~ January 2013 ~
Suddenly by Tim Verdinek
I wasn’t able to ascertain anything about the author, but I’m guessing he’s Slovenian like the kids who made this film. ZVVIKS, “institute for film and audiovisual production based in Ljubljana, Slovenia,” seems to regularly sponsor animation workshops. Here’s the complete video description from Vimeo:
Short animated film based on a poem by Tim Verdinek.
“With some assistance from their mentor, the complete film was created by attendees of the animated film workshop for children, students & youth.”
Story, designs, animation and music: Urša Halilovič, Aleksa Milovanović
Mentor: Simon Hudolin – Salči
Producers: Matija Šturm and Kolja Saksida
Sound Borja Močnik
Colour corection: Teo Rižnar
Production: ZVVIKS 2012
Co producer: Kulturni dom Slovenj Gradec
Financier: Maribor 2012 – Evropska prestolnica kulture, Slovenski filmski center – javna agencija Republike Slovenije
A Tree is Everything by Manasvi Bantawa
Manasvi Bantawa was a 3rd Grade student, so 8 or 9 years old, when this animation was made two years ago by Alex McClelland, working from a poster design by Zack Montrunecs. It’s part of the Healing Stanzas project:
Healing Stanzas is a collaborative project between Kent State University’s Wick Poetry Center and Glyphix design studio. This series combines the creative talents of KSU Visual Communication Design students with student writers (grades 3–12), health care providers, medical students, patients, and veterans to encourage dialogue about the connection between art and medicine, writing and healing.
Giant by Orianne Breakspear
A film by Luca Dicorato and Takanori Yoshiro. Dicorato notes:
Giant is a poem written and performed by 12 years old Orianne Breakspear.
We decided to animate this piece by employing a mixture of techniques, mainly cutout animation. We favoured images from old books and magazines as well as from the web in order to establish the vintage look.The music is from Kevin MacLeod
In 2011, Orianne Breakspear won the Brit Writers Award for poetry in the Under 16s category.
Poem About Big BIGMOUSE by Ludmila Ulanova
I’m spotlighting children’s poetry films and videos this week, a diverse collection of works by children as well as film-poems made by adults for children. This is an outstanding example of the latter. About BIGMOUSE (Про Мыху), animated by Constantin Arephyeff (or Arefiev, in a more standard Romanization) won the award of the children’s jury at the 5th ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival in 2010. This is the English version narrated by Stephen Coates, who collaborated with the author and a couple of other people on the translation. There’s also a Russian version.
As in many Eastern European poetry animations, the text is used as a jumping-off point for a different, more elaborate story-line. However, this also feels very familiar in the context of children’s literature, where the artwork in illustrated books often does much more than just illustrate.
Call for submissions: 6th annual Trevigliopoesia Festival
The Trevigliopoesia Festival has been held in Treviglio – Bergamo (near Milan, Italy) every year since 2008, and includes a competition called La Parola Imaginata. From their website:
TRP – Trevigliopoesia is VIDEOPOETRY: Video-Art, Video Documentary and Poetry Film.
The word as language but also a symbol that becomes an element as the expression of thoughts, images, visions of the poets and their lives. Combining inspirations and influences from the field of philosophy, music, theatre and literature the result of the artistic creation meet the public showing the perfect union between POEM and VIDEO.Under the patronage of the Office of Culture of the town of Treviglio, the arts association Nuvole in viaggio advertises the sixth edition of the video poetry competition LA PAROLA IMMAGINATA.
March 1 is the deadline for submissions. Download a PDF of the rules from their website. (And don’t forget that Italy’s other international poetry film festival, DOCtorClip in Rome, is also still open for submissions.)
What is Life? by John Clare
https://vimeo.com/57929732
This is the work of Sao Paulo-based writer Juliana Mendonça. According to her description at Vimeo, it was
Inspired by New York City fall and John Clare’s poem.
This was my first time in the city and my first time shooting with a Go Pro only.Made 100% with a Go Pro Hero 3 Black Edition.
Poem: What is Life by John Clare.
Music: Hægt, kemur ljósi› by Ólafur Arnalds.
If I Told Him: A Completed Portrait of Picasso by Gertrude Stein
*
[Edited 10/19/17: The original upload has gone missing, so it’s been replaced with two excerpts.]
This is Shutters Shut, choreographed by the legendary duo Paul Lightfoot and Sol León, A.K.A. Lightfoot León, and premiered by the Nederlands Dans Theater II in 2003. Paul Lightfoot told Ballet magazine, “In a way Shutters is a study, it’s an exercise.”
This performance is by Gauthier Dance, the dance ensemble of Theaterhaus Stuttgart. The dancers are Armando Braswell and Rosario Guerra. The film was edited by Valerie Haaf-Seidel, with camera work by Fritz Moser and Werner Schmidtke. (There’s another performance on YouTube, by Nederlands Dans Theater II itself, but that’s only an excerpt and seems to have been uploaded by someone other than the copyright holder.)
Limbo by dikson
A good example of the music-video style of poetry video, directed by Laurence Dobie. Dikson is a slam poet from Zimbabwe. The text is here.
Upgrade to the Moving Poems directory page
Visitor stats show that the directory page, Moving Poems’ index of poets and filmmakers, is one of the most-visited pages on the site. But it’s long been difficult to read, especially since the switch to a new, wider template. So I finally decided it was time for an upgrade and found a WordPress plugin, Multi-column Tag Map, that appeared to do everything I wanted. (The previous page was entirely hand-coded.) It is still perhaps a little unwieldy on smaller screens and mobile devices, when it shrinks to fewer than the maximum five columns, but on a desktop monitor it should now be fairly browsable. Check it out.
