Posts By Dave Bonta
Saltwater by Eleanor Rees
Glenn-emlyn Richards‘ latest animation was produced in collaboration with poet Eleanor Rees. (See also their earlier collaboration, Night Vision.) Rees is a Liverpudlian and author of the collection Andraste’s Hair (Salt, 2007), who “often collaborates with other writers, musicians and artists,” according to her online biography.
I Will Greet The Sun Again by Forough Farrokhzad
Turkish filmmaker Candeniz Erun seems at home in multiple languages; the effect of the rapid-fire text in this video is mesmerizing. Forough Farrokhzād was one of the most influential female Iranian poets of the 20th century.
De droom van de trappen (Staircase Dream) by Michaël Vandebril
http://vimeo.com/31862171
This poem was part of BOEST back in autumn 2009,
a dynamic poetry project with nine poets: Antoine Boute, Andy Fierens, Jess De Gruyter, Els Moors, Mauro Pawlowski, Xavier Roelens, Michael Vandebril, Christophe Vekeman and Stijn Vranken … a poet show on the road from Antwerp to The Hague, with the sound of gluemaster Carlo Andriani and visuals of Jess De Gruyter. Director: Charles and Max Temmerman Clemminck … a book, an anthology of new work by nine poets … [and] a vinyl record.
(auto-translation from the Dutch by Google)
The same website also includes a bio of Vandebril:
Michael Vandebril (1972): Lawyer by training. Debuted in 1998 as a poet in the poetry & straight jazz tradition of the beat poets. In 2000, he founded the collective Le Tigre Unick with literary events which he organized in Antwerp and Amsterdam. At the end of 2002 he was appointed coordinator of Antwerp Book City, and Antwerp earned the title of UNESCO World Book Captital 2004. BOEST marked the end of a year-long break from writing poetry.
(translation prarphrased from Google)
Brian Doyle did the English translation in the video. The reading is by the author. Swoon Bildos handled everything else: concept, camera, editing, and music. I thought the shots of dancers and pigeons startling into flight made an effective pairing with the text, intermixed as they were with blurred shots of ascending motion.
Personal Duty by Mahmoud Darwish
http://vimeo.com/32009181
Talal Khoury’s dramatization of a poem by Mahmoud Darwish won a Special Jury Prize at the 2009 Dubai International Film Festival. In the Vimeo description, he writes:
The film is an illustration of a poem by Mahmoud Darwish, who focuses on the tragic side of the human personality of a martyr.
It is a visual journey that combines the public experience and the personal one and follows a couple separated by a death called “heroic”.
It is a tribute to Arabic poetry through the combination of the cinematography and music with the music within the poem.
The Interrogation of the Good by Bertolt Brecht
“This short animation features a collaged portrait composed of various contemporary world leaders reciting Bertolt Brecht’s poem ‘The Interrogation of the Good,” says Esteban del Valle in the description at Vimeo.
Walking in Plastic by Bandile Gumbi
Another unique video collaboration from South African artist, poet and filmmaker Kai Lossgott, who sets it up for us as follows:
Slums are rapidly becoming the defining landscape of the twenty-first century, both in the developed as well as the developing world. One out of every three city dwellers worldwide nearly a billion people lives in a slum. Performance artist Mduduzi Nyembe presents a memory of a wounded woman, a dream for an absent father, and a dance in a street market for survival. They are ritual stories of the heartache of the slums substance abuse, violence, gender inequalities, chronic unemployment, families incapacity to provide for and protect their children. Each of Nyembe’s characters, taken from his daily interactions in the township, is left, in the words of poet Bandile Gumbi, “a constant wanderer / always at the beginning of complete circles”, trapped in the existential cycle of poverty.
For more on Bandile Gumbi, see her page on the Creative Africa Network.
Peter Quince at the Clavier by Wallace Stevens
A new film by the indefatigable Swoon (which he blogged about here). The inspiration and reading came once again from Nic S.’s new site Pizzicati of Hosanna… which takes its title from a line in this very poem.
French Movie by David Lehman
A poem from Yeshiva Boys (Scribner, 2009), produced to honor the general editor of the Best American Poems series at Motionpoems‘ first screening of films produced for this year’s anthology:
Scott Wenner surprised audiences at the Motionpoems Festival in Fall 2011 by unveiling this motionpoem adaptation of David Lehman’s poem, “French Movie.” In it, the narrator is depicted as an old-school movie camera, and the inevitability of the poem is like a bullet.
