~ Video Library ~

Nog Niet / Not Yet by Marleen de Crée

On 19 April, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Videopoems
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Update, July 2012: Now with a new translation by Annmarie Sauer and credit for voice and concept to Katrijn Clemer.

This is the first of two new videopoems I’ll be sharing for work by a prominent Belgian poet. Marleen de Crée has published 15 poetry collections to date, garnering various prizes (the Maurice Gilliam Award, the August Beernaert Prize of the Royal Academy of Dutch Language and Literature, and the prize of the Flemish Poetry Day). She’s also a visual artist who works in various media, and has had many individual and group exhibitions in Belgium and the Netherlands from 1964 to the present.

This information came via email from Swoon, the filmmaker here in collaboration with Arlekeno Anselmo, whom he credits with “Voice, idea & face” — and, critically, the translation. Those who know Dutch and prefer it without subtitles can watch the original version on Vimeo. As Swoon explained in his email: “For her last book ‘Het is niet de lava’ (It’s not the lava) I made 2 videopoems with a dutchspeaking voice. For a video-festival (FAFF 2011) I made 2 versions with subtitles (I don’t know if our translations do the poem any justice, but the festival prefered subtitles, so…)”

Dupont Circle, 3 A.M. by Raymond Luczak

On 18 April, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Performance Poetry
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Another sign-language “reading” by poet and filmmaker Raymond Luczak. He notes at YouTube that the music was composed especially for the video by John Stutte. The book is available from Sibling Rivalry Press.

The Forty Elephants (with poetry by Gérard Rudolf)

On 15 April, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 2 Comments - Videopoems
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A new film by Alastair Cook “developed around a narrative commissioned by Alastair, written and read by Gérard Rudolf,” with cinematography by James Norton.

The project takes its lead from the Victorian street gang, of women and their children, who plagued the Elephant and Castle; it draws in the current landscape and it’s deteriorating edge, a farewell to the Heygate and Aylesbury estates; this is a dark trawl through threat and desire, driven by Gérard’s incredible words.

The Forty Elephants premiered on 8th April at Alastair’s fine art photography show at The Howden.

Giddoo by Yahia Lababidi

On 14 April, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Videopoems
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“Sleepdancing (Giddoo)” is the latest collaboration between Belgian artist and composer Swoon and expatriate Egyptian poet Yahia Lababidi, and is as different from its predecessors as can be (while still remaining recognizably a Swoon video). The decision not to include a reading of the text in the soundtrack seems appropriate for the subject matter.

Portland by Charly “the city mouse” Fasano

On 13 April, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 2 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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Video and poem both by the wildly creative Mr. Fasano. I liked the minimalist approach here, bolstered by the effective cello accompaniment from Anna Mascorella.

Your Oyster by Hannah Stephenson

On 12 April, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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Video, poem, and music by Hannah Stephenson, who blogged about it briefly at The Storialist.

The Dinosaur Book is Green Fire by Brenda Clews

On 11 April, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 2 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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Canadian poet and artist Brenda Clews does it all here: drawing, filming, editing, even constructing the music. “The world is a green furor of creativity – the green fire of life,” she writes in the description at YouTube, where she provides a detailed description of her process, including this note about the music:

I created the music in a cool program, a ‘P22 Music Text Composition Generator (A free online music utility)’: http://www.p22.com/musicfont In this program, each letter has a sound. When you put text in, you can choose what BMP and instrument you’d like, and the program generates a midi file, with the sheet music. I layered my track in GarageBand 6.0.2 using different instruments, splicing and re-arranging. […]

From start to finish took about 12 hours, there were many layers, of image, text, and sound, each with filters, and I had to render a few times, which took hours, to see if what I had produced worked.

I’m Sorry I Missed Your Birthday Party by Zachary Schomburg

On 7 April, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 1 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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I keep forgetting to revisit Zachary Schomburg’s Vimeo archives and grab the videos I haven’t shared here yet. This one’s a wonderfully mysterious, brief film with an insanely meta beginning. The poem is from Schomburg’s collection Scary, No Scary.

Chartres Blue by Kate Ruse

On 6 April, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Animation
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Kind of a video game feel but interesting nonetheless. Vasileios Matsoukas is the filmmaker. Kate Ruse is an English poet whose “Puritan Black” was featured here last June.

Words by Yahia Lababidi

On 5 April, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 1 Comments - Videopoems
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I’m having a hard time keeping up with the videos Swoon has been making for Lababidi’s poems. This one incorporates Dutch sign language by Marjan De Cuyper and painting by Arlekeno Anselmo for a truly multimedia and multinational exploration of, and exploring through, language.

Wygnana (Expelled) by Bozena Urszula Malinowska

On 4 April, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Videopoems
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http://www.vimeo.com/21089942

Another film by Marcin Konrad Malinowski for a poem by his mother, the late Bozena Urszula Malinowska. Here’s the translation Marcin supplied. I think he’s open to suggestions on how it might be improved, but this is certainly enough to let the non-Polish viewer understand how the film images relate to, and play off of, the text:

Expelled from paradise
by me
by me alone
expelled
I’ll bury my sin in my heart
I won’t drop to my knees
in hope, that there
behind the gates
I’ll find silence and peace
Today I expel myself from paradise
With a curse
that’ll crush my heart
and I won’t yearn,
cry, wait and dream
I expel myself from paradise
So I can
live again

The post about the video on Marcin’s project blog reproduces a hand-written draft of the poem.

To a Mouse by Robert Burns

On 1 April, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Animation
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A gorgeous, grungy animation and great reading (by Bill Patterson) of the classic poem, created for the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum, Alloway, Scotland. Barnaby Hewlett directed. Produced by Spiral Productions.