~ Video Library ~
The Art of Poetry Film with Cheryl Gross: “Western Civilization”
Western Civilization
poem by Peter Jay Shippy
directed and animated by Alicia Reece (MotionGnome) for Motionpoems
lettering and lead actor: Emory Allen
make-up: Ashley Burke
music: Joey Verskotzi
additional animation: Valerie Lockhart
2014
Western Civilization is a well-produced, breathtaking piece. Based on a poem by Peter Jay Shippy, it was one of many short films to debut at the 2014 Motionpoems premiere. The design, poetry and voiceover work flawlessly together. This is as close to perfection as one can get.
I’ll begin with the design. Alicia Reece works with a limited color palette, then switches to black and white, then back to incorporating color against a scratchboard-like background. Add an old scratchy film effect, and we are taken back in time. If I’m not mistaken, the animators used actual video footage and applied the cartoon (special effect) using the Adobe program After Effects. This is a nice, smooth way to simulate animation. It appears that Reece does a lot of commercial work, which is apparent judging from the execution.
The poem is wonderful. It’s hip-hop coupled with American twang. Sort of like Paris, Texas meets Rihanna. The voiceover fits perfectly. I’m back in the 60s or 70s, tripping on mushrooms or peyote and looking for god. Or in this case Keith Moon (former drummer of The WHO.) The reference to popular music is a bonus. This makes the piece a total postmodern experience—or pop-culture experience if you will.
The combination of styles and the use of type all blend successfully, which clearly communicates how we can know, and have known, the American west. I’m ready to get in the car and drive all the way to New Mexico, or in this case Utah. I think it would be fun meeting up with a shaman who is familiar with rock music.
Western Civilization is truly a beautiful piece with a wicked sense of humor.
The Expiration by John Donne
‘Breake off this last lamenting kisse, which sucks two soules and vapors both away.’ Inspired by John Donne’s poem, The Expiration is a beautiful, evocative, depiction of two secret lovers as they accept they must reluctantly part forever. This adaptation embraces the Renaissance concept of la petite mort that ‘to die’ was ‘to orgasm’ and explores the bittersweet moments of a love’s last breath.
That’s the description on the exemplary website for this new film by British director Lotus Hannon, released on the web today in honor of John Donne’s birthday. He’d be 544, which seems incredible to me because in so many ways his work seems so modern. As the greatest of the metaphysical poets, he’s been an indispensable touchstone for metaphor-obsessed 20th and 21st century poets in a way that most of his contemporaries have not. Oddly, however, I haven’t run across very many film or video adaptations of his works online, so let’s hope this one will inspire other poetry filmmakers to try their hand at a John Donne poem.
The Expiration was filmed by BAFTA Breakthrough Brit 2015 Cinematographer Anna Valdez Hanks and has so far been selected for the BFI LOVE season as part of the Cornwall Film Festival and for the StAnza International Poetry Festival in March. The actors are Azzurra Caccetta and Olivier Hubband.
In her director’s statement on the website, Hannon goes into some detail about how she came to make the film and why she chose the shots and setting that she did:
I was introduced to the love poetry of John Donne at high school and suddenly my literature class became a lot more interesting…suddenly his words made ‘one little room an everywhere’. I was able to channel my awakening teenage sexuality into becoming a metaphor sleuth, eagerly stripping away the layers of his work to discover hidden meanings. I found his observations of lovers and loving so beautiful, and The Good Morrow became one of my favourite poems.
John Donne’s honest exploration of life, love, sex, death – la petite mort, fascinates me. When I recently read The Expiration, I was captivated. There is nothing more charged than a ‘…last lamenting kisse,..’ nothing more precious than a love, ‘…which sucks two soules, and vapors both away.’ It was the sobering line “Turn thou ghost that one, and let me turn this,” that instantly brought an image of a couple that can no longer love one another, awkwardly lying close, sharing a bed, knowing they can no longer be connected. An overhead wide shot of a couple turning away from each other, lying back to back became imprinted in my mind,..from this, my ambition to bring it to the screen grew…
Originally I thought we’d shoot in an enclosed environment, inside a bedroom or a beach hut but as my vision for the piece developed, the poem’s earthiness, its grittiness demanded it be located outside. The title and the poem itself made me think of ‘lifeforce,’ or ‘chi’, which literally means breath, air, or gas. And as trees give us the oxygen that we cannot live without, I wanted to set it in the woods.