(From the description at Vimeo.)
Treacle by Paul Farley
“Featured in the Museum of Liverpool. Shot by Steven Ferguson, directed and edited by Lucy Armitage,” according to the description on Vimeo. Paul Farley is a native of Liverpool, and is said to be “one of the most culturally wide-ranging of current British poets. Born in the mid-1960s, his imagination is equally likely to refer to film, television, pop music and modern art as to literature.” Armitage is a production coordinator at ITV.
Videopoetry discussions elsewhere: text vs. voice, art or entertainment, and a new weekly column
Several interesting discussions of videopoetry theory and practice have popped up around the blogosphere over the past several weeks, initiated by videopoets whose names should be familiar to followers of Moving Poems.
1. Using text vs voice in videopoems
Nic S.’s thoughtful blog post responded to a point in Tom Konyves’ Videopoetry: A Manifesto about the use of visual text, and Tom stopped by to clarify what he meant in the comments. A fascinating conversation ensued.
2. Visible Verse Festival 2011 • Art or Entertainment; do I really have to choose?
Heather Haley, organizer of the Visible Verse festival in Vancouver (which I hope all Moving Poems followers from the Pacific northwest will be attending this weekend!), shares a bit of her thinking behind the festival in particular and the genre in general at her blog One Life.
Videopoetry or poetry video. Film or video? And then there is cinema to consider. I find semantics tedious. My reaction to the insistence there be a formal definition of the genre, is, why? Don’t we have enough divides? We live in the age of the mashup. Isn’t that merging? Fusion? Transformation? In any case, I have faith in the poet’s ability to render his or her poem. Via video or film, a poet will explore, push the boundaries of image, language and sound. Whether it’s illustrative or conceptual, I trust the poet to make choices, to create a work according to his individual style and sensibilities. Vision. While I can’t abide cliché or literal translations, surely there’s room for both narrative and non-narrative treatments. One man’s execution is another man’s experiment. One man’s amusement is another man’s pith.
3. “Friday Film and Video Poem” series at Rubies in Crystal
Aside from a scattering of brief, general essays and blog posts, plus occasional process notes from videopoets, there’s been an almost total lack of meaningful literary/film criticism of videopoetry and related genres focusing on individual films and artists. Brenda Clews has begun to fill this void with a weekly series at her blog.
- A Hundred and Forty Suns by Jonathan Blair
After the Kafkaesque beginning with insect-like noises that become a mechanical factory of looped wheels and cogs, the organic sound of drumming as the light increases is warm, comforting. And the light is shining, shining into the perception of the animated character who responds with joy, and into the screen where we as viewers feel that pleasure. Ultimately this film imparts joy, beauty, forgiveness, transcendence, the pulse of life renewed anew.
- ‘immersion /2’ by Sheila Packa and Kathy McTavish
Unlike traditional Bokeh, there is no foreground subject. Rather we are immersed in an ever-shifting slow-moving background. It is as if she composes abstract expressionist artwork before our eyes, painting with light and colour.
- ‘Ground’ by Ginnetta Correli
Ground is hauntingly beautiful, in a disturbing way. In the embracing mindfulness, a poetry of poison, death, loss, and beauty, all of which is natural, found in the natural world, amidst a surreality. We feel cross-currents, disambiguations, and yet the over-arching journey metaphor of Cook’s minimalist poetry, and the bond of love he speaks of, yes, living is like this. Simply a superb film.
- ‘SHED’ by Christina McPhee
I consider SHED a genre-crossing piece that brings together a poetry of drawing and video editing. It is a multiplicity, a place of vectors. The nodes and intensities are democratic, without hierarchy; they are nomads drawn into being by the brush of India and acrylic ink and red paint encrusted on the paper by the artist.
Love Poem by Richard Brautigan
A mash-up of Richard Brautigan‘s “Love Poem,” recited in different voices, with excerpts from Samuel Beckett’s novel Molloy presented as text in English and Korean translation. Titled Love Poem, this was shown at three festivals last year: the 10th Seoul International New Media Festival, the 7th Experimental Film and Video Festival in Seoul, and the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival in Berlin.
