~ 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.
Tiny Openings Everywhere by Kallie Falandays
The poet and reader here, Kallie Falandays, runs Tell Tell Poetry, a site dedicated to “making poetry fun again,” and true to form, this is a fun piece — and a bit of a departure for Swoon (Marc Neys), both in the high-energy style of the reading and the way it’s incorporated into the film. As he says in a recent blog post,
I found the poem at The Poetry Storehouse, but it was Kallie Falandays’ jagged reading that made me pick this up.
I first created a soundtrack where her reading could be the spiky centerpiece. [Listen on SoundCloud.]
The visuals for this one came fairly easy. A string of footage (found and filmed) was edited close to the rhythm and pace of the soundscape. I wanted everyday objects (almost still life) juxtaposed with images of the everyday rat race. For some reason that works well and results in an overall strange atmosphere.
I was prompted to post a second Swoon videopoem this week by the realization that I have missed quite a few good ones this year. I think that’s excusable, though, given that he’s released 70 poetry films in 2014 (so far), collaborating with poets both famous and obscure from all over the world. Considering how many of his films have appeared in festivals and exhibitions, not to mention on this and other websites, it’s fair to say that Neys is doing more to bring poetry to the screen than any filmmaker alive — all on a shoestring budget.
My Handwriting by Dan O’Brien
https://vimeo.com/112336376
This is the most recent of three short videopoems by Ruben Quesada based on texts from Dan O’Brien‘s new poetry collection Scarsdale. (The other two are “Greenwich / Isle of Dogs” and “Breaking the Ice.”) Scarsdale was published last month in London by CB Editions, but an American edition is due out next year from Measure Press, according to the description on Vimeo.
It’s great to see a poet and editor of Quesada’s stature getting into videopoetry. He’s been at it for at least six months, judging from his output on Vimeo, and as this video demonstrates, he already has a pretty deft touch.
Proof: a poetic glimpse into the archives of Bloodaxe Books
A poetry film/documentary hybrid. The filmmaker, Kate Sweeney, describes it in the Vimeo description as
A poetic glimpse into the archives of the North East [UK] poetry publisher Bloodaxe Books, the contents of which were recently purchased by Newcastle University.
The film was made by artist Kate Sweeney in collaboration with poets Tara Bergin and Anna Woodford in spring 2013
Anna Woodford and Tara Bergin both held residencies at the archive. Bergin talks about her fondness for archives in a video introduction to the film. The same site (CAMPUS social network) gives a fuller explanation of how Proof came to be:
In 2013, Newcastle University acquired the archive of Bloodaxe Books, one of the most important
contemporary poetry publishers in the world. Two poets and recent PhD graduates, Anna Woodford and Tara Bergin, were asked to take a look into the as yet un-catalogued boxes to gain an initial sense of the archive’s scope and potential. To document their findings, they teamed up with artist Kate Sweeney to make a short ‘poem-film.’ They called it ‘Proof’.“It was very strange and very interesting,” Bergin says.
The film includes guest appearances by Bloodaxe authors Gillian Allnutt, Simon Armitage, John Hegley and Anne Stevenson.
Cold Moon by Erica Goss
We buy longing, our faces
aggressive and breakableon the cusp of winter.
The perfect poetry film for the holiday season. This is the final part of the 12 Moons series, the year-long videopoetry collaboration between Marc Neys A.K.A. Swoon (concept, camera and direction), Erica Goss (poetry), Kathy McTavish (music), and Nic S. (voice), presented by Atticus Review. Marc wrote:
As with the other 11, Kathy provided me with a great soundtrack. Moody and floating on ‘loneliness’. Perfect for Nic’s reading and the poem itself.
Reading and hearing the poem gave me the idea of using images of people shopping for the holidays. I filmed these for another project (Day is done), but this was a perfect match.It’s like Erica said after viewing the video: “In “Cold Moon,” the young woman’s expression captures the essence of the poem: that holiday shopping is a poor excuse for spirituality, and that faith is still an unexplained phenomenon.”
