~ Author-made videopoems ~
Of Shepherds by Ruah Edelstein
Of all the inadvertent omissions from this site, my failure to share any of Ruah Edlestein‘s marvelous Oah & Harlam animations until now may be the most egregious. I love how the animation and the text each tell part of this odd and touching story — something that probably couldn’t have happened quite so seamlessly if the animator and the poet hadn’t been one and the same. Edelstein’s description at Vimeo reads:
This is a first episode from the series of “Oah & Harlam Episodes”.
The project is based on a poetic prose by Ruah Edelstein. At first glance the stories about two
weirdos Oah and Harlam may appear as senseless.
But when there is an overflow of senselessness, then appears deep philosophy.Original music score by Yoon S. Lee
Sound and final mix by Diego Perezfor more: ruahedelstein.blogspot.com
locating faraway objects by Kate Greenstreet
This was made for The Volta: Medium, a weekly video column that often features poetry. Greenstreet also posted the text to her website.
Radio Carbon by Tim Cumming
Tim Cumming is a major British poet-filmmaker whose work I’ve just recently learned about. Radio Carbon was especially interesting to me since I’ve been watching a lot of archaeological documentaries in which radiocarbon dating features heavily. Here’s the description from Vimeo:
When cosmic rays strike the atmosphere they create the radioactive isotope carbon 14, which can be detected in living matter and decays at a fixed rate over many millennia. Radiocarbon dating is the method by which we measure prehistoric time, and with which our own detritus will one day be measured.
The filmpoem Radio Carbon takes this transient yet permanent record of time as a personal metaphor, fashioning a hypnotic journey into the human past, from the neolithic to the present moment.
It’s a film with eternity at its centre, the vastness of space at its core, and a reverie of images clustering to the lens like the flashing in a stranger’s eye.
This is in 24 numbered sections, and may be viewed as a sequence of separate, interlocking filmpoems with recurring motifs. Cummings shot the film’s 8mm footage in addition to doing all the editing — a major undertaking for a film of this length. His profile at Salt Publications says that Radio Carbon “was premiered at the Renoir cinema in 2009 and at Port Eliot Festival in 2010.”
Apocalypse Later by Michael Anthony Ricciardi
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XATMw6d8DMk
A great example of remix videopoetry from before the YouTube era. Michael Anthony Ricciardi, whose YouTube channel is called Video Poetry TV, says of this piece:
An alternative perspective on ‘the end of the world’. This video poem received a ‘top ten finalist’ award at the Cin(e)-Poetry Festival XXII (San Fran, 1998). It was made with original, found, and some appropriated footage (analog). Soundtrack composed of sampled radio, original moog, acoustic guitar riffing and vocal.
Mouth by Timothy David Orme
You’ve probably heard of erasure poetry, “a form of found poetry created by erasing words from an existing text in prose or verse and framing the result on the page as a poem.” This is an erasure film with a poem in the soundtrack, as Timothy David Orme explains at CutBank, where “Mouth” is the December feature in their recently launched new media series, jərˈmān.
“Mouth” is a short erasure film that visually displays the remaining portions of a 35mm trailer that have not been scraped away, and aurally features the reading of a poem titled, simply, “Mouth.”
Oseka (Low Tide) by Marina Cetkovic
In Croatian (or possibly Serbian; Google Translate indicates the former) with subtitles. The English version of the description reads:
Stop-motion video poetry after an original poem.
A moving poem. A shore-body. A picture of words. A moving picture of the body. A body-picture. Aground on the shore. A wave of words on the body shore. A wave is a body of the wave. The word is a wave of the body.
Rue des Abeilles and No Other Way by Jan Baeke
This is Rue des Abeilles, part of an on-going collaboration between poet Jan Baeke and media artist Alfred Marseille that they call Public Thought: “Cinépoèmes – data poems – moving shorts – speculative analysis.” This was screened at the 2012 ZEBRA Poetry Festival (to whose Vimeo “likes” I’m indebted for the find). In the credits, “Idea & screenplay” are attributed to both Baeke and Marseille, while Marseille alone handled production, editing and sound. The English translation is by Willem Groenewegen.
I was especially struck by the myriad ways in which motion and energy were coaxed from still images and kinetic type animation (even to the point of making the word “motionless” pulse and tremble). The description at Vimeo reads:
One summer morning at dawn in a French town, sleepless and without a clue. Everything was breathing…
Short film based on two poems by Jan Baeke, Rue des Abeilles and No other way (10).
(first revision)
Thomas Möhlmann’s bio of Jan Baeke on Poetry International Web makes it clear that film has been a crucial influence on his work:
Besides being a poet and translator, Jan Baeke works for the Amsterdam Film Museum. In a note to his fourth collection, Groter dan de feiten (Larger than the Facts, 2007), he lists a number of people who inspired him during his writing process. This list shows that the work of international film makers such as Andrej Tarkovski, Federico Fellini, Michael Haneke and Luis Buñuel are as important to Baeke’s poetry as writing of poets like János Pilinszky, Wallace Stevens and Anne Carson. Both Baeke’s imagery and technique seem to be fuelled and formed by film and poetry alike.
Höpöhöpö Böks (The Höpöhöpö of Bök) by Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl
Icelandic poet Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl calls this “a univocal lipogram composed for Christian Bök, author of Eunoia.” The univocality here is brought to you by the letter ö, and recited with characteristic verve by the author (who apparently also did the animation). This received a Special Mention at the 2010 Zebra Poetry Film Festival.
Intangible by Hernán Talavera
Text, video and sound are all the work of the award-winning Spanish videoartist Hernán Talavera.
The Man Who Couldn’t Tweet by Adrian Smith
http://vimeo.com/19643419
Adrian Smith directs with camera help from Daniel Liss.
After many years a man hears from an old lover in an unexpected way. Old school, 16mm black and white given a modern twist and an original soundtrack by Trashcan Petunia.
It turns out by Martha McCollough
In the description on Vimeo, Martha McCollough says about her latest film:
Business continuity rooms are where some people will go to work while the rest of us are outside mutating.
Built in Flash, After Effects, and Logic
Four Paradigms by Alberto Roblest
The description on Vimeo reads:
Four Paradigms for the new millenium. A poem. A homage. A flux.
Alberto Roblest is a “veteran public access television producer” and “author of artwork exhibited at museums, galleries and film and video festivals around the world,” according to the Hola Cultura website.
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