I wanted to capture the metamorphosis of a couple’s intoxicating sexual euphoria into a clear-headed, post-coital reality: Despite their passionate love, their relationship just cannot be. For me, The Expiration is not about a love that has just fizzled out. There is too much full-blooded passion, anger and too much raw pain. The act of passion creates life itself, and yet this is a love that has to be killed off. This led me to interpret the poem in the way I have. I hope to evoke the emotional effect this poem has on me, and to honour the wonder of loving and the bittersweet joy and pain it can bring.
Be sure to visit the Behind the Scenes page for the full credits list, complete with web links, and a series of snapshots of the filming. The website also includes a good biography of Donne as well as the text of the poem.
Une Mort Héroïque / An Heroic Death by Charles Baudelaire
https://vimeo.com/151340667
A fascinating, silent-film-style theatrical interpretation of Baudelaire by Ryan Kiggell of aya theatre company and Olivia Rose of GoodDog theatre company.
A fool, marked to die by a capricious king, is made to perform for the last time. A re-working of the prose poem by Charles Baudelaire; a modern parable on the place of art within the landscape of power and wealth. Both film and theatre, the piece was devised and filmed on a single evening in a public square in Paris.
Made by Ryan Kiggell and Olivia Rose, with GoodDog Theatre Co.
Produced by George Moustakas for aya and Green Rooms.“An Heroic Death” forms part of a longer film, “The Last Songs of Lucan”, based on the poetry collection “Le Spleen de Paris” by Charles Baudelaire. This is a 17 minute silent film accompanied by live percussion by Jamie Misselbrook.
I don’t usually share poetry films or videos that include so little of the referenced poem, but this piece really captured the essence of Baudelaire’s melancholy text, I thought. Two English translations of “Une Mort Héroïque” are available online through Google Books, one by Aleister Crowley and another by Louise Varèse.
Af’a Gilgamesh / Gilgamesh’s Snake (excerpt) by Ghareeb Iskander
A great poetry film by Roxana Vilk, combining videopoem (with an English translation in subtitles by John Glenday) and a brief explanation of the poem by its author, Iraqi poet Ghareeb Iskander. This combination is one Vilk has used to good effect in other films, too, but for some reason I missed this one until now, when I spotted it thanks to its inclusion in the ZEBRA Poetry Film Club channel on Vimeo. The unusually complete Vimeo description includes Vilk’s description of her process, so let me reproduce it in full:
This film is a result of a commission from Reel Festivals as part of Reel Iraq 2013 and funded by Literature Across Frontiers and the British Council.
Based on a poem by Ghareeb Iskander, Directed/Produced & filmed by Roxana Vilk, Edited by Maryam Ghorbankarimi and Sound Design & Music Peter Vilk, Poem translation by John Glenday, bridging translation by Lauren Pyott and Assistant Director James Sadri.
In January 2013 I was invited to create films inspired by poets and poems I encountered from both Iraq and Scotland as part of the Reel Iraq festival in Erbil. It was an incredible trip and an honour to work with Reel Festivals again.
I first heard Ghareeb Iskander’s poem, during a magical evening in the mountain village of Shaqlawa when the poets were sharing the fruits of the first days of translating each others works over a glass of wine.. or two….
As John Glenday read out in English his translation of Ghareeb’s poem, I was immediately struck by the imagery in it and how the sentiment resonated with how I felt on coming to Iraq for the first time – a mixture of feeling the weight of the history mixed with an aching sense of loss.
I should also add at this point that the poem in the film is an extract of a much longer work (in three acts) on Gilgamesh.
Image wise I was drawn to empty sites across Erbil. First of all the many building sites that lay scattered across much of the city and how they had this haunted quality – almost like abandoned old theatres.
I was also drawn to filming in the empty ancient Citadel in the centre of Erbil which dates back over 3,000 years and had 3 years ago been emptied of its inhabitants to be preserved as a UNESCO site.
Both these locations resonated with the emotional landscape in Ghareeb’s poem for me and also lent visual space to house the images he was creating in the language.
It was pouring with torrential rain for most of our trip which seemed fitting in some way with the sound world of Ghareeb’s poem and one morning I asked him to walk through an empty building site, reciting his poem in his mind, as the rain dripped loudly on the floor of the empty site.
In terms of colour I wanted to reflect back Erbil exactly as I encountered it in January – devoid of much colour and somehow the locations had a monochromatic feel. So our ever sharp eyed editor Maryam Ghorbankarimi and I worked together strip the images back of colour and then use just touches of colour to create contrast.
Sound designer and composer Peter Vilk used the found real location sounds I had recorded Iraq ( such as the rain) which he then treated and manipulated with his software to create his sound design score, alongside a melody he wrote on the piano.