So this was the last of the series. All of these were made over more than a year ago, but I still have great memories working on these. My gratitude also goes out to Atticus Review and Moving Poems for giving those videos an extra home.
Showing these 12 at Zebra Festival in Berlin this year was a highlight, but collaborating with those three was the best reward.
Nic S.: Ten Fabulous Videopoems
It turns out
Martha McCollough, 2012
Several things about Martha McCollough’s work delight me. Her voice and reading style for one. Voice, where it is used, is almost overridingly important for me, and if vocals are off, the whole film is off. Martha’s voice and reading style carry her work superbly. I also love her double- or triple- (or more) narration style, where you frequently have the voice carrying one narrative thread, the kinetic text carrying another, and the visuals a third. You feel that text is an actual character in her films. I also enjoy how she plays around with vocals, using repetition, chorus, and other vocal effects. She has a great sense of humor! Check out Mr Lucky’s Jackpot for a more straightforward combination of her different techniques.
The Polish Language
Alice Lyons and Orla Mc Hardy, 2009
At eight minutes, this is far longer than my usual optimum video poem length (ideally, less than two minutes, three approaches a stretch…), but is so finely and imaginatively made that one instantly forgives. Again, kinetic text as character and dynamic role-player/narrator, but presented here in a truly fantastic variety of form. Background vocals only (as a separate non-English narration track — nothing obviously duplicating the text) and a wonderful mix of individual/chorus vocals, intermittent sound effect, intermittent tuneful piano, and (most of all) intermittent silence. So beautiful and moving.
Rain
Maria Elena Doyle, 2011
All my favorite elements here: kinetic text that plays as a dynamic character in the overall audio-visual story, marvelous visuals that combine regular video footage with animation, and nice vocals towards the end. Based on the poem “Rain” by Maori poet Hone Tuwhare. Poem text here.
https://vimeo.com/25072181
Sonnet 44
Thomas Freundlich, Lumikinos Production & Art Slow, 2012
This short dance film is based on Shakespeare’s Sonnet 44. It’s an imaginative remix of a classic, and one that assumes audience familiarity with the original text. So rather than presenting the text in the usual linear, pedestrian format, the film-maker incorporates it in a dynamic, fragmentary fashion, so that it participates by inference, almost, and again, as a live character in the piece.
A Word Made Flesh
Eliza Fitzhugh, 2010
As Dave Bonta said at Moving Poems, this is “a fascinating linguistic deconstruction of the poet’s lines … The multiple accents should remind us that now more than ever, with the advent of the web, Dickinson’s poetry belongs to the world.” Poem text here. No particular visuals or film-making talent to admire in this one, but what pleases me is the word play, in every sense of the phrase, where both text and vocal versions of the word are presented and re-presented in shifting and re-shifting form. A sort of philological Greek chorus, moving the overall narrative forward with clever diversions and rest stops.
Tongue of the Hidden
David Alexander Anderson, 2007
Mysterious and beautiful, love poems of Hafez read in the original Persian, with illustration and animation based in Persian calligraphy. This is over five minutes in length, and as far as I can tell contains two poems, one that starts about 40 seconds in and a second that starts around the three-minute mark. I’m including the Persian version below. If you prefer to hear the same narrator read the poems in English, go here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUhaF1JI5r8
Instructions to Hearing Persons Desiring a Deaf Man
Raymond Luczak, 2014
I find this video extraordinarily moving. Again, no film-making virtuosity to admire, just a very talented and convincing poem performance by Raymond Luczak. I frequently rant on about reading poetry aloud for an audience at Voice Alpha, and for me, what is transformative about that act — what makes a poem and your relationship to it qualitatively different — is the act of putting the poem into your body, the physicalization of the poem in preparation for presenting it to an audience. This video gets at the same idea from a different perspective altogether — just beautiful to watch. And if you have a minute, take a look at this video from Sarah Rushford. The subjects close their eyes and recite lines from memory, to intriguing and convincing effect. Once more, I see the transformative effect of putting a poem into the body.
