The posh mums are boxing in the square is a marvelous piece from U.K. poet Wayne Holloway-Smith and Dutch film-maker Helmie Stil, both award-winning artists. The synopsis:
The film poem is about a mother re-imagined into life and given boxing gloves to fight off cancer.
Credits:
Producer Director and Editor: Helmie Stil
Writer: Wayne Holloway-Smith
Swimmers: Adele Carlson and Katie Fried
Underwater Camera: Philip Bartropp
Underwater camera assistent: Aaron Hindes
Camera: Edmund Saunders
Soundscape: Lennert Busch
The film was made in association with the Healthy Scepticism Project, The Poetry Society and Motionpoems.
Moving Poems has previously shared several other poetry film collaborations from Helmie Stil.
Blank is another in a series of collaborations between film-maker Kate Sweeney and poet Linda France. Sweeney’s artist statement about the film:
In the administrative section of the Bloodaxe Books Poetry Publisher’s archive, there is a post-it note stuck to an invoice. The note has slipped through the archival ‘cleaning’ process and rather than being discarded, has been preserved by accident. In 2017, I drew and digitised a font from the letters making up the short message written on the note. For every missing letter in the font, there is a dot; a hole, an ellipsis. I called the font, ‘Janet’.
‘Janet’ an ephemeral trace drawn from an archive has become a conduit for other voices and the starting point for collaboration with other artists and writers to speak, not about or for, but through ‘Janet’.
In 2019, I invited poet Linda France to write a poem using ‘Janet’. Blank is a response to both the metaphorical and the structural potential of the font, ‘Janet’. France has extracted the implicitly feminist possibility of ‘Janet’ as a tool for articulating the female experience of the effect of the male gaze (and consequently the effect of its absence).
As a printed document it is possible to see how France has utilised the concrete and structural qualities of ‘Janet’. The poem printed on the page is punctured but readable. In order to make the video, Linda and I had to translate and devise a way to ‘sound out’ the poem. And so, as a video poem, Blank becomes a playful presentation of the relationship between the visual and audible characteristics of the mark – the period, the omission – and its use within poetic texts presented on the page, the screen and in performance.
Blank is one of a series of video-poems produced in collaboration with other poets and artists. It is part of my practice-led PhD project; working with the Bloodaxe Books publisher’s archive as a site and source for my research into the ways collaborative practice can be used to look at the shape and form of the hidden archival artefact.
Both film-maker and poet have featured several times before here at Moving Poems, on projects together and and with other artists.
Dutch filmmaker Helmie Stil‘s latest poetry film uses a text by the British poet Rebecca Goss.
This poetry film is about the transition from being a girl to a woman from the perspective of a mother who wants to protect her daughter but at the same time wanting to let her go.
Rebecca Goss’ poem ‘When it feels hot, that rage against me’ won the Sylvia Plath Prize in April 2022. For the Sylvia Plath Literary Festival in October 2022 it has been made into a poetry film by Helmie Stil from poetrycinema and The Poetry Society.
I love poetry films that feel like responses to the particularity of the places where they were shot. I know that wasn’t the case here, that the text preceded the film and was written independently of it, but the fact that it feels as if it could’ve been written ekphrastically is testament to the rightness of Stil’s imagery.
Martin Gerigk takes a highly experimental approach to the traditional literary form of Japanese haiku in his film titled Haiku.
The visual and spoken text elements include fragments from haiku by Iio Sōgi (1421-1502), Arakida Moritake (1473-1549), Matsuo Bashō (1644-1694), Yosa Buson (1716- 1784), Kobayashi Issa (1763-1828) and Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902). Additional text inspired by the ideas in these haiku is by Gerigk himself, along with Cauro Hige, who also contributes voice and performance.
In a freely contemporary manner, the traditional literary form guides the film’s structure. From the film-maker’s statement:
Following the typical structure of a traditional Japanese haiku the film contains 17 specific events divided in three parts of 5, 7 and again 5 units. All these events are built and derived from original Japanese haiku, contemporary text sequences, sound patterns or pure music sections.
The stylistic approach to text in the film seems more akin to sound poetry and concrete poetry than to traditional poetry. But regardless of approach to literary form, this is a truly outstanding piece of film-making that has been very widely screened and awarded. It displays a similar virtuosity to Gerigk’s Structures of Nature, published earlier in the year here at Moving Poems.