For those interested in technicals – I filmed on a Canon 7D and captured separate sound on a Zoom stereo Mic, synching the sound later in the edit.
Commissioned by Reel Festivals as part of their Iraq Project 2013 and funded by Literature Across Frontiers and the British Council.
For more of Roxana film works please visit roxanavilk.com
Iskander explained the two-step English translation process in an interview at Arabic Literature (in English).
Bicycle Love Poem: Midtown to Canal by Jessica Jacobs
This delightful film by Tom Jacobsen (Pixel Farm) was one of the winners of Motionpoems‘ Big Bridges Film Festival in Minneapolis last year. Sophie Jacobsen is the actress and Jesse Marks provided the sound mix. The many nods to selfie culture recall some of the best video work of Alt Lit poet Steve Roggenbuck.
For more on the poet, Jessica Jacobs, see her website.
For women who are difficult to love by Warsan Shire
An atmospheric video by New York-based artist BriAnna Olson for Warsan Shire‘s widely circulated poem.
Relativity by Sarah Howe
I wanted to share something by Sarah Howe today to celebrate her winning the TS Eliot prize with her collection Loop of Jade, “the first debut poetry collection to win the British prize since it was inaugurated in 1993” as the Guardian pointed out. YouTube has a couple of good videos of her reading her work, but the only videopoem is this one by Bridget Smith, produced for National Poetry Day 2015. The renowned physicist Stephen Hawking reads a poem Howe wrote especially for him. He praised the poem on Facebook:
Physicists and poets may differ in discipline, but both seek to communicate the beauty of the world around us. … Sarah Howe brings light to life in her poem “Relativity.”
It sounds as if this video, or one very like it, will be part of an upcoming Bridget Smith exhibition at the Frith Street Gallery in London, The Eye Needs a Horizon:
A high definition video installation shows a beam of light emanating from an unseen projector. The film shows nothing but light and particles of dust, yet it evokes a sense of drama and indeed of immensity using the sparest of means.
River Bicycle Peony (from August Notebook: A Death) by Robert Hass
This is a kind of metaphor, a stop-motion animation by Paige Speight of Robert Hass‘s “River Bicycle Peony.” Evan Montilla provided the voiceover.
Mor säger att det är ett minne / Mother says that it’s a memory by Eva Ström
The filmmaker Marc Neys A.K.A. Swoon writes,
My last video for 2015 is also my most personal. Mor säger att det är ett minne is a poem by Eva Ström I found on lyrikline earlier this year. I decided to use it with the footage I shot during my mother’s last week. […]
I used the audio by Mechner (Literaturwerkstatt Berlin, 2005) as base for the music. Around Eva’s reading I composed a frail piece of music using only a piano and an old clock; [SoundCloud link]
The translation by Maria Freij was used as subtitles. […]
In the film you see my mother clipping her nails after bath. She had come home to die (after her decision to stop all treatment and medication). She wanted to spend her last days at home, with her children close by.
I am well aware that this video speaks to me and my family on a whole other level, but I also believe that the combination of this footage with the poem and the music works well for other people…
Thanks to Marc for his willingness to share such personal footage and go so deep.
Crows, Reckoning by Jessica Goodfellow
A poem by Jessica Goodfellow adapted to film for Motionpoems by Alex Hanson and Edward Chase Masterson of Commandr studio. See Masterson’s Vimeo upload for a full list of credits, which appear to have gone missing in Motionpoems’ otherwise fabulous new website design.
Released on January 1, this was the last episode (as they’re now calling them) in Motionpoems’ Season 6, which was produced in partnership with VIDA: Women in Literary Arts and featured a lineup of all female U.S. poets. As with the others in this season, there’s a bonus interview with the poet. Here’s the final question and response:
What was your initial reaction to seeing the motionpoem?
I don’t know what I was expecting, but I had to watch the movie two or three times before I could take it in, because its story line was so different from the poem. I was all the while captivated by the the textures in the imagery, the childlike yet knowing voice of the narrator, the mystery of the film, those actual crows (I had expected animation since I did not think real animals would be feasible) and that final striking image. Even now, though I’ve watched the film a dozen times, it remains mysterious to me, but that’s the genius of what Alex Hanson and Edward Chase Masterson have done—adding layers of mystery rather than in trying to explicate the poem. Because of their film, the poem has become a deeper, more moving experience, one that evokes a despair in me that I did not expect.
Smell! by William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams’ own recitation of his poem is included in the soundtrack of this animation by Isaac Holland. The video is part of the Poetry of Perception series commissioned by Harvard for its Fundamentals of Neuroscience course.
