~ Videopoems ~
Videopoetry, filmpoetry, cinepoetry, poetry-film… the label doesn’t matter. What matters is that text and images enter into dialogue, creating a new, poetic whole.
Street Boy by Gareth Owen
An interesting performance by Paul Townsend in a brief film directed and edited by Lewis Albrow. Gareth Owen is a British playright, novelist, children’s author, actor and director.
I Have a Rendezvous with Death by Alan Seeger
Zooey Park made this four-minute short in NYC for a 72-hour contest for Asian-American filmmakers with the theme “Time’s Up.” I like the way Park recontextualized what is traditionally seen as a war poem, and I liked the moments of dead silence throughout the film.
Fear of Snakes by Lorna Crozier
Canadian filmmaker Andreas Mendritzki (GreenGround Productions) has done a very difficult thing here: made an videopoem for a narrative poem by suggesting the action described in the poem without directly showing it. The result is extremely effective, in my opinion. Evidently I’m not the only one who thinks so — it won first prize at the 2009 Chicago International Children’s Film Festival.
Lorna Crozier is a major Canadian poet. Here’s her website.
Murder (Two voices at dawn on Riverside Drive) by Federico Garcia Lorca
Asesinato, directed by Javier Gómez Serrano for elegant mob films, is an adaptation of a poem from Poeta en Nueva York (Poet in New York), which may be read at Google Books in both Spanish and English (translation by Pablo Medina and Mark Statman).
Siren Song by Margaret Atwood
A new videopoem by Belgian artist and composer Swoon. According to the notes at his blog, he first composed the music and found film images to match, then decided to add the poem:
I took some time working on a piece of music (first hunted, frightened. Melancholic other) with matching images.
Memories of what never was. The attraction between man and woman. A farewell. The impossibility of things undone.
A rabbit.Somehow the words of Atwood gave the necessary lightness (counterweight) and they added an extra layer.
(Thus, at any rate, Google Translate.) Who knew a pet rabbit could be capable of such gravitas?
Poem of Jealousy by Sappho
This is the Sappho poem preserved because Longinus included it in his famous treatise On the Sublime. And indeed, film student and surfer Matt Ching says he made this “for my aesthetics class project on the Sublime.” He used the translation by Horace Gregory; you can browse through a huge number of other versions on this webpage.
I like the psychadelic approach here, though the abrupt ending is unfortunate.
Self Portrait by Edward Hirsch
http://www.vimeo.com/18203490
The wacky folks at Teleportal Readings say about this one:
We filmed esteemed poet Ed Hirsch during a shoot Teleportal did in collaboration with Rattapallax at the Bowery Poetry Club last summer. Though “trippy” isn’t a term we’d normally use to describe Hirsch’s work, the hand-painted, rotoscoped animation by Teleportal art director Scott Gelber makes the poet’s “Self Portrait” just that.
For more on Hirsch, see his page at the Poetry Foundation website.
She Walks in Beauty by Lord Byron
This is “Harenberg,” by Klaus Hommerich and Daniel Gerken,
Shot on film and video; different gauges, resolutions and intentions show the pursuit of quiescene and ease of mind. […] Techniques: 8mm, 16mm, HD 1080P (EOS 5D, 550D), SD, Greenscreen with 8mm and 16mm,Feltpen on b/w film, Snorricam, Ikegami camera tube, GoPro HD, …
The reading is evidently by J. Milsome of the BBC.
How to Remain by Heather Haley
Heather Haley wrote and directed this entertaining film about a very serious subject. Here’s her gloss from the video description on YouTube:
The audience is along for a wild ride in AURAL Heather’s “How To Remain” with a compulsive protagonist resolutely heading toward an elusive goal of perfection, perpetually struggling to stay *on* and, or to stay thin. *How to remain in control* is at the heart of anorexia and bulimia. Ubiquitous images of the ideal woman provide pressure and anxiety for us all. She turns to her trusty steed but instead of her body disintegrating, the horse’s body withers away. A symbol of intense desire and instinct, the horse’s ribs start to protrude as it becomes increasingly emaciated until finally disappearing with a *POOF! * Though eating disorders are a serious matter, the story is really about facing our all-too-human mortality. REMAIN is the key word and our secret desire, fueling our heroine’s quest for eternal youth and beauty, i.e., immortality. She is in a race. A horse race. A rat race? Or a labyrinth. Reel time accelerates as it does in real life; time seemingly flying by with advancing years as we move toward our inevitable departure. Of course HOW we live is what really matters.
