~ Video Library ~
First Grade Activist by Nic S.
This film by Marie Craven is the remix category winner of the Poetry Storehouse First Anniversary Contest. The challenge was to “Create a remix (a video remix, an art collage, a soundscape, a sound collage, or surprise us) in response to any Storehouse poem currently up at the site.” Erica Goss, Marc Neys and I were the video judges, but in fact all the remix entries were videos, so our top pick was the category winner.
On the poetry side of the contest, Jessica Piazza picked a winner and three runners-up, and I’ll be sharing the resulting ekphrastic videopoems by Neys, Eduardo Yagüe and Lori Ersolmaz as they are completed. Please see the full announcement at Moving Poems Magazine. Let me just quote what Erica Goss wrote about why we selected First Grade Activist.
In judging the contest, we looked for an overall fit between the poem, images and soundtrack. The winner had to demonstrate a sophisticated understanding of the elements of video poetry, blending them to create an artwork that is more than the sum of its parts.
As we evaluated the contest entries, we watched the videos many times over. Dave watched each video on different days, to try to eliminate the influence of whatever mood he might be in at the time, while Marc says he looked at “the total package, the crafting, as in editing skills, original camerawork, and the visual concept and originality.” For my part, I watched looking for that indescribable quality that a good video poem has, the juxtaposition of poetry, sound and image that jumps from the screen.
We agreed that “First Grade Activist” has those qualities. Dave said it had a “great populist aesthetic, as is appropriate for the subject matter. The music is fitting and compelling. The split screen with text on the left is on one hand reminiscent of a classroom blackboard, and on the other just a good choice for a self-referential poem like this one. I like everything about it.”
I thought it dealt well with a subject that’s gotten a lot of attention lately: bullying. I love that the poem imagines a “first grade activist” who combats bullying with a poem praising her friend’s red hair, the very attribute she’s getting teased for. As the children march down the hallway, little ones first, we feel the pain of the child who doesn’t fit in and the courage of her friend, who imagines a way to help.
Marc added, “The video is as crisp and fresh as a first school day, with a strong and taut concept in a tight execution. Good rhythm and good use of split screen in combination with the poem on screen (and the use of red in the letters). The music brings it together and gives it a nice build up, while the visuals remain the same. The video is clever and actually lifts the poem to a higher level.”
Congratulations to Marie Craven for winning the contest, and thanks to all who sent in their work.
The music in the soundtrack is by Dementio13, and the film footage is courtesy of the Prelinger Archives. See the contest results announcement for Craven’s bio.
On a personal note, I was pleased that the winning film was made with a poem by Nic S., even though this barely registered when I was evaluating the entries. Nic is of course the driving force behind The Poetry Storehouse, and added some of her poems at the beginning (as did I) mainly to set a good example and get the ball rolling. She works tirelessly to promote others’ poetry, lending her wonderful reading voice to many projects and creating a huge number of remixes herself, but her own poetry deserves to be much better known.
Robert Peake: Ten of My Favourite Animated Videopoems
This is the first of a projected series of “top ten” lists from a variety of contributors, intended to help new or occasional visitors to Moving Poems discover the best videopoems and poetry films. —Ed.
In animation, as in poetry, anything is possible. Both media also have a similar range, sweeping up everything from the surreal to the hyper-real, comedic to sublime. In this, they are well suited to collaboration. Here are ten videopoems that work as closely together as a practiced tango duet.
Homage to the Mineral of Cabbage by Stephanie Dudley, poem by Erín Moure (2011)
Simply gorgeous stop-motion animation, as dark and mysterious as the heart of a cabbage.
“Balada Catalana” (with English subtitles) by Laen Sanches, poem by Vicente Balaguet (2010)
A musical and imaginative bacchanal, I had to remember to shut my jaw after I first saw this.
Old Astronauts by Motionpoems, poem by Tim Nolan (2009)
Image and text perfectly tempered to the poet’s delivery.
“Of Care” by Ruah Edelstein (2011)
A deceptively simple poem unfolds through repetition, music, and imagery, drawing out the archetypal wisdom of a fable.
“Why do you Stay Up So Late?” by Ernesto Lavandera, poem by Marvin Bell (2004)
(Interactive, click here to begin)
An experimental interactive piece that beautifully matches the mood and timbre of this fine poem.
“Streamschool” („Patakiskola”) by Péter Vácz (2012)
Fluidity, beauty, and grace are evoked through stop-motion animation from this traditional Hungarian rhyme.
“Square Pears, Rare Bears” by Sharon Keighley, poem by Ed Barton (2009)
Deliberately low production values and literal depiction of this fast-paced linguistic romp heighten the delight.
“About Bigmouse” by Constantin Arephyeff, poem by Ludmila Ulanova (2008)
In this piece, music plays a central character around which the words and images dance.
“Brother” by HBO Family, poem by Mary Ann Hoberman (2011)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GR3Rtmmi2lA
The story told through the animation gently enfolds and unfolds this simple poem. Read by Carrie Fisher.
