Posts By Dave Bonta
I’m sorry but I’ve witnessed what’s under your suburban bruises by Meg Tuite
Meg Tuite reads her poem in this collaboration with Swoon (Marc Neys) for the inaugural issue of Awkword Paper Cut [auto-playing audio alert]. Marc blogged about the making of the film. A snippet:
Something in the combination of her words/voice and these sounds led me back to a movie I used in another video, FF Coppola’s ‘Dementia 13’
I picked out a few scenes and faces and started editing. Looked for the right movements that I could feature as some kind of recurring visual chorus.
In the end I added a layer of lights and colours.
Call for submissions: Ó Bhéal International Poetry-Film Competition 2013
Ó Bhéal (Irish for by word of mouth) is a weekly poetry event in Cork which, since 2010, has also been sponsoring an annual screening of poetry films and videopoems from around the world. This year they’re taking it to the next level, associating with the IndieCork festival of independent cinema in October and holding a poetry-film competition. View the complete guidelines at their website. Here’s the meat of it:
We are now open for submissions. Thirty films will be shortlisted and screened during the IndieCork festival. One winner will be selected by the Ó Bhéal jury.
Deadline for submissions is the 15th of September 2013.
Entry is free to anyone, and should be made via email to poetryfilm [at] obheal.ie – including the following in an attached word document:
- Name and duration of Film
- Name of director
- Country of origin
- Contact details
- Name of Poet
- Name of Poem
- Synopsis
- Filmmaker biography
- and a Link to download a high-resolution version of the film.
Films must interpret or be based on a poem, and have been completed no earlier than the 1st August 2011. They may not exceed 10 minutes in duration. Non-English language films will require subtitles.
Love? by Julie Gard
Words are a fugitive, ghostly presence in this film by Kathy McTavish. For more poems by Julia Gard, see her website.
Demain, dès l’aube… / Dawn of Tomorrow by Victor Hugo
http://vimeo.com/65694129
Directed by Nick Ramey and Lauren Armantrout, who note in the Vimeo description:
In Victor Hugo’s famous poem, demain des l’aube, many have formulated their own adaptation of the plot. Subtitled in English, while the poem is read in French, this story involves the consequences of commitment in a relationship. The notion that love lasts forever couldn’t be further from the truth in this heartbreaking short.
Hugo’s poem has its own page on the French Wikipedia.
Videopoems of place featured at Connotation Press
This month in her Third Form column at Connotation Press, Erica Goss presents “nine poetry films using the following criteria: first, the native language of the poet or filmmaker had to be the language used in narration, and second, the country of the poet or filmmaker had to be prominent in the video.” Her choices are all films I remember with fondness, and it’s interesting to see them presented side by side. I’ve shared so many videopoems at Moving Poems now, it’s easy to lose track of the outstanding ones, so further acts of curation like Erica’s are invaluable. Go look.
Chinatowns by Boey Kim Cheng
http://vimeo.com/64731664
A very short filmpoem about exile and belonging by Laura Wu.
Call for submissions: Liberated Words Poetry Film Festival 2013
A new videopoetry festival is planned for Bristol, UK in October. The deadline for submissions is June 30th.
Festival organisers Sarah Tremlett and Lucy English in conjunction with Colin Brown of Poetry Can welcome videopoems of 3 minutes or less to be screened at Liberated Words poetry film festival, as part of Bristol Poetry Festival, October 2013.
There are two separate categories for this year’s inaugural festival:
Four by Four
Videopoems of three minutes or less are invited as a response to a printed poem by four poets.
The poets and poems are:
Philip Gross: Heaps
Lucy English: from ‘Take Me to the City’
Jo Bell: The Shipwright’s Love Song
Johnny Fluffypunk: Bill Blake’s Birthday Cake for Adrian MitchellWinning entries of each poem will be screened as the highlight of the festival at the Arnolfini, Bristol.
Liberated Words II
We are also inviting videopoetry makers to submit 3 minutes of their most recent work broadly supporting the theme of ‘liberated words’.
The selected poetry films will be shown at a Liberated Words II screening at the Arnolfini Bristol.
See the announcement post for background and other information.
The Death of Me (trailer) by Howie Good
A poetry book trailer that appears to give a pretty good indication of the tone and flavor of the book. (I say that having read a number of Howie Good‘s books and chapbooks, though not this particular one yet.) Sizable chunks of text alternate with underwater footage of swimming penguins, apparently shot on a mobile phone at an aquarium. Unlike so many trailers for poetry books from micropresses, where the initiative to make a video originates with the author, this was made by the publishers themselves.
This is a video promoting the launch of Howie Good’s limited edition poetry collection ‘The Death of Me’ through Pig Ear Press. The text is from Howie’s book, the video was shot in Basel Zoo and the soundtrack was created on a ukulele. The video and audio were created by Mr [Pete] Lally.
Pig Ear Press are a (very) small press using letterpress printing and handbinding to create limited run books of quality. You can purchase Howie’s book and see information about previous publications by visiting pigearpress.co.uk.
I’m a little late in sharing this, but the press run doesn’t seem to be sold out quite yet.
Sleep (Der Schlaf) by Georg Trakl
An animation by A.E.E. Viljamaa. Here’s the text of the German original:
Der Schlaf
Verflucht ihr dunklen Gifte,
Weißer Schlaf!
Dieser höchst seltsame Garten
Dämmernder Bäume
Erfüllt von Schlangen, Nachtfaltern,
Spinnen, Fledermäusen.
Fremdling! Dein verlorner Schatten
Im Abendrot,
Ein finsterer Korsar
Im salzigen Meer der Trübsal.
Aufflattern weiße Vögel am Nachtsaum
Über stürzenden Städten
Von Stahl.
Three poems by Michelle Matthees
This is the rest, another of Kathy McTavish‘s mesmerizing pieces of sound art and kinestatic imagery. Three poems by Michelle Matthees in type form—”The Gardner Hotel,” “Bouquets” and “The Rest”—scroll slowly up the screen against a background (or is it a foreground?) of shifting shapes and tones.