Martin describes himself as primarily a composer and arranger for orchestra and chamber music. Indeed, the meticulous entwining in this film of exquisite images, sounds, rhythms and words, feels more like musical composition than any ordinary film-making. Each element calls and answers the other. In the film-maker’s own words:
Haiku | 俳句 is a symphonic audiovisual project for two Japanese performers, alternating percussion groups, soundscapes and rhythmicized video sequences. The film is an experimental approach to pay tribute to the beauty of Japan and the extraordinary art of Japanese haiku poetry of 15th to early 20th century.
Pattern noster is a video poem about the importance and influence of patterns. Whatever the figure, the infinite is only a sequenced series of textures.
Be sure to click the CC icon if you need the rough-and-ready English translation.
Bobie is a videopoet from Provence with an active online presence and a growing body of interesting work. I’m not sure why it’s taken us this long to feature his work at Moving Poems. He’s had an interesting trajectory as a culture worker, according to the bio on his website:
My apprenticeship began with writing and drawing. In 1994 I started a garage punk band (Mike Hey No More). Then in 2004 I discovered the dialogue between words, sounds and images on stage within the multimedia trio Ana. Since then, I explore works where the verb surveys different media: stage (Printemps des poètes, BPI Pompidou, Capc Bordeaux, Jimmachine’s tour in Japan, …), devices (Chevaux 2 Vent, Viral…) and exhibitions (Couper-coller, Frgmts collective). In recent years I have mainly devoted myself to collages and video poetry.
Or as he put it on Vimeo,
I write without being a writer. I make collages, without being a visual artist. I make video poems, without being a director. I imagine and play music too. Anyway, poetry remains my path. From my media experience, I have kept a taste for short and incisive forms.
At one level, Letter to Fred is a film about the creative obsession of film-making. At another it’s about life and death beyond that frame. It’s the fifth film I’ve shared here at Moving Poems by Canadian experimental film-maker, Mike Hoolboom, so highly esteemed in the field since the 1980s.
At the film’s heart is a letter from Mike’s long-time friend, Alfred Vander aka Fred Pelon, a former film-maker. The simple words of the letter are given on screen simply as subtitles, while the sublime images, sounds and filmic rhythms invite a subtle poetic trance, a mindset of clarity in which the authenticity of what is said can better be felt and heard.
The film itself seems like Mike’s ‘letter to Fred’, as if in answer to the words received. The film-maker’s synopsis:
A letter from my friend Alfred Vander. Though when we met he was Fred Pelon, anarchist super 8 filmmaker, a prolific machine of thoughts and pictures, growing fungi on film, and on the archaic behaviours of the state. But it turned out that film was only the next stage in a life dedicated to reinvention. In this brief post, he describes his new normal, no longer living in a boat but a monastery, working as a caregiver, a gardener, a bridge keeper. As the pandemic waxes on, and my relationships to fringe movie practices and places that used to be central feel increasingly abstract, as if part of some faraway dream, these spare lines offer new hope, and the ongoing consolation of friendship.
The drawn-out opening shot startles immediately to the edge of the seat, the knifes-edge presence of death a stark reference point for what follows. The film is highly personal to the two friends and yet covers far wider ground.
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From filmmaker Sherng-Lee Huang and actress Veronika Nowag-Jones, whom Huang calls “a stalwart of German cinema and stage,” these two trailers for The Echo Chamber by Michael Bazzett each feature a complete, short poem from the collection. US independent literary publisher Milkweed Editions has been producing video trailers off and on for the better part of a decade. As anecdotal evidence for their effectiveness, I ordered a copy of The Echo Chamber before I even finished posting this! Here’s the publisher’s page for it.
Hat-tip: Sean Thomas Dougherty on Twitter.
British filmmaker Kate Sweeney, whose work we’ve featured here in the past, collaborated with one of my favorite contemporary ecopoets, Linda France, for a poetry film in support of her tenth collection with Faber. Here’s the YouTube description:
A short film by Kate Sweeney, with poetry written and read by Linda France.
“I have taken to counting what I want to call ‘Startlings’. They are creatures who, sensing their species is facing extinction, feel the cell-tingling impulse to evolve and ensure their survival. Within their tissue and bones, hearts and minds, they enact the necessary transformation. For every Endling there is a Startling.”
To celebrate the publication of Linda France’s tenth poetry collection – influenced by her three years of writing the climate – artist Kate Sweeney has created a new film responding to Linda’s words.
Linda France’s residency as Climate Writer was supported by New Writing North, Newcastle University and Arts Council England. Startling was published in partnership with Faber Books.
Find out more about the residency and its projects: https://newwritingnorth.com/event/writing-the-climate/
Order a copy of Startling: https://www.faber.co.uk/product/9780571379026-startling/