~ Video Library ~
Haiku (This cold winter night…) by Yosa Buson
Amusing little animation by Paul Watts, who seems to have remembered what so many Western haiku-appreciators do not: that irreverence is central to the form (it was a reaction against more serious renga poetry).
The Wind, One Brilliant Day by Antonio Machado
Machado is one of my favorite poets, so I was excited to see this from award-winning filmmaker Chel White, and with the recitation by none other than Alec Baldwin. Here’s White’s description from the Vimeo page:
Based on a one-hundred-year-old poem by the Spanish poet Antonio Machado, “Wind” is an allegorical perspective on climate change. In recent years, a number of films have been made on the topic of global climate change, but few have addressed the issue from a poetic perspective.
“Wind” is constructed with the poem as the film’s nucleus, book-ended by montages of astonishing time-lapse sequences by photographer Mark Eifert. In the film, scenes of the earth, weather, and human interaction, both negative and positive, dominate the film’s imagery. The music consists of a lesser known piece by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, with solo piano played by Thomas Lauderdale (of Pink Martini.)
Though written in the early 20th century, the Machado poem is particularly poignant today, bearing an uncanny relevance for climate change and planet stewardship. This film was commissioned by the environmental organization Live Earth, and is narrated by Alec Baldwin. The English translation is by Robert Bly.
(Thanks to Viral Verse for the introduction to Chel White’s work.)
we hear them cutting by T. L. Kelly
According to the author’s resume, this was
a poetry film collaboration with poetry by T. L. Kelly and film by Guilherme Marcondes and Andrezza Valentin and sound by Paulo Beto, in Born Magazine, October 2003. Screened in 2004 at Resfest Brazil and Anima Mundi, both in Brazil; and Zebra Poetry Film Festival in Berlin (where the film won a special mention).
Born Magazine has been around in one form or another since 1996, and is now probably the best-known web journal for literary animation, as well as a standard-bearer for artistic collaboration in general.
The magazine launched on the Web in 1997 with a focus on editorial design and traditional editorial topics, including essays, film and music reviews, and topical articles. As Web technology continued to evolve, contributing artists began focusing on the connections between literature and visual arts, and experimented with the dynamic relationship between text, cinema, audio, and interactivity. In response, Born redefined its mission in 1998, focusing on collaboration and media-rich interpretations of poetry, short fiction and creative non-fiction, and eventually arrived at its present incarnation.
Shelby the Dog by Robert Sward
A wise and funny poem by Robert Sward from Blue’s Cruzio Cafe, an online space for poetry animations that’s been in operation since 2004. The animations are by Beau Blue, but authors collaborate by providing readings, photos, ideas for storyboards, and other sugggestions, according to the About page.
The Lovers by Dorianne Laux
A wonderful interpretation of the Laux poem that takes one, crucial liberty with the text, turning it from a third-person into a first-person poem in the woman’s voice. Here’s the director’s description on Vimeo:
The Lovers is performance piece based on the poem by Dorianne Laux. It examines the ecstasy, complexity and contradiction of female sexual experience.
This performance was developed as a collaboration between The Kelman Group (UK) and The Tuesday Group (Portland, OR, USA) in July and August 2009.
Performers : Juli Gun, Anet Ris-Kelman and Taru Sinclair
Director : Bob LockwoodThis edit is an amalgam of takes of two rehearsal runs of the piece at Hipbone Studio on E.Burnside, Portland.
Stadt-Fisch (City-Fish) by Jan Kummer
A 16 mm film by Patrizia Monzani, who describes herself on her blog as “a film director and editor. Author of videopoems in collaboration with contemporary poets, she is currently involved in the videoart world also as a curator (cooperations with LOOP festival, Visualcontainer.org and Videoartworld.com).” Of this film, she says on Vimeo:
Three characters cross each other – without really affecting one another, thoughts and voices overlap, strophes are repeated… Actually they are not alone and lonely, they just don’t see what they are surrounded by.
Jan Kummer, the poet here, is an artist and author from Chemnitz, Germany.
Dave, this is a very user-friendly platform for discussion. Good find.
I have a question. I really like Ren’s animated collages, and I like to make collages. Does anyone have any ideas about what software I need to learn to make parts of my collage move? I’m thinking of collaborating with my teenage son, who studies drawing and painting.
She is Overheard Singing by Edna St. Vincent Millay
A music-video-style film titled Overheard by composer Briareus (Clayton Corrello). Millay’s poetry doesn’t do much for me by itself, but put to music and envideoed, it’s really quite compelling, I think.
The electric kool-aid Collins test
This is a test of the auto-embed video posting feature from the front page of the blog. I’m simply posting the URL of a video on YouTube to its own line, separated by spaces before and after, as detailed in the WordPress codex. (I think this will work in all browsers, with the possible exception of mobile devices. Please leave a comment if you are only seeing links and not the videos themselves.)
Sometimes I feel as if Billy Collins is looking down on me, and he’s not even dead yet!
That was the authorized video, an animation by Juan Delcan, part of a series of animated poems produced by JWT New York. It has been viewed 756,604 times on YouTube. But I much preferred the following unauthorized video montage by Lauren Adolfsen:
The Delcan animation is a very fine illustration of the poem, but with Adolfsen’s video, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. It’s not merely a poem video; it’s a videopoem.
Which do you you prefer?
