~ Nationality: Brazil ~

Le Mince Rideau (The Thin Curtain) by Henrique Costa

On 30 June, 2024 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Videopoems
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Brazilian American poet Henrique Costa says,

I wrote this poem in 2019 and made it into a film with Jonny Knowles in mid-2020.

Another collaboration with the outstanding Mr. Knowles, in which we sought to capture l’air du temps.

Jonathan Knowles is an award-winning filmmaker and animator from Huddersfield, UK. This is his sixth poetry-film collaboration with Costa; this is the third we’ve shared here, and you can watch the others on Costa’s Vimeo page.

The current events unfolding in this four-year-old film still feel current, with so much civil unrest and the hegemonic world order continuing to unravel, so the blend of French in the voiceover with English in the subtitles and scenes from Brazil and elsewhere seems fitting.

A Sonnet to the Smartphone by Henrique Costa

On 16 July, 2020 by Marie Craven with 0 Comments - Videopoems
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Back in May, Dave wrote some words about a video from the poem The Long Burial by Brazilian-American writer Henrique Costa. That piece was a collaboration between Costa and UK film-maker and animator Jonathan (aka Jonny) Knowles.

They made A Sonnet to the Smartphone a few months earlier. It is an elegiac and then rousing cry for our times. For both videos they teamed up with actor Suzanna Celensu, also in the UK, who appeared and voiced the soundtracks.

All parts of this collaboration are equally wonderful. Let’s hope there are more videos from them in the future as well.

The Long Burial by Henrique Costa

On 28 May, 2020 by Dave Bonta with 1 Comments - Videopoems
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British filmmaker and animator Jonathan Knowles collaborates with Brazilian-American poet Henrique Costa, who lives in Brazil but writes poetry in English. Costa told us

I started making video poems in November 2019, when I teamed up with Jonny Knowles, an English director from Huddersfield, in the UK.

Since then, we have made five video poems. [The Long Burial] was written in 2017, but was reinterpreted by Jonny to address the strange times in which we are living now, in the spring of 2020.

I found the contrast between the formal sonnet and the glitchy, hyper-modern video especially effective. The soundtrack, including voiceover by Suzanne Celensu and music by Alias Here (AKA James Cunliffe) was also excellent.

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Isto / This by Mariana Collares

On 17 March, 2018 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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Brazilian writer and interdisciplinary performer Mariana Collares says in the Vimeo description:

In October 2013 I made a call to some women at facebook. I had written a poem about the objectification of women and intended to illustrate it through a video, with the participation of other women who had the same thought.

Hence arose the project that i finally conclude with the help and always accurate direction of Marcello Sahea.

I thank the women who dared to participate in the project by sending pictures of their personal files. I also thank those who, even from afar, share this our desire to contribute to the onset of effective awareness on this subject, still so controversial, and now finds its climax through various events worldwide.

Ao Amigo do Fáscio / To the Fascist’s Friend by Murilo Guimarães

On 27 September, 2017 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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Murilo Guimarães is a Brazilian poet and multimedia artist and a PhD candidate in anthropology at the University of Lisbon. Ao Amigo do Fáscio is his first release for RG: Murilo, “an art project situated in an imaginary intersection of ethnography, electronic music, video and literature.”

The poem is a letter to [one who] has been captivated by violently irrational acts and thoughts set by politicians, intellectuals and influencing individuals or groups.

In the video, two proto-fascists walk around the city amidst everyone else without being noticed.

The voiceover is by Terêncio Lins. Be sure to click the CC icon to read the English translation (which is a little rough, but one can get the drift).

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Poemas Videográficos / Videographic Poems by Fernando Tavares Pereira

On 18 February, 2017 by Dave Bonta with 3 Comments - Author-made videopoems, Concrete and visual poetry
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Brazilian poet Fernando Tavares Pereira made these fascinating animated text videos with the help of Rafael Veggi (computer graphics, sound). For those of us who don’t know Portuguese, he was kind enough to email a translation of each as well as an explanation of the project:

The videographic poem is the record of the birth of a word. Through the experience of emotions, associations, forms, memories, everything that contributes to the formation and understanding. It’s the word behind the word.

Secret – Secreto

Portrait – Retrato

Sun – Sol – As the letter sun in Portuguese, s-o-l, as the key of sol, as a sun shining, as the sol note at the end

One – Um – The ONE is the element one and at the same time the multiplicity in time. This back and forth movement means your birth as a word.

