~ Author-made videopoems ~
Cat by Gary Hoare and Joe Cronin
This delightful videopoem by Gary Hoare and Joe Cronin was the winner in the Best Smartphone Production category at the 2015 Rabbit Heart Poetry Film Festival. (Watch all six finalists on YouTube.) The internet may already be cracking under the cumulative weight of tens of thousands of cat videos, but I think there’s always room for one that pushes beyond the mere cute factor to ask larger questions about cats, people, and (in this case) worship.
One of the unique features of Rabbit Heart is that they require all films/videos to be made by the author, either alone or in close collaboration with the filmmaker. In this case, I’m not entirely sure which of the named authors did which, but that’s O.K. I guess.
Péndulo (Pendulum) by Celia Parra
This is PalabrapeliculA (WordmoviE), directed by Belén Montero of Versogramas and the poet herself, Celia Parra. The poem, read by Parra, is in Galician; be sure to click the CC icon for Spanish or English subtitles, translated by Parra and Mylece Burling. As with yesterday’s video, I learned about PalabrapeliculA thanks to the 2015 Ó Bhéal shortlist, which includes this thumbnail bio of Parra:
Celia Parra is a film producer and award-winning poet. With experience in literature, audiovisual communication and production, she has worked for the most representative Galician producer companies. As a poet, she has received diverse prizes (Ánxel Casal, Avelina Valladares…), published an individual poem collection (No berce das mareas, Ed. Fervenza), an audiopoetry CD (RECVERSO) and participated in several collective publications. She currently drives her creative processes towards the hybridisation between poetry and other formats.
She certainly sounds like someone to watch.
Best of luck to all the filmmakers in the 3rd Ó Bhéal International Poetry-Film Competition, and thanks to the organizers for sharing such a well-annotated shortlist for the benefit of those of us who can’t make it to Cork this weekend.
Your Mouth is a Wound, and That Fly is a Nurse by Cindy St. Onge
A wonderfully creepy, author-made videopoem by Cindy St. Onge, with sounds sourced from freesound.org and footage from Shutterstock. Visit her poetry site for the text of the poem.
Insomnie (Insomnia) by Daniel H. Dugas
https://vimeo.com/53532151
An author-made videopoem from 2012, in French with English subtitles, by Canadian poet, musician and videographer Daniel H. Dugas. From the description on Vimeo:
Synopsis: A television show on the Big Bang theory adds to the anguish of not being able to sleep. What would happen to dreaming if time itself disappeared?
Statement: Dictionaries hold all of the words of languages and images hold all of the feelings in the world. As time races on the linear track of our lives, sleeplessness becomes a fragile stand against the disappearance of being.
Summer’s End by Kaspalita Thompson
To mark the equinox, here’s a new, author-made videopoem by Kaspalita Thompson, a Pureland Buddhist priest and psychotherapist from Worcestershire. In the Vimeo description, he notes:
The words are by me. Special thanks to everyone who created the other various bits and shared them under licences which allowed me to use them. Credits at the end of the film.
This was as a much a process of getting to know lightworks, which I used for the first time, as creating a videopoem.
It’s Complicated by Jade Graves
A love story with a surprise ending from teenage videopoet Jade Graves. This is one of several more videos uploaded to Vimeo by Media Poetry Studio since we ran Erica Goss’s report on the videopoetry summer camp in Moving Poems Magazine.
How many luxury cars in your town? by Daniel H. Dugas
Newly uploaded to Vimeo, Canadian poet and filmmaker Daniel H. Dugas‘ 2004 experimental videopoem
analyses the traffic on highways and in one projection, merges fragments of vehicles, with lines from the Book One* of Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature And Causes of the Wealth of Nations. This project looks at the symbolic of cars as an anthropomorphic fantasy of individualism.
The Essence of Instinct by Robert Peake
The first use of Google Deep Dream technology for poetry film of which I’m aware. American-British poet and filmmaker Robert Peake worked with his usual collaborator, Valerie Kampmeier, who created the soundscape. Robert shared some process notes (along with the text of poem) on his blog:
This film-poem began as an exploration of the possibilities of using Google Deep Dream technology for film. I ran the Deep Dream software on frames of time-lapse clouds. Initial experiments were not deterministic enough, flickering wildly between very different images from frame to frame. I then composited dreamed-upon frames with their siblings to create a kind of motion blur frame, which when dreamed upon a second time created greater continuity both of movement and shape. To create further continuity, I also morphed various dream frames into each other.
The process is an attempt to simulate pareidolia — the phenomenon whereby we “recognise” patterns in random data, which is very much what Deep Dream is doing here, and what we humans do when we see shapes in clouds. The solid, iridescent imagery reminded me of William Blake, but the constantly-changing nature of these creatures made me think of the evolution of species. In researching Charles Darwin’s early life, the poem took shape. Valerie then designed the soundscape to accompany and complete this piece, drawing on her own childhood experience of hearing distant, indistinct voices.
To see more of Robert’s experiments with Deep Dream and morphing technologies, check out his recent uploads to Vimeo.
American House Fire by David Campos
https://vimeo.com/135318578
A highly effective author-made film by the Fresno, California-based poet David Campos. The text originally appeared in Luna Luna.
Thanks to Nicelle Davis for the tip.
what we don’t put into words by Dean Pasch
An author-made videopoem by Dean Pasch, a British artist and poet living in Germany who’s been uploading a number of short films, with and without poetry. The Vimeo description for this one includes some process notes:
This film started its life as a piece of music composed on an iPad using Garageband. Then I chose one of my poems I felt appropriate and rapped the poem to the music (in Garageband). Next up were the first round of pictures – a series of my own artworks – edited on the ipad in iMovie.
Then there was a break of a year (or so) and I took the film into final cut pro and explored the material further – resulting in the current version.
The challenge is always to transcend the technology while at the same time enjoying it. To embrace the words and the pictures with equal care … exploring both illustration and interpretation – each feeding both picture and word – or at least striving towards that organic flow.
Five Minutes by Kate Greenstreet
Poet-filmmaker Kate Greenstreet notes:
Five Minutes originally appeared in Pastelegram (pastelegram.org/e/108) as five one-minute movies.
But they clearly work best as a single film.
Act by Kate Greenstreet
“This videopoem is based on the chapter “Act” from my book Young Tambling,” says Kate Greenstreet in the Vimeo description. Young Tambling is “experimental memoir” that includes “poetry, prose, art”; read excerpts on Greenstreet’s website. Here’s the Ahsahta Press catalog description:
Young Tambling resonates with Greenstreet’s relentless exploration of what it means to be human, to need to feel, to make art. Memory, in this book of “experimental memoir,” works something like the narrative tactics of a traditional ballad— “alternate leaping and lingering,” in one formulation. Greenstreet does not dabble in teleological platitudes: the lives crosscutting these poems are not singular but plural and sublime, full of sacrifice and empathy for the lost. In Young Tambling, a life’s meaning is born of its poet’s song, and a memory cannot reveal its truth until it finds its ballad.
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