The Woods
Kristian Pedersen, 2012
Over at Voice Alpha I am building a collection of readers I call ‘musical readers.’ People who, while they read poetry aloud for an audience, appear to hear an internal music which both guides and manifests itself in their reading. Cin Salach and Carl Sandburg are my favorite examples of this phenomenon. It manifests itself charmingly here in the voice of the Norwegian poet, Aina Villanger, who does the reading for this delightful videopoem. I love the spare imaginative use of simple abstract shapes and a minimal color palette to play out the action in the poem, marching perfectly along with the reading.
Karl
Scott Wenner (animation) and Motionpoems, 2011
I am not usually intrigued by or particularly drawn to Motionpoems‘ poetry films, as they generally tend, in my view, to be fairly literal visual interpretations of the text poem they engage. I also find their vocal tracks are often not quite ‘there.’ Not this one though — it’s pretty much perfect in every way. A dissonance that somehow really works between the text narrative by Dag Straumsåg and the visual narrative. That moth, that spider. The drum, the piano, the synthesizer. And that wonderful voice with its fabulous reading. Each element spare and solitary, but somehow they are all necessarily attached to each other. (Maybe the one thing I would have changed had I been in charge would have been to not snap the spider web at the very end…)
Montserrat
Fernando Lazzari, 2013
Kinetic text once more (this time in celebration of an actual specific typeface). I really like the reliance on text alone as the narrator and the fact that the film-maker does not feel the need to run duplicative vocal narration alongside the text presentation, as too often happens in kinetic text productions. Wonderful graphics. Very clever idea to present a city as the ‘stage’ for this segment of a Jorge Luis Borges poem, upon and across which the text ‘actor’ performs its dynamic role.
See five more poetry videos that didn’t quite make this list at Nic’s blog, Very Like a Whale. —Ed.
Як вишні / As cherries by Olena Huseynova
Dariia Kuzmych directed, animated and edited this videopoem with poetry by Olena Huseynova and music by Heinali. It won first prize in the main competition at CYCLOP 2014.
See the CYCLOP-2014 playlist on YouTube, currently at 30 videos, for more Ukrainian poetry films, many of them with English subtitles. With the Western news media always focusing on conflict in Ukraine, it’s easy to lose sight of the country’s rich and complex culture. Watching these bilingual videopoems offers a glimpse into the way Ukrainian people think, what they value and what they dream about. Plus, they’re just very good films.
Кафка / Kafka by Kyrylo Polischuk
Kyrylo Polischuk (Pol Ischuk) composed the music and text, and Viktoria Netrebenko is credited with the idea and editing of this Ukrainian videopoem. It took 2nd place in the main competition at CYCLOP 2014.
Взрослеют / Growing Up by Ksana Kovalenko
A quirky, disturbing stop-motion animation by Eugene Tsymbalyuk with text and narration by Ukrainian poet Ksana Kovalenko. Denis Chernysh was the director of photography, and the actors are Victoria Klyosova and Roman Nemtsov. This was the third-place winner in the general competition at CYCLOP 2014.
Tsymbalyuk offers this synopsis in the description at Vimeo:
“Growing up” is an associative video, made under the impression of the short poem. It’s a story about growing up by pain. It’s about the ability to except the inevitable and to gain experience, when the treacherous knife in your spine turns out to be a key able to open new doors for you.
News roundup: Read Our Lips Filmpoem Competition, Rabbit Heart DVD, animated poetry film screening in Leipzig
Spoken-word poets from the north of England are invited to submit films to the Read Our Lips Filmpoem Competition 2015.
Read Our Lips is a unique digital project that aims to give poets and spoken word artists the skills to make their own filmpoems, from storyboarding through to editing.
We believe that a filmpoem is not a recording of a performance to camera, but is instead a layering of visual elements on to a spoken poem in such a way as to create a new, coherent work of art. We are looking for films that do more than simply illustrate the featured poem in a literal way, but which seek to surprise, enhance or subvert by their choice of additional imagery.
