~ Videopoems ~
Videopoetry, filmpoetry, cinepoetry, poetry-film… the label doesn’t matter. What matters is that text and images enter into dialogue, creating a new, poetic whole.
114 & Lenox, 4AM by Molly Murphy
A Vimeo find. I don’t know anything more than this:
Director of Photography Jordan Chlapecka
Performed & Read by Molly Murphy
Shadows by Langston Hughes
I suppose this is technically a music video rather than a videopoem, but it strikes me as much closer to the latter genre to the former — save for the fact that the poem takes the form of a very beautiful art song.
Composed by Lior Rosner
Soprano: Janai Brugger
Directed and After Effects by Tal Rosner
DoP: Adam Woodhall
Dancers: Cameron McMillan, Fiona MerzAbout the project:
One of America’s greatest poets, Langston Hughes was a social activist and early innovator of jazz poetry. Hughes distilled the experience of his generation of African Americans into poems that sang in his clear and unapologetic voice. In “In Time of Silver Rain: Seven Poems by Langston Hughes,” composer Lior Rosner uses his music to liberate Hughes’ words from the boundaries of historical context. Rosner’s modern settings challenge us to consider the contemporary relevance of Hughes’ frank and often searing meditations on the universal themes of oppression, loss, frustration and love. While the emotions captured in these songs are indeed timeless, beneath the undeniable modernity of Rosner’s music, there are subtle harmonic nods to the jazz that provided the sonic backdrop for the Harlem Renaissance.
Born to Die by Zaher Mousa
One poem, one cameraman, two films! Reel Festivals commissioned both Alastair Cook and Swoon (Marc Neys) to make films for a piece by the Iraqi poet Zaher Mousa, using footage shot in Iraq by American poet Ryan Van Winkle. Here’s how Alastair introduced his film (the first one above) on Vimeo:
Born to Die is a poem by Iraqi poet Zaher Mousa and is in his native Arabic. There are no subtitles, as I want you to hear to the emotion in this great poet’s voice. The English text of the poem is available on the Vimeo site if you click through. Born to Die was a commission from Reel Festivals and was shot in Iraq for Filmpoem by Ryan van Winkle. It is a pair with Swoon, with him making the English language counterpart translated by Lauren Pyott and read by Jen Hadfield; this is the second film we have paired, the first being Aan Het Water.
These films are part of a larger collaboration between Reel Festivals and Zaher Mousa. Check out Mousa’s essay, “Reel Festivals – Dialogue through Poetry.”
Pets by Vickie Vertiz
A mash-up of public-domain footage from the Internet Archive by Kenji Liu.
Poet Vickie Vertiz reads the poem “Pets” from her book Swallows (Finishing Line Press, 2013), available at tinyurl.com/swallowsbook
Coelacanth by Charlotte Henson
A new poetry film by Rachel Laine is always worth waiting for. This one features a poem and recitation by UK poet Charlotte Henson.
He Wishes For The Cloths of Heaven by William Butler Yeats
Film by Gianni Marini; voice by Paul Buchanan. This is the poem also known as “Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven”:
Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
According to the Wikipedia, the poem was featured in an episode of the BBC television series Ballykissangel, where it was recited by one of the characters.
Humming Bird by D. H. Lawrence
http://vimeo.com/61407931
In a blog post introducing this video, Nic S. writes:
I get such a kick out of people putting their creations out there for free non-commercial use by others. This happened thanks to generous Vimeo user, Equiloud, who has a clips channel offering his amazing video creations for free download and Sound Cloud user Flute Ninja doing the same. The reading itself was already up at Pizzicati of Hosanna.
Requiem auf Georg Trakl (Requiem on Georg Trakl) by Sigrun Höllrigl
This Swoon film is a production of the Vienna-based videopoetry group Art Visuals & Poetry, who write:
“Requiem on Georg Trakl” is a political movie. The death metaphors in the poetry of Georg Trakl are interpreted as visions of the deads of first and second World War. The movie is about the poet as a visionary and outcast of society. The artist stays lonely because he has another view of reality – he “sees” in another reality.
Wild Geese by Mary Oliver
This is O wild goose da muller by Carmen PG Granxeiro:
Videoarte. Tres formas de escoitar. Tres formas de entender.
Videoart. Three ways to listen. Three ways to understand.
Videoarte. Tres formas de escuchar. Tres formas de entender.
Oliver’s most famous poem has been made into numerous videos for the web, most of them dreck. But I shared one other that I liked, a film by Justin DeWaard, back in 2010.
Ode to My Body by Scott Parson’s 12th Grade Class
This collaboratively written poem comes from Scott Parson’s 12th Grade Class at the Maplewood Career Center in Ravenna, Ohio. It was animated by Adam Rechtenwald from a design by Eric Stearns, and is part of the 2009-2010 edition — Peace Stanzas — of the Wick Poetry Center’s Traveling Stanzas program.
