~ Author-made videopoems ~
out of shadow by Amaal Said
what are you making your way out of?
maybe skin, maybe shadow.
An author-made videopoem by photographer and poet Amaal Said, featuring Annina Chirade, editor in chief of Rooted In Magazine. The About page on Said’s website gives some insight into her motivations:
I am a Danish-born Somali photographer and poet, currently based in London, UK. I’m concerned with storytelling and how best I can connect with people to document their stories. I have photographed mainly Women of Colour in an attempt to widen representation. I started with taking as many pictures of family members because I wanted to remember them, however far they were. I’m still so fascinated with the way we can use photographs to bring people closer.
The photography grew out of the writing. There were things I could photograph better than I could describe. I am a member of the Burn After Reading poetry collective and a former Barbican Young Poet. I won the Wasafiri New Writing Prize for poetry in 2015.
I Was Born Red / Terlahir Merah by Gandiva Arungirora
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-BAAqHuyXk
A bilingual Indonesian videopoem by the artist duo Gandiva Arungirora: Gracia Tobing (who also wrote the text) and Navida Suryadilaga. Additional credits include Chairul Karyana ‘Aceh’, art direction; Rizkita Daratri, director of photography; and Tesla Manaf, music and sound design. Tobing told me in an email that the part of the voiceover in Indonesian is a translation of the English part, but that it includes metaphors that don’t necessarily translate well. The over-all message deals with self-acceptance and identity, and how we define ourselves by where we come from, where and how we happen to have been born. Tobing also indicated that they are very interested in videopoetry and are hard at work on more videos, so keep an eye on their YouTube channel.
Poema Cas’leluia & Final Brega (take dezessete) / Poem with Flying Termites & Cheesy Ending (take seventeen) by bagadefente
An at-times quite literal but nevertheless thoroughly entertaining videopoem from bagadefente, “a brazilian self-taught multimedia artist, who creates works in several languages & media, specially video, writing & prints, using Chance and Chaos as its main creative tools.” I liked the use of text-on-screen, and the soundtrack by Dael Vasques was another favorite element (I’m a sucker for banjo music), but mostly I just liked the quirky, improvisational feel. And I see I’m not alone: According to the Vimeo description, it was screened in most of the major poetry-film festivals last year.
First Aid to Control Bleeding by Cindy St. Onge
Cindy St. Onge calls this “a video remix dirge.” To me, it’s political remix videopoetry done right: responsive to the political moment yet aesthetically balanced and restrained, and highly imaginative in its juxtaposition of image and text (from a first aid manual). St. Onge includes just long enough of a clip from the cellphone video of a dying Philando Castile for the content to register with the viewer, but not so much that it seems disrespectful or exploitative, I think.
To Be There by Sharon Lenger
An author-made videopoem from 2008 by Israeli filmmaker Sharon Lenger, offering “Brief glimpses into residential apartments in Tel-Aviv. An attempt to breathe in the life that is there, and feel slightly at home,” according to the description in the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival’s 2010 archive, where it was part of a program called “Poetic Tel Aviv.” In addition to ZEBRA, the video has been shown in galleries and at festivals around the world, winning first prize in the “Life into Art” show at the Pen and Brush gallery, New York, and second prize at EMERGEANDSEE 2011, Berlin.
Ends by Saba Riazi
https://vimeo.com/172833728/34ea4be1a0
An author-made videopoem by Saba Riazi, a young Iranian filmmaker who divides her time between Tehran and Brooklyn. The music and sound design are by Bahar Royayi. To see more of Riazi’s very personal, idiosyncratic work, check out the videopoems page on her website. Her statement at the head of that page is worth quoting in full, so that perhaps other filmmakers in her situation will feel inspired to follow her example:
To us NYU film graduates, high production values are almost equal to ethics and principles. After three and a half years of having “Ice cream” my first feature in post production I realized I have lost “time” waiting for finances to come to be able to finish Ice cream. This has been the issue for many of my colleagues who wanted to make REAL MOVIES. So I decided, in the meantime I will shoot my life on my iphone or Canon 70D as I go, when I can and where I can and I will try to finish up weekly or biweekly video projects, freestyle, almost in form of a poem. You might notice sound pops, imperfect cuts and abstract narratives in these pieces and although those are conscious and some intentional, the only reason I make these videos is that they actually make me happy. They are very personal creative projects and they give me a chance to express myself and exercise my craft, without worrying about industry standards and three act structure and so on and so forth. [link added]
Two poems by Tarfia Faizullah
This video produced for Voluble incorporates two stylistically distinct, musically compelling video remixes for poems by Tarfia Faizullah, “Feast or Famine” and “Love Poem Ending with the Eye of a Needle.” Faizullah notes in a YouTube comment that
this was a result of a collaboration between me, emcee and producer Brooklyn Shanti, and tabla player and activist Robin Sukhadia. The film for the second poem is sampled from Sita Sings the Blues, an animated film that the director made available through Creative Commons. The footage for the first is tourist footage of Bangladesh.
