~ 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.

Self Portrait by Edward Hirsch

On 16 February, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Animation, Performance Poetry
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http://www.vimeo.com/18203490

The wacky folks at Teleportal Readings say about this one:

We filmed esteemed poet Ed Hirsch during a shoot Teleportal did in collaboration with Rattapallax at the Bowery Poetry Club last summer. Though “trippy” isn’t a term we’d normally use to describe Hirsch’s work, the hand-painted, rotoscoped animation by Teleportal art director Scott Gelber makes the poet’s “Self Portrait” just that.

For more on Hirsch, see his page at the Poetry Foundation website.

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Three Poems by Steven McCabe

On 15 February, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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The poems are “Speed-dial a Rainbow,” “Bough,” and “Salome’s Veil.” McCabe directs with cinematography by Eric Gerard and editing by Konrad Skreta.

She Walks in Beauty by Lord Byron

On 14 February, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Videopoems
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This is “Harenberg,” by Klaus Hommerich and Daniel Gerken,

Shot on film and video; different gauges, resolutions and intentions show the pursuit of quiescene and ease of mind. […] Techniques: 8mm, 16mm, HD 1080P (EOS 5D, 550D), SD, Greenscreen with 8mm and 16mm,Feltpen on b/w film, Snorricam, Ikegami camera tube, GoPro HD, …

The reading is evidently by J. Milsome of the BBC.

How to Remain by Heather Haley

On 11 February, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Videopoems
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Heather Haley wrote and directed this entertaining film about a very serious subject. Here’s her gloss from the video description on YouTube:

The audience is along for a wild ride in AURAL Heather’s “How To Remain” with a compulsive protagonist resolutely heading toward an elusive goal of perfection, perpetually struggling to stay *on* and, or to stay thin. *How to remain in control* is at the heart of anorexia and bulimia. Ubiquitous images of the ideal woman provide pressure and anxiety for us all. She turns to her trusty steed but instead of her body disintegrating, the horse’s body withers away. A symbol of intense desire and instinct, the horse’s ribs start to protrude as it becomes increasingly emaciated until finally disappearing with a *POOF! * Though eating disorders are a serious matter, the story is really about facing our all-too-human mortality. REMAIN is the key word and our secret desire, fueling our heroine’s quest for eternal youth and beauty, i.e., immortality. She is in a race. A horse race. A rat race? Or a labyrinth. Reel time accelerates as it does in real life; time seemingly flying by with advancing years as we move toward our inevitable departure. Of course HOW we live is what really matters.

Anansi Hides the Moon by Brenda Clews

On 10 February, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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“Poem, painting and video by Brenda Clews,” as it says in the closing credits. Brenda’s process notes at her blog are almost as interesting as the result:

A painting, ‘Parchment Figures: Doubles, Doppelgängers, Clones,’ hanging on a wall. Sunlight moving through wind-waving branches falls through a window onto it. You can also see the shadows of the window itself. That morning I was absorbed watching the light and shadows dancing quietly over the painting and videotaped it. Then, on an evening walk I came across a light on a patio with a thick white gauzy curtain around it, and shot some footage with my iPhone video camera. Later, playing with the footage, I added the billowing curtain and its light next to the painting of doubles and shadows. Then I cut sections of a photograph of the painting out, animated them and added them to the film. Finally, pondering on what I had produced, I wrote a whimsical poem of the African trickster spider god, Anansi, and wove it in with handwritten notes.

Read the rest.

Naming by Scott Edward Anderson

On 9 February, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 1 Comments - Videopoems
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A new filmpoem by Scottish artist Alastair Cook for a piece by the American poet Scott Edward Anderson. Alastair notes, “Naming was premiered at The Out of the Blue Drill Hall in Edinburgh in January 2011; it was shot entirely on Kodachrome Super8 in 2010 and contains no post production, after effects or erstwhile digital trickery.”

Excerpt from Little Gidding by T. S. Eliot

On 8 February, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Videopoems
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“Midwinter spring” is Peter Stephens‘ first foray into videopoetry, a film for the opening stanza of Eliot’s “Little Gidding.”

Breathe by Emma Passmore

On 7 February, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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A few months back I posted the French version of this, because Emma indicated that restrictions imposed by some of the festivals she’d entered it in might prevent her from sharing the English version for a while. But in a discussion of filmmaking approaches at the forum, she mentioned that she had in fact been able to post it, as you can see. Again, this won the Public Jury Prize for Best Film at the 2010 Zebra Poetry Film Festival in Berlin. Visit Emma’s website for more

What is to Give Light by Yahia Lababidi

On 4 February, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 6 Comments - Videopoems
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Egyptian poet Yahia Lababidi, a Facebook contact, shared the text of his poem at The Idler just after I discovered that Al Jazeera has a cache of Creative Commons-licensed videos available for remix. So with Lababidi’s blessing I pulled this videopoem together, using some of that Egyptian street poetry for a soundtrack. I did the reading myself because he was having internet-connection problems and wasn’t able to send me his own reading.

Videos in the film/animation category at YouTube don’t seem to attract too many views, so I identified it as “News & Politics” instead. We’ll see if that makes a difference. In any case, it needs to be watched by people with an interest in the uprising.

Seasonally Affected by Hannah Stephenson

On 3 February, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 1 Comments - Author-made videopoems, Performance Poetry, Videopoems
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This film, called “Seasons,” was made in response to a poem Hannah just wrote and posted to her blog last Thursday. The anonymous filmmaker grow365 says, “This is part of my 365 project to do something creative every day. You can see other experiments at http://grow365.posterous.com […] It’s the first time I’ve ever done this sort of thing.” The soundtrack incorporates Erwin Schulhoff’s Sonata for Solo Violin, Second Movement, performed by Daniel Hope, which means of course that she’s in risk of YouTube stripping it out.

The poet herself also posted a video of the poem, also her first such effort. It’s extremely lo-fi, made with the camera on her laptop, but more imaginative than at least 90% of poem videos made in that fashion.

(The poet moved to Columbus, Ohio in December, and I keep wanting to shout, Put on a damn coat and hat, Hannah! You’re not in L.A. anymore!)

Render, Render by Thomas Lux

On 2 February, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Videopoems
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Good advice for anyone making a revolution. According to the note on YouTube,

This motionpoem was created by Jeff Saunders with Scott Olson, Ben Myrick, Adam Tow, Carly Zuckweiler, and Andre Durand. It was shot in Jeff’s studio. The audio is from The Academy Audio Archive POETS.org and was recorded at Poet’s House, March 29, 2004.

Inexplicably, Lux doesn’t appear to have a website or blog, though of course he’s published widely in treeflesh media.

The Chimney Sweeper by William Blake

On 31 January, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 2 Comments - Animation
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Blake in Turkish kinetic type animation! I think Alper Yildirim really captures the mood of Blake’s poems (see the Wikipedia for the complete text). In the notes on Vimeo, he explains:

This video is done for the typography course, when i was in the post-graduate program of Hacettepe University -i am not studying there now ,thanks to god-. I tried to make a mixage of using moving typographic elements with animation. The Chimney Sweeper is a poem of William Blake, and i used its first verse.

When my mother Died, I was very young,
And my father sold me while yet my tongue,
Could scarcely cry weep weep weep weep,
So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep.