~ Author-made videopoems ~
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.
Indian Prince by Trevino L. Brings Plenty
Videopoetry minimalism done right. Trevino L. Brings Plenty wrote and directed, Myron Lameman and Sky Hopinka shot and edited, the voiceover is by Chenoa, and the actors are Chaz and Andy, say the credits.
A Request by Eleni Cay
A love poem for the 21st century by Eleni Cay, who says on YouTube:
This filmpoem is for all those who are frustrated that their partners love their phones more than the time they can spend together!
My big thanks to MK [Milton Keynes] Poet Laureate Mark Niel for the voiceover & guitar, James [Wright] for the sound and all the anonymous filmmakers whose footage I found at Shutterstock.
Entropic Void by Payson R. Stevens
It’s always fun to find poetry films made by innovators working in isolation from others in the field, since they bring a completely fresh outlook and approach. In the case of Payson R. Stevens, his unique background in science/science communication on the one hand and art and design on the other included helping to
pioneer the field of interactive multimedia starting in 1987. He produced and directed ten acclaimed educational CD-ROM titles on Earth science and environmental subjects, two of which debuted at the Smithsonian Institution’s 1995 Ocean Planet Exhibition. In 1994, InterNetwork received the Presidential Design Award for Excellence from Bill Clinton for the CD-ROM science-journal prototype, Arctic Data InterActive.
The above video is an example of a new type of work that Stevens has trademarked: Video Tone Poems.
In October 2013, a trip to the spectacular Ajanta and Ellora ancient caves in the state of Maharastra, India catalyzed a new integration of my creative expression through video, poetry, photography, and music. I call this work Video Tone Poems™ (VTPs). A tone poem is classically defined as a piece of orchestral music, usually in one movement, on a descriptive or rhapsodic theme.
I believe the Video Tone Poems™ may be a new auteur genre, using all the visual, poetic, and musical tools and technologies to express a unified vision of one individual’s expression in multiple creative arts. Of course, living in the isolation of Behta Pani/Flowing Waters (our Himalayan retreat), I may be deluded or perhaps watching my shadow reflecting on my studio walls…while Plato laughs.
Stevens divides the VTPs into three categories based on the type of message. Entropic Void belongs in the “Afflicted Messages” category, “meditations on the human condition, the environment, and technology, all interacting in this, The Age of Anthropocene (described as the global impacts of human behavior which include climate change, species invasion and extinction, etc.).” Stevens told me in an email, “I screened the VTPs in New Delhi last October and at the San Diego Museum of Art in Feb to a full house and enthusiastic response.”
I’m not sure how I feel about message-oriented poetry in general, but I like this videopoem a lot. There is nothing remotely touristic about his gaze; the people shown are just people, not exoticized others, in keeping with the poem’s hortatory “you.”
Landmine in a Field of Flowers by Matt Mullins
A recent videopoem from filmmaker-poet Matt Mullins. This is the way the meadows look now where I live, in central Pennsylvania.
Apocalypse Rhyme by Oliver Harrison
I’m not always enamored of the sorts of poetry films that get chosen as Vimeo Staff Picks, but this one is bloody amazing. “Poem, animation and soundtrack by Oliver Harrison. Commissioned by Animate Projects in conjunction with Lupus Films for Channel 4’s Random Acts.” It won the Best Motion Graphics award at the 2014 Animation Awards, according to Harrison’s website. Enjoy.
(Hat-tip: Nadeen White, via the contact form. Thanks, Nadine!)
Maize Dog by Trevino L. Brings Plenty
Lakota poet, musician and filmmaker Trevino L. Brings Plenty‘s wry send-up of stereotypes of Native Americans. Eva Williams is the actress, and Sky Hopinka and Myron Lameman assisted with cinematography and editing.
I first became aware of Brings Plenty’s involvement with poetry film three years ago: he supplied the voiceover for a book trailer/videopoem featuring Adrian C. Louis, Savage Sunsets. Then last week when I posted Heid E. Erdrich’s latest videopoem and saw his name again, this time credited with the music, I thought I’d better find a web link, and in the process discovered that he was a poet and filmmaker in his own right. The videos on his website include several videopoems, “Maize Dog” among them.
Monster by Jason Armstrong Beck
Filmmaker–poet Jason Armstrong Beck’s noirish advice on writing a poem from his online project The Journal of Bison Jack. The minimal Vimeo description notes that it was “Shot in Savannah, Georgia 2015.” (See the film itself for additional credits.)
Undead Faerie Goes Great with India Pale Ale by Heid E. Erdrich
https://vimeo.com/125483767
I got a bit of a contact high from watching this very hip but undeniably trippy videopoem. Heid E. Erdrich wrote and co-directed it with Jonathon Thunder, who supplied the animation, editing, and sound design. Erdrich recites her poem in the soundtrack over music by Trevino Brings Plenty.
Sun/Moon Diglossia (Dancepoem) by Eleni Cay
Eleni Cay is poet, filmmaker and dancer here. Her dance partner, Chris Bradley, is the choreographer. Music is by David Garrett, and Sarah Jane Mukherjee and Christian Payne provided the voiceovers. To read the text of the poem, click through to YouTube.
Cay is a researcher originally from Slovakia, and is currently poet-in-residence at Westbury Arts Centre in Milton Keynes, UK. She has an essay up at Poetryfilmkanal, “Poetryfilms: when poetry and film have a flirt.”
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