~ Nationality: Mexico ~
DATA by Andrés Pardo and Jorge Luis Borges
DATA rewrites Funes el memorioso, first published in 1942, a short tale by the great Argentinian writer, Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986). In making these notes about the video for Moving Poems, I have wondered how to credit the writing, and have elected to see it as a very contemporary kind of co-authorship, between the film-maker, Andrés Pardo, and Borges.
The film is a fusion of experimental cinema and videopoetry. The text is a poetic prose piece. Its subject is human history and its recording. Even more it is about physical traces. The film’s elements are in synchronicity.
A film-maker’s biography says this:
Andrés Pardo Piccone, Montevideo 1977, is a film editor, documentary filmmaker and film lab enthusiast. He releases in 2012 his debut documentary feature Looking for Larisa. His documentary work focuses on objects or situations that trigger stories of collective memory and its relationship to the creation of identity and community. He is fond of small film formats, black and white and Soviet cameras.
Pardo states elsewhere that he is better known as General Treegan.
DATA has been published at YouTube by the Institute for Experimental Arts in Athens, where it screened at the 2019 International Video Poetry Festival.
El Otro / The Other by Rosario Castellanos
My latest Moving Poems production remixes a translation I made of a poem by the great, 20th-century Mexican writer Rosario Castellanos with footage of a performance art piece. I found the latter on Videezy: two clips licensed CC0, i.e. public domain, but I still think it’s important to acknowledge the original director, Derek Alan Rowe—especially since I made so few changes to his clips—as well as the artist/performer, Stephanie Leathers. In place of the original soundtrack, which was more atmospheric, I hit on the idea of using a tango (for hopefully obvious reasons), and found a Creative Commons-licensed one on SoundCloud that I liked by an Iranian musician named Roozbeh Fallah. As usual, my tools were basic: Magix Movie Edit Pro and Audacity.
Chikome Xochitl by Juan Hernández Ramírez
For World Poetry Day, here’s a poem in Huastecan Nahuatl by Juan Hernández Ramírez.
Veracruz poet Juan Hernández Ramírez reads the first section of his prizewinning poem “Chikome Xochitl” in the Huastecan Nahuatl. Translated by Adam Coon with David Shook from both Huastecan Nahuatl and Spanish—Hernández’s creative process employs both in dialogue with one another—this poem and an accompanying note will appear in the print edition of World Literature Today (Jan. – Feb. 2014). […]
Video shot in Veracruz by Adam Coon. Subtitled in Los Angeles by David Shook. Poem © Juan Hernández Ramírez, 2013. Translation © Adam Coon and David Shook, 2013.
The complete poem appears in the anthology Like A New Sun: New Indigenous Mexican Poetry, edited by Víctor Terán and David Shook (Phoneme Media, 2015). It may also be read online in World Literature Today, which includes a lengthier description of Ramírez’ writing and the translation process.
See Vimeo for more of David Shook’s videos of indigenous and other poets.
La semana sin tí / The week without you and Anti-Yo / Anti-Me (excerpts) by Tomás Segovia
This is Platillo Puro, Spanish director Bruno Teixidor‘s “homenaje en videoarte al poeta hispano-mexicano Tomás Segovia” (homage in videoart to the Spanish-Mexican poet Tomás Segovia). He’s released both color (above) and black-and-white versions. Be sure to click the “CC” icon at the bottom to read the English subtitles—the work of translators Gabriela Lendo and Lucas Laursen, who were close friends of the poet. Also, be advised that the film contains full frontal nudity, so watch with discretion.
The title literally means pure dish, but Bruno told me in an email that it’s from a Segovia poem in which platillo refers to the pan on a balance scale. The voice on the soundtrack is Segovia’s, cinematography is by Thiago Moraes, and the actors are Leila Amat and Rafael de Labra. The two poetry selections are separated by a short statement from the poet about his relationship to the literature world as the credits roll, setting us up for the excerpt from “Anti-Yo” at the very end. All in all, a very effective homage, I thought.
Green Enchantment (Verde Embeleso) by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
I made this video for a new series I’ve started at the literary blog Via Negativa, “Poetry from the Other Americas.” Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz is one of the greatest poets of the last 500 years, and it bothered me that I didn’t have anything of hers at Moving Poems yet. Luck was on my side, because (as is often the case with me) I shot the meadow footage without knowing how I’d use it. Then a few days later I found the translation in my files and the proverbial light bulb went off. Since this is a “green” poem, I suppose we should imagine an LED light. But as I said in my process notes at Via Negativa, verde or green has all kinds of connotations, including some that Sor Juana couldn’t have imagined in 1688, and I think it’s fine to suggest some of them in a contemporary videopoem. Through the choice of fonts and music, I tried to bridge the gap between the 17th and 21st centuries.
I also did something a little out of the norm for films/videos of poems in translation: I put the original language into subtitles and a reading of the translation in the soundtrack. To me, this approach makes sense if the primary audience is people who need the translation to understand the poem. Though I personally find reading subtitled movies very easy, I’m told that a lot of people have trouble with it, and in any case, most traditional poetry makes its strongest appeal to the ear, not to the eye. On the other hand, people in the target audience with hearing disabilities will not be well served by this approach.
The black-and-white footage is sourced from two television ads produced in the 1960s, found via the invaluable Prelinger Archives. The music is also in the public domain, courtesy of MusOpen. Thanks to Luisa A. Igloria for the terrific reading.
Abecedario Poético / Found Footage Mix by Raúl Calderón Gordillo and Mariano Rentería Garnica
Must be expanded to full screen. Mariano Rentería Garnica made the film in collaboration with his fellow Mexican artist Raúl Calderón Gordillo, who supplied the text. The Spanish/English title as given above is what he wrote in Vimeo, where he also supplied this explanation:
Este remix visual trata de crear una impresión rítmica de la mirada poética en el cine, mostrándola como imágenes aleatorias. Este Abecedario Poético es la búsqueda de una relación del cuerpo humano en el cine, apoyado con algunos textos del artista visual michoacano Raúl Calderon Gordillo.
This visual remix tries to make a rhythmic impression of the poetic glance in cinema by showing random images of beauty. The Poetic Alphabet, tries to make a relation in between the human body in cinema and the poems of the mexican visual artist Raúl Calderon Gordillo.
Paraguas (Umbrella) by Alfredo Boni de la Vega
A jazzy illustration by Barcelona-based L’esstudi of a haiku by Mexican writer Alfredo Boni de la Vega (1914-1965). I like the video better than the poem itself, which strikes me as being too metaphor-laden to qualify as a real haiku:
Flower of sadness
that opens when tears start falling
from the sky.
