~ 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.
An Interview: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes
This film by Maggie Bailey blends interpretative dance with snippets of a 1961 interview with Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. Here’s the description from Vimeo:
An Interview stems from a desire to explore the life of Sylvia Plath. This short film analyzes Plath’s feelings about her relationship with her husband, daily life, and raising her children, through dance and gesture work, paired with excerpts of an interview with Plath and her husband, Ted Hughes. Though she says quite the opposite in this interview, we can infer that she feels a loss of identity and purpose in life, in the midst of caring for a new baby. The year of the interview is 1961, two years prior to Plath’s suicide. Directed & filmed by Maggie Bailey. Edited by Maggie Bailey and Tyler Rubin. Performed by Heather Bybee. Music by Michael Wall. Interview with Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes.
Winning by Jade Anouka
A new performance poetry video from director Sabrina Grant and actor and poet Jade Anouka, with original music by Grace Savage.
As Mãos / Hands by Bernardo Pinto de Almeida
The words and voice of the contemporary Portuguese poet Bernardo Pinto de Almeida are featured in this new film from Belgian filmmaker and composer Marc Neys A.K.A. Swoon, who writes, in part:
I used the reading on Lyrikline (Audio production: Casa Fernando Pessoa, Lisboa 2004 ) to create the soundtrack. The audio version is based on a former version of the poem before called ‘Maturidade 2’
The translation [by Ana Hudson] was used as subtitles.Bernardo Pinto de Almeida has a natural capacity for weaving a cloth so that the poem reveals itself as if a picture of a living body on a canvas of words and images.’
(Guy Barker, British poet, 1964-2009)Guy Barker’s quote (and the content of the poem) led me back to the footage Eduardo Yagüe made for me during the summer of 2014.
I guess I almost used every bit he filmed and am grateful for his ‘eye’Bringing it all together was fairly easy.
I graded some of the footage for a higher contrast.
It was the flow of the reading and the pace of the music that gently steered me to the cutting choices I made. [links added]
Bela noć! (apokaliptične uspavanke) / White Night! (apocalyptic lullaby) by Goran Živković Gorki
Serbian slam champion Goran Živković Gorki, “the first homeless man on the Moon,” performs in a film by Dragana Nikolić. Đorđe Vić translated it into English for the subtitles. The poem appears in Gorki’s forthcoming collection Psihoslajdovi (The Psychoslides).
J’ai tant rêvé de toi / I Have Dreamed of You So Much by Robert Desnos
An animation of Desnos’ poem produced for French television by Emma Vakarelova.
Driving through the city towards whatever is beautiful by Warsan Shire
A commissioned poem by Warsan Shire in her capacity as Young Poet Laureate for London in a film from VisitLondon.com. (I wasn’t able to discover who actually filmed and edited it.) It’s an excellent poem that almost redeems the banal advertisement for London in which it is incorporated. Here’s the YouTube blurb:
How do you capture the way a city makes you feel? The anticipation of getting out into the city while driving over Westminster Bridge, the calm that being close to the River Thames induces, or the sense of time standing still as you relax in the park. Watch and share as Warsan Shire opens her heart and pens an intimate love letter to the capital. In her personal London Story, the latest of her commissions as part of her role as Young Poet Laureate for London, she uses the city as the backdrop for an exploration of her feelings of falling in love.
Arctica: three poems by Stevie Ronnie
https://vimeo.com/146147123
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https://vimeo.com/146160092
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https://vimeo.com/146166630
To make up for my prolonged absence (I’ve been relocating to the UK for the winter), here’s a whole triptych of filmpoems from Filmpoem itself: the crack team of filmmaker Alastair Cook and composer Luca Nasciuti, working in commission for a fascinating project from Northumberland-based poet Stevie Ronnie.
In July 2013 writer and multidisciplinary artist Stevie Ronnie visited the High Arctic as part of the Arctic Circle international residency programme. Arctica is a year-long series of interlinked artworks on the subject of climate change that Stevie has made in response to that experience.
These works are interdisciplinary in nature encompassing literature, performance, photography, artist’s books, film and a public art installation.
That’s from the Arctica website. A dedicated page on the Filmpoem website includes descriptions of each film:
[…] The films also feature Arctic footage shot by US-based artist Michael Eckblad alongside found footage from Alastair’s collection.
‘What I Should Have Said’ is the first Filmpoem of the Arctica triptych. It takes us into the air as we settle in to listen – then brings us back to ground in the Arctic. This is a love poem to the family that Stevie left behind, originally composed shortly before he set off on his Arctic journey. ‘What I Should Have Said’ appears in Stevie’s collection of poetry ‘Manifestations’ (Red Squirrel Press).
‘Time and the Two Year Old’s Hands’ is the is the second Filmpoem of the Arctica triptych. It reaches the midway point of the triptych and turns back on itself, the hourglass turning over, injecting an urgency into this plaintive call for the survival of our children. The poem ‘Time and the Two Year Old’s Hands’ was composed as a creative response to the IPCC report on Climate Change that was commissioned by Tipping Point, the Free Word Centre and Spread the Word for the publication ‘Weatherfronts: Climate Change and the Stories We Tell’.
