A tantalizing (if that’s the word) excerpt from a 52-minute documentary by David Bickerstaff and Phil Grabsky. “Based on Mario Petrucci’s award-winning book-length poem (split over two books), ‘Heavy Water: a film for Chernobyl’ tells the story of the people who dealt with the disaster at ground-level: the fire-fighters, soldiers, ‘liquidators’, and their families.”
http://www.vimeo.com/6759661
Not sure of the filmmaker’s full name, but he’s Kevin on Vimeo, and obviously very professional in his approach to filmmaking. Here’s what he has to say about this piece:
An homage to the great Oscar Wilde, one of his lesser known poems penned in 1881 entitled “Helas” which translated from French is “Alas”. Interpreted by the mesmerizing young actor, Isaac Haldeman, set to the hauntingly austere music of Kevin McLeod, shot in Brooklyn with a Panasonic Lumix GH1.
Footage of a performance by Brazilian sound-poet Márcio-André. Brazil has had a thriving avant-garde poetry culture for decades, so I thought it only fitting to pay tribute to it here on Moving Poems at the end of a week featuring Brazilian videopoetry.
Many of Márcio-André’s projects don’t require a grasp of Portuguese to appreciate, being more sound than poetry. One that I found especially intriguing is his online Dot-Matrix Symphony. The instructions say (I think) to push play and then pause for all nine videos, then when they’ve all downloaded, start them going as close to simultaneously as possible.
Moacy Cirne performs his poem for the video-anthology Um Dia – A Poesia (One Day Poetry) by Ayres Marques Pinto (described in his YouTube bio).
I have no idea what the words mean, but clearly this man did not get the memo from his North American colleagues that poems are supposed be droned from behind a podium. (See Ayres Marques Pinto’s YouTube archive for many more videos from the One Day Poetry anthology.)
Another Carlos Drummond de Andrade poem, pulled together by Lila Sakura with a little help from her friends in the Darc Kontinents collaboration project.
A poem by Brazil’s greatest 20th-century poet, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, from the documentary Meu Amor Virtual by Dutch filmmakers Jan Willem Looze and Marke Fekkes:
At latineuro.com more than 2,500 Brazilian women offer themselves to Western men. These days Brasileiras are no longer only interested in their own countrymen – most of these men are a little too free with their hands, have too little education and above all: no future. So modern Brazilian women have taken to the net, offering themselves in the hope of finding true love online.
The documentary Meu Amor Virtual shows the dreams, desires, hopes and fears of four of these women who set out looking for intercontinental, intercultural and Everlasting Love.
A higher-quality version of this clip in WMV format may be downloaded from the documentary’s website.
I thought the ending, with the statue of the poet on a park bench at Copacabana, was a really nice touch.
Enio Bergwanger, the director, says:
This is a film shot on 16mm for the Minute Film Festival in Brazil 2004. The film was based on a poem called “Mixture” of copywriter, Fernanda Pinto. Here it is:
“Stay away from me…
Enough…
My mouth is like yours…
My eyes are like yours…
Stay away from me…
This mixture divides me…
Confuses me…
Dissolves me…
Be just my mother…
The mother I love…
The mother I hate…”The actress says the poem.
Shot with the idea of using basicly the primary colors, Red, Green and Blue. Inspired on the colors of a film by DP Ed Lachman – Far from Heaven (2002).
Music by Renato Borghetti – Borghettinho
Production Company – Paralela Filmes – Brazil
American poet Hal Sirowitz is, according to an uncited assertion in the Wikipedia, the best-selling translated poet in Norway, thanks mainly to these and other animations by Sigrid Astrup. I think the Norwegian really adds an interesting dimension to the poems.
Gregory Orr reads his poem for “an upcoming [in 2006] enhanced CD release entitled ‘Orpheus and Eurydice'” by Trey Gunn.
Sylvia Plath reads her poem in another video by the enigmatic mishima1970.