lapse animation techniques, the poem unfolds onscreen, with typography as a key visual element. It visual style is loosely based on underground publications in Poland in the 1970s and 1980s, known as Bibula. A chorus of voices sampling poems in Polish, woven together with original music by sound designer Justin Spooner, combine to create a powerful score in a film of ’emotional depth and technical sophistication’ (Jury, Galway Film Fleadh 2009, award for Best Animation).
The Polish Language is at once a playful and solemn journey into the sensuality, beauty and power of language.
Lyons wrote the poem, while Mc Hardy took the lead on the animation. For full credits and a list of screenings, see the website’s About page. The poets sampled in the soundtrack are Tadeusz Różewicz, Zbigniew Herbert and Wisława Szymborska.
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Dave Bonta is a poet, editor, and web publisher from the Appalachian mountains of central Pennsylvania.
This is beautiful. I will watch it over and over. So intriguing – the poetry, the type and sound all in a dance together.
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