“Four Years From Now Walking With My Daughter” by Liam Owen (2013)
A piece that bears re-viewing, as no attention to detail is spared, giving this touching poem a sense of familial care.
Die liebe in den Zeiten der EU / Love in the age of the EU by Björn Kuhligk (Part 2)
As mentioned in Part 1, for the 2014 ZEBRA festival, filmmakers were challenged to make a film using a text by the young German poet Björn Kuhligk, with an English translation provided by Catherine Hales. The ZEBRA programme committee chose three best films; these are the other two — both animations, conceived and directed by the animators themselves.
Susanne Wiegner says about her film (above),
The film starts with a peaceful, blue sea scenery full of hope and light. The recitation of the poem begins, that describes in a very drastic way the treatment of the boat refugees by the European Union.
The sea scenery becomes dark and hostile and ends up in front of a wall. The ear-deafening noise of helicopters resounds.The camera pans upwards and one realizes that the walls were built by the European emblem and the whole scenery turns into the European flag. The helicopters disappears, the Fortress Europe “was defended successfully” once again.The heraldic description of the European flag given by The Council of Europe is:
“Against the blue sky of the Western world, the stars represent the peoples of Europe in a circle, a symbol of unity. Their number shall be invariably set at twelve, the symbol of completeness and perfection…Just like the twelve signs of the zodiac represent the whole universe, the twelve gold stars stand for all peoples of Europe – including those who cannot as yet take part.”
Council of Europe. Paris, 7–9 December 1955
Ebele Okoye’s animation, produced in Germany with the support of Shrinkfish media studios in Abuja, Nigeria, is the stand-out interpretation for me. Okoye’s summary reads:
Sometimes, we are like marionettes in the hands of those whom we have either consciously or
unconsciously chosen to please.
A visual adaptation of the poem “Die Liebe in den Zeiten der EU” by Björn Kuhligk.
In addition to the nicely oblique relationship between images and text, I thought the interplay of spoken and whispered lines worked brilliantly.
Grandmother is a Crab by Rosemary Norman
The collaborative partnership between London-based experimental filmmaker Stuart Pound and poet Rosemary Norman dates back to 1995, and nearly twenty years later, they’re still going strong. I saw “Grandmother is a Crab” at ZEBRA. The description on Vimeo reads:
Grandmother is a Crab borrows from an earlier digital video, made fifteen years ago, that itself used footage captured from a travel advertisement on television. Black and white, and mirror effects, take the image out of time, giving it both vividness and distance. The music is played in reverse. And the voice-over and under-titles are a poem that re-enters the magic world of a child on a beach.
Simple yet ingenious. It’s not just the kids who excel at digital remix these days.
Interni / Interiors by Azzurra D’Agostino
I had the pleasure of seeing this film, from Italian director Gianmaria Sortino, on the big screen at ZEBRA. Like Sina Seiler’s Elephant, it prompts us to consider the interior spaces of women’s lives from a new perspective.
Sortino describes it at Vimeo as
Video poetry based on a piece by a young talented poet, Azzurra D’Agostino.
A special thank to Marina Spada, who inspired this work.
Azzurra D’Agostino’s own reading is in the soundtrack. Jeff Abshear is the translator. (There’s also a version without the subtitles.) I see that Abshear has translated a collection of D’Agostino’s poetry, Canti di un luogo abbandonato/Songs of an Abandoned Place, for a small, letterpress edition from the Kalamazoo Book Arts Center.
Joining the Lotus Eaters by Laura M Kaminski
https://vimeo.com/108625030
Today again I’d like to present two very different videopoems made with the same text—and even the same reading. This time the poem comes from The Poetry Storehouse, and is the work of the Missouri-based poet and editor Laura M Kaminski. The voiceover in both is by Nic S., who is also the maker of the first video remix (her preferred term). Nic sourced her music from David Mackey on SoundCloud.
Australian artist Marie Craven puts the “kinesis” back in “kinestatic” here. I didn’t even notice that the film was made entirely of still images the first time I watched it; the uptempo music by anunusualleopard probably had something to do with that. Click through to Vimeo for the full list of credits and links.
Read the just-published interview with Laura M Kaminski at Moving Poems Magazine to learn why Nic’s film brought her to tears, and how a friend who doesn’t usually read poetry reacted to Marie’s film.
Die liebe in den Zeiten der EU / Love in the age of the EU by Björn Kuhligk (Part 1)
For the 2014 ZEBRA festival, filmmakers were challenged to make a film using a text by the young German poet Björn Kuhligk, with an English translation provided by Catherine Hales. According to the program, “23 film makers from ten countries followed the call. Thirteen of the films have been selected for the festival.”
UK filmmaker Maciej Piatek‘s take on the poem was judged one of three best films of the contest. (I’ll share the other two, by Ebele Okoye and Susanne Wiegner, in Part 2 next week.) It includes a voiceover by Lisa Luxx and music by Dominic Rattray. In the Vimeo description, Piatek writes:
We, Europeans have tendency to cut ourselves off from the rest of the world, the EU is almost like a green island in the ocean of poverty. Sometimes our prosperity makes us blind even though we’re going through financial crisis, economy is only a part of the problem. The biggest challenge for the EU is to face the crisis of values, the same values which founded EU such as: “..respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities … “. This short video poem’s trying to visualize the state of mind of an illegal immigrant on its way to “freedom” through fear and despair.
