~ Video Library ~

Murder (Two voices at dawn on Riverside Drive) by Federico Garcia Lorca

On 21 February, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Videopoems
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Asesinato, directed by Javier Gómez Serrano for elegant mob films, is an adaptation of a poem from Poeta en Nueva York (Poet in New York), which may be read at Google Books in both Spanish and English (translation by Pablo Medina and Mark Statman).

Electric Literature’s single-sentence animations: videopoems for fiction

On 20 February, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 1 Comments - Animation, literary magazines and websites, related genres

Electric Literature is a magazine of short stories available — for a price — in multiple forms: eBook, Kindle, iPhone, audio, and print-on-demand. They also have a flourishing video section which complements the magazine in a unique and delightful manner: they get top animators to illustrate single sentences from short stories they’ve published. Thus the films function as video trailers for the magazine, but are also inventive and satisfying in their own right. And I think they prove one of my central contentions: that sufficiently artful prose is indistinguishable from poetry. Here are a few of my favorites.

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Siren Song by Margaret Atwood

On 18 February, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 4 Comments - Videopoems
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A new videopoem by Belgian artist and composer Swoon. According to the notes at his blog, he first composed the music and found film images to match, then decided to add the poem:

I took some time working on a piece of music (first hunted, frightened. Melancholic other) with matching images.
Memories of what never was. The attraction between man and woman. A farewell. The impossibility of things undone.
A rabbit.

Somehow the words of Atwood gave the necessary lightness (counterweight) and they added an extra layer.

(Thus, at any rate, Google Translate.) Who knew a pet rabbit could be capable of such gravitas?

Poem of Jealousy by Sappho

On 17 February, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Videopoems
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This is the Sappho poem preserved because Longinus included it in his famous treatise On the Sublime. And indeed, film student and surfer Matt Ching says he made this “for my aesthetics class project on the Sublime.” He used the translation by Horace Gregory; you can browse through a huge number of other versions on this webpage.

I like the psychadelic approach here, though the abrupt ending is unfortunate.

Self Portrait by Edward Hirsch

On 16 February, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Animation, Performance Poetry
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http://www.vimeo.com/18203490

The wacky folks at Teleportal Readings say about this one:

We filmed esteemed poet Ed Hirsch during a shoot Teleportal did in collaboration with Rattapallax at the Bowery Poetry Club last summer. Though “trippy” isn’t a term we’d normally use to describe Hirsch’s work, the hand-painted, rotoscoped animation by Teleportal art director Scott Gelber makes the poet’s “Self Portrait” just that.

For more on Hirsch, see his page at the Poetry Foundation website.

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Three Poems by Steven McCabe

On 15 February, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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The poems are “Speed-dial a Rainbow,” “Bough,” and “Salome’s Veil.” McCabe directs with cinematography by Eric Gerard and editing by Konrad Skreta.

She Walks in Beauty by Lord Byron

On 14 February, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Videopoems
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This is “Harenberg,” by Klaus Hommerich and Daniel Gerken,

Shot on film and video; different gauges, resolutions and intentions show the pursuit of quiescene and ease of mind. […] Techniques: 8mm, 16mm, HD 1080P (EOS 5D, 550D), SD, Greenscreen with 8mm and 16mm,Feltpen on b/w film, Snorricam, Ikegami camera tube, GoPro HD, …

The reading is evidently by J. Milsome of the BBC.

How to Remain by Heather Haley

On 11 February, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Videopoems
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Heather Haley wrote and directed this entertaining film about a very serious subject. Here’s her gloss from the video description on YouTube:

The audience is along for a wild ride in AURAL Heather’s “How To Remain” with a compulsive protagonist resolutely heading toward an elusive goal of perfection, perpetually struggling to stay *on* and, or to stay thin. *How to remain in control* is at the heart of anorexia and bulimia. Ubiquitous images of the ideal woman provide pressure and anxiety for us all. She turns to her trusty steed but instead of her body disintegrating, the horse’s body withers away. A symbol of intense desire and instinct, the horse’s ribs start to protrude as it becomes increasingly emaciated until finally disappearing with a *POOF! * Though eating disorders are a serious matter, the story is really about facing our all-too-human mortality. REMAIN is the key word and our secret desire, fueling our heroine’s quest for eternal youth and beauty, i.e., immortality. She is in a race. A horse race. A rat race? Or a labyrinth. Reel time accelerates as it does in real life; time seemingly flying by with advancing years as we move toward our inevitable departure. Of course HOW we live is what really matters.

Anansi Hides the Moon by Brenda Clews

On 10 February, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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“Poem, painting and video by Brenda Clews,” as it says in the closing credits. Brenda’s process notes at her blog are almost as interesting as the result:

A painting, ‘Parchment Figures: Doubles, Doppelgängers, Clones,’ hanging on a wall. Sunlight moving through wind-waving branches falls through a window onto it. You can also see the shadows of the window itself. That morning I was absorbed watching the light and shadows dancing quietly over the painting and videotaped it. Then, on an evening walk I came across a light on a patio with a thick white gauzy curtain around it, and shot some footage with my iPhone video camera. Later, playing with the footage, I added the billowing curtain and its light next to the painting of doubles and shadows. Then I cut sections of a photograph of the painting out, animated them and added them to the film. Finally, pondering on what I had produced, I wrote a whimsical poem of the African trickster spider god, Anansi, and wove it in with handwritten notes.

Read the rest.

Naming by Scott Edward Anderson

On 9 February, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 1 Comments - Videopoems
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A new filmpoem by Scottish artist Alastair Cook for a piece by the American poet Scott Edward Anderson. Alastair notes, “Naming was premiered at The Out of the Blue Drill Hall in Edinburgh in January 2011; it was shot entirely on Kodachrome Super8 in 2010 and contains no post production, after effects or erstwhile digital trickery.”

Excerpt from Little Gidding by T. S. Eliot

On 8 February, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Videopoems
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“Midwinter spring” is Peter Stephens‘ first foray into videopoetry, a film for the opening stanza of Eliot’s “Little Gidding.”

Breathe by Emma Passmore

On 7 February, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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A few months back I posted the French version of this, because Emma indicated that restrictions imposed by some of the festivals she’d entered it in might prevent her from sharing the English version for a while. But in a discussion of filmmaking approaches at the forum, she mentioned that she had in fact been able to post it, as you can see. Again, this won the Public Jury Prize for Best Film at the 2010 Zebra Poetry Film Festival in Berlin. Visit Emma’s website for more