I asked about their composition process, and Fernando replied:

The poem is born as a graphic on paper. Then I wrote a project, a script to follow, to turn the poem into movement. And so Rafael is free to create solutions on top of what I present, and many times I have counted on his talent to improve the quality of the job. I’m the pen and he’s the byte. We are a partnership to works in the same sense to create beauty and, I usually say, entertainment. In fact I see poetry as entertainment, image, cinema, more than anything else. I believe that with this poetry does not lose anything of its flavor.

The poems are numbered as an untitled movie, because they are born and nominated by themselves. They are the subject of reading and we are the observing object. The logical layout has changed and reinvented itself.

Rafael added:

The sound was arranged by me following Fernando’s guidelines.
All samples come from open source databases around the internet and then edited in Audacity software.

Poems 01 and 02 animations were made on Blender, poems 03 and 04 were made in SVG/HTML/Javascript/CSS. I’ve had a great time working on them!

The fourth poem represents a deconstructed word ‘um’, which means ‘one’ in portuguese, as well as the number 1 itself.

Poema Cas’leluia & Final Brega (take dezessete) / Poem with Flying Termites & Cheesy Ending (take seventeen) by bagadefente

On 14 July, 2016 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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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.

Despedida / Farewell by Cecília Meireles

On 16 October, 2015 by Dave Bonta with 2 Comments - Videopoems
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A text by the 20th-century Brazilian poet Cecília Meireles, read and translated into English by the London-based artist Natalie d’Arbeloff, has been translated into film by the indefatigable Belgian videopoet Marc Neys A.K.A. Swoon in a lovely and moving tribute to his late mother. He writes:

My mother passed away.
This is a tribute to her and the way she directed her own ending.

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The soundtrack is the end of this, re-edited with a reading by the translator Natalie d’Arbeloff. [Bandcamp link]

For the visual part of the video I used a split screen. Footage of leaves floating, a fish, reflections of leaves (by me), an old tea kettle drifiitng on the sea and the shade of a butterfly (Credit to Jan Eerala)

Sober and tranquil.

I know this work is personal, but I think that the beauty of the grief transcends the personal aspect. Anyway enjoy…

I never met Marc’s mother, but I almost feel as if I knew her, since she appeared in a number of his films over the years. I’m honored to have played a small role here in having brought the translation and reading to Marc’s attention by publishing them at my literary blog Via Negativa.

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coração (heart) by Marcelo Sahea

On 27 April, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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Brazilian poet, performer, and visual and sound artist Marcelo Sahea produced the text, did the reading and made the film with the help of some crowd-sourced footage:

During two months, some friends and interested people were invited to participate sending short clips of its naked bodies filmed by themselves with any types of cameras. Some of these images are part of the work that you will see.

Lenora de Barros: the challenge of working with sound in a society of images

On 27 January, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Concrete and visual poetry, interviews
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Lenora de Barros is a genre-crosser, a concrete poet and visual artist also working in film and audio. I was impressed that someone with such a strong background in the visual aspect of poetry would become so seduced by sound.

I searched for an example of her work on YouTube and found Encorpa (Embodies), a video made for an exhibition called The Overexited Body — Art and Sports. Lenora de Barros is credited with the sound on this piece along with Cid Campos. Brazilian filmmaker Grima Grimaldi directs.

In-di-vi-sível (Indivisible) by Márcio-André

On 9 October, 2009 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Concrete and visual poetry, Musical settings, Performance Poetry
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Footage of a performance by Brazilian sound-poet Márcio-André. Brazil has had a thriving avant-garde poetry culture for decades, so I thought it only fitting to pay tribute to it here on Moving Poems at the end of a week featuring Brazilian videopoetry.

Many of Márcio-André’s projects don’t require a grasp of Portuguese to appreciate, being more sound than poetry. One that I found especially intriguing is his online Dot-Matrix Symphony. The instructions say (I think) to push play and then pause for all nine videos, then when they’ve all downloaded, start them going as close to simultaneously as possible.

Ruins by Moacy Cirne

On 8 October, 2009 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Performance Poetry
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Moacy Cirne performs his poem for the video-anthology Um Dia – A Poesia (One Day Poetry) by Ayres Marques Pinto (described in his YouTube bio).

I have no idea what the words mean, but clearly this man did not get the memo from his North American colleagues that poems are supposed be droned from behind a podium. (See Ayres Marques Pinto’s YouTube archive for many more videos from the One Day Poetry anthology.)