Belgian filmmaker Swoon (Marc Neys) included Kuhligk’s reading in the soundtrack. One simple, powerful visual concept carries the filmpoem. In addition to the ZEBRA screening, it was also screened at the 5th West Virginia Mountaineer Short Film Festival.
One more film from the screening has been shared on Vimeo, but cannot be shown here due to embedding restrictions. Mexican director Alex Saavedra‘s film is a complex narrative with several twists and turns.
Pipene / The Pipes by Øyvind Rimbereid
This was the winner of Goethe Institute Film Prize at the 2014 ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival, where the animator, Kristian Pedersen, also had an exhibition and gave a talk, which I attended. One thing I learned that really impressed me is that the producer of Pedersen’s wonderful series of abstract animations, Gasspedal, does not view them as trailers or promotional tools for its chapbooks but as important publications in their own right — hence the creation of a separate division, Gasspedal Animert. A very forward-thinking publisher!
The poet and reader is Øyvind Rimbereid, who was also in attendance at ZEBRA and gave a reading of this and several other poems from a cycle of poems about the organ, accompanied by the Babylon Theater’s old silent-movie organ. In the video, Nils Henrik Asheim plays on an old pump organ with live electronic effects.
Written for the opening of the Stavanger Concert hall and its custom built organ, The Pipes is an ode to industrial history – the former backbone of the city’s economic and social life.
—
One of Norway’s most celebrated poets, Øyvind Rimbereid (b. 1966) made his debut in 1993 with the short story collection Det har begynt (It has begun). His poetry collections Herbarium (2008) and Jimmen (2011) both earned nominations for the Nordic Council prize for literature. Rimbereid is the only Norwegian poet to be awarded the Critics’ Prize twice, for Solaris korrigert (2004) and Orgelsjøen (2013).
Vuosirengas / Tree Ring — poems by Katri Vala
Another one of my personal favorites from the 2014 ZEBRA competition screenings, this poetry film was directed, filmed and animated by Maria Björklund. All the photography was done in a park in Helsinki named for a poet who used to live nearby, Katri Vala (1901-1944), and excerpts from several of her poems are included in the soundtrack. “The filming took place once a week through the year” (2009), according to the credits. Here’s the description at Vimeo:
A film by Maria Björklund (2012)
Script: Maria Björklund, Antti Mäki, Maria Palavamäki
Editing: Maria Palavamäki
Sound design and music: Antti MäkiThe infamous Katri Vala Park in Sörnäinen, Helsinki is a meeting place for urban nature and poetry in this experimental animated documentary.
The film was produced by Animaatiokopla.
The poetry was translated by Annira Silver and read by Kimberli Mäkäräinen. There’s also a version of the film in Finnish.
Cirkel / Circle: 11 Belgian poets
A filmpoem by Swoon (Marc Neys) incorporating 11 poems by 11 different Belgian writers, telling a single story of life, lust, love and loss. The poems range in style from experimental to formal verse, all ably translated by Willem Groenewegen. I had the pleasure of seeing this at ZEBRA with an introduction by the filmmaker, having first viewed it online more than a year ago when Marc briefly made it public. It’s now been fully released to the web after nearly two years of festival screenings.
I don’t know if there is ever an ideal day of the week to post a 20-minute poetry video, but website visitor stats do suggest that Monday is a big day for procrastination on the job. So grab a beverage, put on your headphones and hit the play button. What better way to ease into the week than with a surreal poetry film to alter your consciousness?
Here are the poems that make up the film:
- “Meer tijd” (More Time) by Jan Lauwereyns
- “Tel Aviv” by Michaël Vandebril
- “Over de afstand tussen twee vogels (III)” (On the Distance between Two Birds (III)) by Lies van Gasse
- “Het komt” (It Will Come) by Stefan Hertmans
- “!!!” by Xavier Roelens
- “Krop” (Crop) by Leonard Nolens
- “Of wel” (Or Will It) by Marleen de Crée
- “Een hele kleine oorlog” (That Little War) by Yannick Dangre
- “De reu rouwt, de mens steelt” (The Hound Mourns and People Steal) by Delphine Lecompte
- “Dertien vragen en geen antwoord” (Thirteen Questions Without An Answer) by Stijn Vranken
- “Onvoltooid” (Unfinished) by Charles Ducal
The poems were recorded by three well-known Flemish actors: Vic De Wachter (poems 1, 6, 7, 8), Michaël Pas (poems 2, 4, 10, 11) and Karlijn Sileghem (poems 3, 5, 9). The actors are Katrijn Clemer, Mathieu Courtois, and Rommel the cat. (“Rommel” means “clutter” in Dutch; it has nothing to do with the Nazi general.) The music is by Hanklebury, Lunova Labs, and Swoon. Click through to Vimeo for the rest of the credits, not to mention the extensive list of screenings.