‘From Arctica’ is the is the third Filmpoem of the Arctica triptych. It brings us back from the Arctic to Northumberland and was originally composed in response to the tragic and unexpected death of a child in Stevie’s local community. This difficult and moving ending to the tryptich is about the about the acceptance of the unspeakable, the unthinkable and those things that are around us that we choose not to see. ‘From Arctica’ is an extract from a yet to be published poetic narrative that explores climate change, light, dark and our relationship with death against the backdrop of the Arctic landscape.
Watching them back to back, there’s a definite gestalt effect for me. Also, these filmpoems certainly put my own difficulties adjusting to a more northern latitude (London! Yowza) in perspective.
Never Too Late by Malcolm London
Just in time for Thanksgiving, a meditation on the power of family, community and love from Chicago-based poet Malcolm London and filmmaker Caves for Heart Of The City TV, in collaboration with Irish graffiti artist Maser. It was posted to YouTube in December 2013 with this description:
Chicago met Dublin a little over a month ago when we linked with Malcolm London and renowned Irish graffiti artist Maser for their “Never Too Late To Love” collaborative mural. Today, we drop the visuals. Enjoy.
If you’d like to check out the mural go to La Baguette Bakery’s alley on 2109 S Ashland Ave (at 21st St).
I looked up Malcolm London today because he’s in the news, but unfortunately not in a good way: he’s one of five activists who were arrested by Chicago police last night for what sounds very much like the usual trumped-up bullshit used by American police to punish people for exercising their constitutional rights to free speech and assembly:
One of the five protesters arrested in the Loop in the hours after the release of the Laquan McDonald video is an aspiring poet who has garnered national attention and was one of the organizers of the march.
Malcolm London, 22, of the 4900 block of West Huron in the Austin neighborhood, was charged with aggravated battery to a police officer, a felony, after he allegedly struck a cop, according to the Police Department.
He faces the most serious charge of those arrested during the demonstration, which lasted for hours and briefly stopped traffic on the Eisenhower Expressway.
London is accused of striking an officer in the 100 block of East Balbo Drive as police blocked protesters from marching across the bridge. He is scheduled to appear in bond court later Wednesday.
Supporters have created a Free Malcolm London hashtag and have urged people to call police to demand that he be released.
“He was just standing there and the police snatched him up,” tweeted the Black Youth Project 100, which organized Tuesday night’s march. London is listed as a co-chair of the organization’s Chicago chapter.
London is a member of the Young Adult Council of the Steppenwolf Theater and appeared on PBS for a TED Talk with John Legend and Bill Gates. In 2011, he won the Louder Than A Bomb youth poetry slam in his Chicago, according to a biography on his website.
In 2012, just graduated from Lincoln Park High School, London talked to the Tribune about growing up in Austin and how it affected his work.
“There are a lot of kids like me in places like this, places kind of pushed into the shadows by the people who run this city,” he said. “We have stories to tell, stories not told in the news and media. I am getting the chance to tell mine, and others can too.”
In September of that year, he made his national television debut in “Verses & Flow,” a series that features musical and poetry performances.
(Read the rest.) Three of the five activists are charged only with “resisting police officer,” which is one clear sign that this is B.S. Follow the #FreeMalcolmLondon hashtag on Twitter for updates. Please consider helping Malcolm and the other arrested activists raise money for their bond so they can get home for Thanksgiving. And be sure to visit Malcolm’s website for more videos of him performing his poetry.
UPDATE (25 Nov., 7:56 PM): The charges against Malcolm London were dropped and he was released this afternoon.
[A]fter an outcry from fellow activists, who said London did not hit an officer and was standing peacefully when he was targeted by police and arrested, the charges against London were dismissed Wednesday afternoon.
No Regrets ( Не жалею, не зову, не плачу…) by Sergei Yesenin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQhAR-PiaI4
A film by John Deryl, who also supplied the voiceover using the English translation by Andrey Kneller. The YouTube description includes a process note:
Usual people don’t see many things around them. This piece shows what usually happens in my mind when I walk on the street. This morning I did not plan to make a film, but I happened to take my camera with me, and it resulted in this video. So I filmed it, found the right poem and narrated, chose the right music, mixed, edited, and color graded everything in about 6 hours. And now you have a chance to be in my mind for some time.
La canción del espejo / Song of the Mirror by Rafael Courtoisie
A powerful new film from the Spanish director Eduardo Yagüe in response to a poem by the Uruguayan writer Rafael Courtoisie, which is included in the soundtrack. London-based translator and poet Jean Morris supplied the English translation used in the subtitles, a collaboration which I’m happy to say I had a small role in bringing about. The music is by Four Hands Project, and the actresses are Mercedes Castro and Montse Gabriel.
Body, remember (Θυμήσου, Σώμα) by C. P. Cavafy
A gorgeous film from 2003 by the London-based animation artist Katerina Athanasopoulou, with an English translation of a poem by Cavafy (Kavafis) in the soundtrack. Click through to Vimeo for additional credits and a list of selected screenings.