The Way The Light Reflects by Richard Siken
An author-made videopoem by the Tucson, Arizona-based poet Richard Siken. As with his first videopoem, Why, this does double-duty as a music video for the French singer Marianne Dissard, though this time it’s an instrumental: “Fondre”, off the album L’Abandon (2010), composed by Christian Ravaglioli. Click through to Vimeo for the full credits and the text of the poem.
S by Rachel Eliza Griffiths
Another author-made videopoem recently published by Voluble, this time from the enormously talented poet and photographer Rachel Eliza Griffiths. Click through to listen to her artist’s statement, where she explains that “‘S’ is the first piece in a trilogy of videos that engage Audre Lorde’s poem The Black Unicorn.” Her discussion of the relationship between audio and video, hearing and seeing in her creation of the video is absolutely fascinating.
This concludes this week’s focus on videopoems or poetry films made solely by the poet her- or himself. Over the years I’ve shared many such videos, and Matt Mullins put together an annotated gallery of Ten Notable Single-Author Videopoems to showcase some of the best. There are many more examples of films that emerge from active collaborations between the poet and the filmmaker. I hadn’t planned this as a promotion for the Rabbit Heart Poetry Film Festival, which alone among poetry film and videopoetry festivals requires the poet to have been directly involved in making the video, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that their deadline for submissions is coming up on July 1. (Which happens also to to be the deadline for the 2016 ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival.)
This Dull Chaos by A. H. Jerriod Avant
An author-made videopoem by A. H. Jerriod Avant, one of the three lead curators of a new, Los Angeles Review of Books-sponsored website and YouTube channel called Voluble, where the video debuted:
“this dull chaos” wants to track a very specific emotion, through at least a singular episode of social chaos, right down to the family function. an episode where the speaker wants to escape, if just for a moment, or from a cycle of these moments, even if that escape’s no larger than one’s own mind, if that be a measure. these moments, hell bent on frightening the psyche, remind me of the love we often run from, the love that we don’t always get to keep, conflict, peace and how this breaks down at the infamous and beautiful family gathering. the photographs seek out angles, similar to the way a spider web’s thread does. also in its construction, with a center, “like an ambition done sat up in you,” I once heard an elder Black deacon say. it explores this episode of social chaos while simultaneously commenting on episodes or cycles of social chaos we witness at large and outside the walls of the home. the photographs move chaotically, not caught by any one rhythm. their changes are responses to certain disruptions. the speaker is frantic and at times, seems to wish to get a signal outside this one house for help, even if that help is time, relief or any mode of meditation and or sense-making.
Voluble looks like a promising site to follow for anyone interested in multimedia experimentation. From the About page:
Voluble is an off-the-page makers’ space for writers and artists of all kinds. The channel aspires to be an outlet for experimentation, play, collaboration, and any other gestures that coincide with a visual or literary art practice.
Voluble hopes to shed light on the personal, political, and public lives of writers and artists from around the world.
Gallery space, incubator, laboratory, studio! Each week a different artist or artists will use this online platform to show us their world.
Everyone is invited to join us in making this space as open, challenging, and diverse as the world we hope to live in. We are actively seeking works and proposals, and would love to carry on a conversation about interstitial, interdisciplinary creativity.
A confession at line 16 by Mikey Delgado
I had already decided to feature author-made videopoems this week when this one from Mikey Delgado appeared in my Vimeo feed. Delgado is a North London poet and blogger; this is his first new post on Vimeo in three years. Here’s the description:
a film by Foy Migado (Mikey Delgado) featuring a text and reading from Mikey and the music of the inestimable my hot air balloon (soundcloud.com/welcometotheamericas) in a roundtable at The Ephraim Cockle Centre for Poesy, discussing via an entertainment the manifest and the latent; the impulse for, and the evolution of, a text and its will to exist; response to horror, retreat from horror, pseudo conversion into art, exculpatory codas, metaphors for the poet’s will to register an experience; texts as arrows with no targets; poets standing naked in the woods.
Click through to read the poem.
Elegy for a Hymen by Cindy St. Onge
An author-made videopoem by Cindy St. Onge, using footage sourced from Shutterstock and a soundtrack by Jeff Beal, according to the Vimeo description.
Don’t miss a post
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy