~ 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.
A Petty Morning Crime by Georgi Gospodinov
Bulgarian writer Georgi Gospodinov‘s poem in an utterly brilliant animation by Asparuh Petrov and the Compote Collective. Here’s the description from Vimeo:
А murder in the second degree, that doesn’t cut down the guilt…
04:01′ / DCP / 2015 / directed by Asparuh Petrov
“A Petty Morning Crime” is based on the original poem by Georgi Gospodinov of the same title. The film is part of the visual poetry project “Mark & Verse” produced by Compote Collective.
It was selected for ZEBRA 2016 and featured as a film of the month at PoetryFilm Kanal. Here’s the conclusion of their essay (worth reading in its entirety), via Google Translate:
A Petty Morning Crime convinces on all levels: from the voice, the sound design, the integration of the writing into the picture and the manner in which the poem is adapted visually. The adaptation retains a certain piece of work without falling into the illustration trap. The abstract figures, the spatial elements and the strong noises and sounds divert the attention of the viewer from the direct correspondences of word and image, and open his eyes to the special cinematic pictorial language, as much as the text also the everyday and banal pages of life poetry.
Poem for Rent by Kim Mannix
The text here is by Canadian poet Kim Mannix, the music by Adi Carter, and the video and voice are the work of Marie Craven, who really puts the “kinetic” into “kinestatic” in her use of still images. See the Vimeo description for links to all the photographers, and listen to the complete soundtrack, “Blink Blink,” on SoundCloud.
Our last video of 2016 is also our first of 2017, since it’s already the New Year in Australia where Marie lives. And a few hours ago on Facebook, she wrote: “The turn of the year is my favorite time. For me, it is about letting go of the past and going fresh into the new.” Here’s wishing all Moving Poems readers/viewers a happy, peaceful and creative New Year.
July 1, 1916: With The Ulster Division by Paul Muldoon
Director George Belfield of Somesuch production company writes (in the Vimeo description):
My great grandfather Wilbye survived the Somme. His brother Harry was killed in Belgium. My dad still has Wilbye’s signet ring on his finger. WW1 – and the Battle of the Somme – have always loomed large in my mind. The history. The poetry. My own family connection. The horror and carnage of it. The pointlessness. This film was my way of trying to connect with those experiences, and Paul Muldoon’s insightful and compassionate poem left us with the relatively simple task of creating space for it to sink in. These days, the Somme area is a banal agricultural backwater, but the landscapes still feel haunted by the atmosphere of what happened there. I recce-ed the locations with my dad, and my sister produced the film, so it’s really been a family affair, and I’m very proud of it.
The voiceover is by Lloyd Hutchinson and the sound by Jake Ashwell; click through for the full credits. The film was commissioned by 14-18 NOW, Norfolk and Norwich Festival and Writers Centre Norwich as part of the Fierce Light project.
Set by Nasim Łuczaj
Glasgow-based directors Douglas Tyrrell Bunge and Malen Montabes and poet Nasim Łuczaj are all credited as co-writers of this film, and all three appear as actors along with Harvey Dimond. It was made for the 48-hour filmpoem challenge sponsored by Cinepoems on December 2-4. The words are a little difficult to make out over the music, but the shots are too inventive not to share.
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot (3)
https://vimeo.com/191084099
Eliot’s enduring poem of male mid-life crisis gets a proper film treatment from Laura Scrivano and actor Daniel Henshall in A Lovesong, the third interpretation of Prufrock I’ve shared here over the years. The description from Vimeo:
‘Do I dare disturb the universe?’
A solitary man wanders the streets of a city, restless with indecision. As he tumbles down a rabbit hole of seedy dive bars, half deserted streets and shots of whiskey, time fractures – and it seems he might be destined to walk these streets forever.
Shot in New York by director Laura Scrivano, A LOVESONG the first film of THE PASSION series and features actor Daniel Henshall, star of AMC’s TURN: WASHINGTON SPIES and SNOWTOWN. thepassionfilms.com
Exploring Daniel’s fascination with poetry and text and the actor’s relationship to the both script and camera, his film takes as its starting point TS Eliot’s poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, considered to be one of the founding texts of modernist poetry.
As for the series which it is initiating:
THE PASSION is an ongoing series of intimate short films, capturing some of the world’s most exciting actors in exclusive, commissioned performances, exploring and re-imagining key texts and modes of performance in contemporary settings.
Each edition of THE PASSION is crafted through a creative conversation with the featured actor, with a script being developed based on a classic text or mode of performance of the actor’s choosing.
Pushing the boundaries between cinema, storytelling, poetry, contemporary art and performance, the films will be as original, dazzling and individual as the talents that create them.
The stories THE PASSION will tell, the talents involved, the dramatic themes illuminated and the strength of each individual performance will make THE PASSION a unique and inspirational digital experience.
Usually in poetry film the most relevant collaboration is between a poet and a filmmaker, so this approach of developing scripts in conversation with actors is intriguing (though it doesn’t sound as if all the texts will be poems). A reply to a comment on Vimeo gives additional detail about the process here:
Director Laura and star Dan spent weeks talking about the poem’s possible interpretations, and on adapting the text, before our DOP was brought in to discuss how to render it on film. We were dreaming in Prufrock by the end of it.
Ghazi Hussein: four poems and an interview
This is I came from the unknown to sing,
a short film about the Palestinian / Scottish Poet Ghazi Hussein
directed by Roxana Vilk camera Ian Dodds, Edited by Maryam Ghorbankarimi and Sound Design and composition by Peter Vilk
Executive produced by Scottish Poetry Library and United Creations Collective
Camera Ian Dodds
Editing Maryam Ghorbankarimi
Sound design and composition Peter Vilk
additional music by GOL
Hussein recites four poems in the film, two in English and two in Arabic: “Next visit,” “I came from the unknown to sing,” “I am an interesting file” and “To Edinburgh,” all from the book Taking it Like a Man: Torture and Survival a Journey in Poetry.
Leaving at Day Break by Catherine Ayres
This is one of a new series of videopoems by Anglo-Breton poet Claire Trévien — Day Six of the first videopoetry advent calendar of which I’m aware. As with most of the others in the series so far, it presents the poem (this one by Northumbrian poet Catherine Ayres) as text-on-screen accompanying a deft remix of video and audio from the web:
Components:
Two videos, one from Beachfront B rolls: http://beachfrontbroll.com, the other from Justin Jason: https://vimeo.com/57236261
Music is ‘Grass’ by Silent Partner
Sound effects from http://soundbible.com by Mike Koenig and stephan
Collaged together by Claire Trévien
Subscribe to CTrevien on YouTube to follow along as the advent calendar unfolds.
