~ 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.
I Have a Secret Servant by Felix Dennis
A “melting painting animation” by Italian video artist Elena Chiesa. For more of Felix Dennis’ poetry, see his website.
Another Slow Day by Henry Stead
http://vimeo.com/57190458
London-based poet, translator and classicist Henry Stead supplied the words and voice for this videopoem by Swoon, who has blogged some process notes:
To go with the almost languid reading I wanted images that expressed some kind of restlessness, boredom and even sulk. Once I had those, the video practically made itself…
They met for a live performance (Stead reading while the film was projected) last week at the London Poetry Systems 5th anniversary celebration.
Bir Küvet Hikâyesi (The Tale of a Tub) by Nazim Hikmet
A very fine dramatization of a narrative poem by the great Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet. The translation in the subtitles leaves a bit to be desired, but the actors help carry the meaning through. Here’s the Vimeo description:
Nâzım Hikmet’in “Bir Küvet Hikâyesi” isimli şiirinden uyarlanan kısa film.
This movie which is adapted from a poem by Nazim Hikmet, recreates the tensions provoked by the ‘other woman’ through the voices of a couple named Suleyman and Fahire.
Yönetmen – Senaryo/Directed by: Orçun Baş
Eser/Poem By: Nâzım Hikmet
Oyuncular/Cast: Filiz Baş, Coşkun Baş
Kamera/Camera: Orçun Baş
Ses/Sound: Öner S. Biberkökü
Işık/Light: Orçun Baş, Öner S. Biberkökü
Görsel Efekt/Visual Effects: Öner S. Biberkökü
Kurgu/Editing: Orçun Baş
Every Memory by Sheree Mack
http://vimeo.com/55172122
This is #6 in Alastair Cook‘s Absent Voices series “celebrating the legacy of the Greenock Sugar Sheds, vast Category A listed hulking relics of the sugar trade, a dark and sweet slice of Scots history.” Sheree Mack reads her poem as part of a soundtrack by Luca Nasciuti, with cinematography by Swoon (Mark Neys). This is one of several filmpoem collaborations between Cook and Neys, and you can catch both men along with Nasciuti live in London tomorrow night, February 16, as part of the London Poetry Systems anniversary bash.
Alastair Cook, Mark Neys and Luca Nasciuti are also all directors — along with yours truly — of the first Filmpoem Festival to be held in Dunbar, Scotland in early August. We’ve just posted the call.
America by Allen Ginsberg
An impressive videopoem apparently made for a high school English class. I particularly like how the young filmmaker asserts herself as a kind of alternate-history author of the poem. It seems in keeping with the poem’s own speculative interests.
poem “America” by Allen Ginsberg
directed by Sydney Gross
starring Sydney Gross
special thanks to Sabah Light and Ashley Langley
project for Mr. Locke’s class
To A Young Poet by R. S. Thomas
Othniel Smith notes:
An interpretation of a poem by Welsh writer R. S. Thomas (1913-2000), made entirely using material taken from the public domain Prelinger Archive. Contains brief nudity.
See Smith’s Vimeo channel for many more classic poetry mashups with Prelinger films and Librivox recordings.
something I remember by Robert Lax
The third in a trilogy of animations for Robert Lax poems by the German architect and artist Susanne Wiegner.
“something I remember” is a poem by Robert Lax that describes a certain moment outside of time and space during a rainy night. For the film the letters of the poem are divided in a large amount of layers. These layers become spaces, streets and the falling rain.
And at the end … “there is nothing particular about it to recall.”
Homenaxe ao mineral do repolo (Homage to the Mineral of Cabbage) by Erín Moure
This is Little Theatres, a jaw-droppingly good stop-motion short directed and animated by Stephanie Dudley. It’s based on a poem in Galician, the language of northwest Spain, by the Canadian poet Erín Moure, from her book, Little Theatres (Teatriños).
The film has its own website. According to the About page,
The poem is the second in a series of six by Erín in her award-winning book, Little Theatres. Each poem is an homage to a simple, humble food, such as potatoes, onions, and cabbage. The poems examine our relationship to food, and draw new insights to how these basic foods relate to life, as well as how we relate to each other. In looking more closely at the simple, everyday elements of life, we learn to appreciate their beauty.
The film Little Theatres is an interpretation of what Little Theatres are. It is an exploration of layers: layers of space, and layers of words, both spoken and written. The exploration begins and ends with a simple cabbage.
The film is also available with subtitles in French. (Moure’s multilingual abilities were a source of confusion for me at first, since the Wikipedia article about her mentions that her mother is from the part of western Ukraine known as Galicia — unrelated to the Galicia in the Iberian peninsula except inasmuch as both regions were originally settled by Celts. To compound the confusion, I’ve filed this film under both Canada and Galicia in the index, since the poem, if not the poet, is clearly Galician.)
An Anna Blume (To Anna Flower) by Kurt Schwitters
“An Anna Blume,” says the Wikipedia, is “a poem written by the German artist Kurt Schwitters in 1919. It has been described as a parody of a love poem, an emblem of the chaos and madness of the era, and as a harbinger of a new poetic language.” This film adaptation, a German-Bulgarian production, won the the Ritter-Sport Prize at the 5th ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival in 2010. Here’s the description at Vimeo:
Anna Blume is a visual poetry about the lust of a man chasing a woman. The story takes on surreal journey dictated by the mind of the poet. Lust and ingestion, disguised in love, drive the two characters to an end where love turns to be a very lonesome and strange place. The film is based on and inspired by the emblematic love poem from 1919 “An Anna Blume” by Kurt Schwitters.
CREDITS:
director Vessela Dantcheva
art director Ivan Bogdanov
screenplay Vessela Dantcheva & Ebele Okoye
main animator Ebele Okoye
music composer Petar Dundakov
sound designer Emil Iliev
compositing & edit Ivan Bogdanov
storyboard & layouts Vessela Dantcheva
produced by Ebele Okoye & FINFILM
supported by Robert Bosch Stiftung & National Film Center
Day is Done by Johan de Boose
Swoon‘s latest videopoem features a text, reading and English translation by Belgian author Johan de Boose. As Swoon wrote in a blog post introducing the film:
For poetry day & week (here in Belgium & The Netherlands) Johan de Boose wrote a poem.
The ‘Provincie Oost-Vlaanderen‘ and ‘Het Poëziecentrum‘ gave me a commission to make a videopoem for it.During these days filled with poetry, Johan is visiting schools, showing the video, reading the poem and talking with the students…
Some things speak for themselves.
Loud and like crystal.[…]
It was clear from the beginning that I wanted someone young to feature in this video. And I found the perfect one. Filming and editing was made easy with her natural expression and Johan’s strong words.
Dutch and Flemish Poetry Day is the fourth Thursday of January (January 24th this year).
Click through to the post to read the poem in both languages.
Kliniken (The Clinic) by Annelie Axén
A newly subtitled animation by Kristian Pedersen for Gasspedal Animert. Words and voice are by Annelie Axén. There’s also an unsubtitled version.
According to the Gasspedal website (with the help of Google Translate), Annelie Axén was born in 1975 and is an author and critic. Raised in Falun, Sweden, she graduated from the Author Program at Telemark University College in Bø, Norway, and went on to the University of Copenhagen where she studied journalism. Her book Langz was published by Gasspedal in 2005.
