~ Animation ~
To This Day by Shane Koyczan
Canadian performance poet Shane Koyczan headed up this collaborative project, which has its own website. The YouTube version has gone viral, with more than 5 million views in the first week. Quoting the website:
To This Day Project is a project based on a spoken word poem written by Shane Koyczan called “To This Day”, to further explore the profound and lasting impact that bullying can have on an individual.
Schools and families are in desperate need of proper tools to confront this problem. We can give them a starting point… A message that will have a far reaching and long lasting effect in confronting bullying.
Animators and motion artists brought their unique styles to 20 second segments that will thread into one fluid voice.
This collaborative volunteer effort will demonstrate what a community of caring individuals are capable of when they come together.
This was produced by Leah Nelson, Jorge R. Canedo Estrada and Alicia Katz at Giant Ant. The component 20-second clips were each posted to Vimeo by their creators, if you’d like to investigate any of them further. I’ll just reproduce the list of 86 animators and motion artists from the credits page of the website: Ryan Kothe, Mike Healey, Will Fortanbary, Brian San, Diego De la Rocha, Gizelle Manalo, Adam Plouff, Mike Wolfram, Hyun Min Bae, Oliver Sin, Viraj Ajmeri, Vishnu Ganti, Yun Wang, Boris Wilmot, Cameron Spencer, DeAndria Mackey, Matt Choi, Reimo Õun, Samantha Bjalek, Eli Treviño, Ariel Costa, Caleb Coppock, James Mabery, Samir Hamiche, Waref Abu Quba, Deo Mareza and Clara, Josh Parker, Scott Cannon, Thomas McKeen, Kaine Asika, Marcel Krumbiegel, Teresa del Pozo, Eric Paoli Infanzón, Maxwell Hathaway, Rebecca Berdel, Zach Ogilvie, Anand Mistry, Dominik Grejc, Gideon Prins, Lucy Chen, Mercedes Testa, Rickard Bengtsson, Stina Seppel, Daniel Göttling, Julio C. Kurokodile, Marilyn Cherenko, Tim Darragh, Jaime Ugarte, Joe Donaldson, Josh Beaton, Margaret Schiefer, Rodrigo Ribeiro, Ryan Kaplan, Yeimi Salazar, Daniel Bartels, Joe Donaldson, Daniel Molina, Sitji Chou, Tong Zhang, Luc Journot, Vincent Bilodeau, Amy Schmitt, Bert Beltran, Daniel Moreno Cordero, Marie Owona, Mateusz Kukla, Sean Procter, Steven Fraser, Aparajita R, Ben Chwirka, Cale Oglesby, Igor Komolov, Markus Magnusson, Remington McElhaney, Tim Howe, Agil Pandri, Jessie Tully, Sander Joon, Kumphol Ponpisute, James Waters, Chris Koelsch, Ronald Rabideau, Alessandro & Manfredi, Andrea López, and Howey Mitsakos.
from Tabacaria (The Tobacconist’s) by Álvaro de Campos (Fernando Pessoa)
This is Azulejo ou l’illusion visuelle, an “animated film by Kolja Saksida made in the two week workshop in Lisbon, Portugal,” according to the description on Vimeo from ZVVIKS, the Slovenian Institute for Film and Audiovisual Production. A note at the end of the film adds that it was inspired by a painting on tiles representing Lisbon before the great earthquake of 1755.
The film includes just the first four lines of the poem in the soundtrack, with a French translation in titling. Here’s the English translation given in the description:
I am nothing.
I’ll never be anything.
I can not want to be anything.
Apart from this, I have in me all the dreams of the world.
This is one of the poems Pessoa wrote under the “heteronym” of Álvaro de Campos. Here’s the complete, much longer text and here’s one blogger’s attempt at a translation.
Things That Have No Name by the Psychiatric Intensive Outpatient Therapy Group
An outstanding collaborative poem credited to the Psychiatric Intensive Outpatient Therapy Group, Summa Health Systems. Alex McClelland made this film based on a poster design by fellow Kent State University student Nate Mucha. Poster and animation are part of the Healing Stanzas project. (Here are the poster and the text.)
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.
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
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.
Suddenly by Tim Verdinek
I wasn’t able to ascertain anything about the author, but I’m guessing he’s Slovenian like the kids who made this film. ZVVIKS, “institute for film and audiovisual production based in Ljubljana, Slovenia,” seems to regularly sponsor animation workshops. Here’s the complete video description from Vimeo:
Short animated film based on a poem by Tim Verdinek.
“With some assistance from their mentor, the complete film was created by attendees of the animated film workshop for children, students & youth.”
Story, designs, animation and music: Urša Halilovič, Aleksa Milovanović
Mentor: Simon Hudolin – Salči
Producers: Matija Šturm and Kolja Saksida
Sound Borja Močnik
Colour corection: Teo Rižnar
Production: ZVVIKS 2012
Co producer: Kulturni dom Slovenj Gradec
Financier: Maribor 2012 – Evropska prestolnica kulture, Slovenski filmski center – javna agencija Republike Slovenije
A Tree is Everything by Manasvi Bantawa
Manasvi Bantawa was a 3rd Grade student, so 8 or 9 years old, when this animation was made two years ago by Alex McClelland, working from a poster design by Zack Montrunecs. It’s part of the Healing Stanzas project:
Healing Stanzas is a collaborative project between Kent State University’s Wick Poetry Center and Glyphix design studio. This series combines the creative talents of KSU Visual Communication Design students with student writers (grades 3–12), health care providers, medical students, patients, and veterans to encourage dialogue about the connection between art and medicine, writing and healing.