Click through to the Facebook event listing for the competition terms and conditions. The deadline is February 23, 2015. Prizes total £225. (I especially liked this bit: “All poems will be screened online during March 2015 for entry into the viewer’s choice prize category.”)
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Here’s a cool thing: just in time for the holidays, a Rabbit Heart Poetry Film Festival 2014 DVD from Doublebunny Press.
All the best video from the 2014 Rabbit Heart Poetry Film Festival collected in one place, including category reels, and the Best of What Not to Submit Monday.
Films by:
Yves Bommenel, Greg Brisendine, John Mortara, Sarah Guimond, Aisha Naseem & Chris Markman, Josh Lefkowitz and Chris Follmer, David Richardson, Timothy David Orme, Meriel Lland, Megan Falley and Rachel Rae Gausp, Malt Schlitzman, Cheryl Maddalena, Sou MacMillan, Jenith Charpentier, Laura EJ Moran, Scott Woods, Michael Medeiros, Cassidy Parker Knight & Jeff Knight, and Allan & the Nieces
To sample some of the films included on the DVD, see their YouTube page.
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Here’s an upcoming screening that sounds kind of intriguing: Leipzig-Präsentation von LAB/P – poetry in motion.
Wir präsentieren 9 Animationsfilme, die in der interdisziplinären Zusammenarbeit von AutorInnen und FilmemacherInnen aus der Region entstanden sind. Die Werke ermöglichen einen spannenden Einblick in zeitgenössische Lyrik und Animationsästhetik und geben Gelegenheit, neue künstlerische Positionen zu entdecken.
Which Google Translate renders as:
We present 9 animated films that have arisen in the interdisciplinary collaboration between authors and filmmakers from the region. The works provide a fascinating insight into contemporary poetry and animation aesthetics and given the opportunity to discover new artistic positions.
Here are the details:
Donnerstag, 11. Dezember 2014
Kleiner Empfang ab 19:30 Uhr, Vorführungsbeginn 20:00 Uhr
UT Connewitz, Wolfgang-Heinze-Straße 12, 04277 Leipzig, www.utconnewitz.deProgramm:
KANTEN DEINER AUGEN (Melissa Harms & Yevgeniy Breyger)
ROSTOCK, GRAND CAFÉ (Susann Arnold & Moritz Gause)
DAS BILD IN DEM BILD IN DEM BILD IN DEM BILD (Catalina G. Veléz & Marlen Pelny)
ECHO (Damaris Zielke & Peter Thiers)
AUSGEBRANNTES HAUS (Eva-Maria Arndt & Antje Kersten)
OHNE TITEL (Meng Chang & Daniel Schmidt)
VIVA VIOLENCE (Johanna Maxl & Katharina Merten)
DIE ANGST DES WOLFS VOR DEM WOLF (Juliane Jaschnow & Stefan Petermann)
KASPAR HAUSERIN (Nelly Chernetskaya & Katia S. Ditzler)
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Thanks for all three of these news items to the fabulous Thomas Zandegiacomo Del Bel, who seems to know about everything related to poetry film going on anywhere on the world, and posts it all to the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival group page on Facebook.
Алый апрель (Scarlet April) by Dmitry Vodennikov
Ukrainian filmmaker Anzhela (Angie) Bogachenko directed and edited this surrealist videopoem with a text by the contemporary Russian poet Dmitry Vodennikov (who is no stranger to video). That’s Vodennikov’s reading in the soundtrack, which was put together by Victor 78 — the long-haired male lead. The English translation in the subtitles is credited to Anna Shwets. (I like the way even the post-it notes are translated. And I love the post-it notes in general.) The cast includes Zoryana Tarasyuta along with Bogachenko and Victor 78. Vladimir Gusev was the cameraman. Asya was the cat.
Bogachenko also made that delightful film with the dancing cosmonauts that I posted back in October, “А у вас дім далеко від нас?” (Do you have a home away from us?).
