~ Nationality: U.K. ~
Bridge For The Living by Philip Larkin
The high quality of this poem-film as a film convinced me it deserves a place here, despite the (to my taste) rather too literal correspondence of film image to textual image. Actually, as a commemorative work for the bridge itself, it’s hard to see how the film could’ve avoided such literalism — and it’s not as if the choice of shots and camera angles doesn’t exercise the viewer’s imagination, too. At any rate, here’s the description at Vimeo (edited slightly to remove typos):
Written to commemorate the opening of the Humber Bridge, ‘Bridge For The Living’ finds Philip Larkin ruminating both on the effect he believed the bridge would have on the city of Hull and its environs but also on the nature of man’s need for connectivity.
This film returns to the poem during the 30th anniversary year of the Humber Bridge and illustrates and explores Larkin’s sentiments. The read is supplied by Hull-born Oscar-nominated acting legend Sir Tom Courtenay and is the second time he has completed a film based on a Larkin poem with Yorkshire film-maker Dave Lee, their previous collaboration being a multi-award nominated adaptation of ‘Here’.
‘Bridge For The Living’ has been made for the 2011 Humber Mouth Literary Festival with support from Hull City Council and the National Lottery.
It won an award at Glimmer 2011: The Hull International Short Film Festival. The Jury said: “Dave Lee has created a mesmerizing film with a timeless feel. Bridge for the Living is stunning; a wonderful use of time-lapse, fantastic camera angles and flawless editing, this work perfectly compliments the Philip Larkin poem with its beautiful cinematography, all complimented by Sir Tom Courtney’s voice over.”
The Humber Mouth website is here.
Four Steps Removed: Taxidermy – poems by Jenny Donnison, Angelina Ayers, Noel Williams and Helen Cadbury
A series of poems by four UK poets that were all prompted by the same exhibition, “12 Heads and the Reynard Diary,” by artist Susannah Gent, at Bank Street Arts, Sheffield. The poems are:
“Taxidermy” – Jenny Donnison
“Taxidermy I, II, III” – Angelina Ayers
“Notes on Taxidermy – A Poem Found in Susannah Gent” – Noel Williams
“Young Red and the Urban Fox” – Helen Cadbury
“Teumessian Fox” – Jenny Donnison
Mark Gittins recorded the poets and made a video, but passed it on to the composer, Lyndon Scarfe, without the recordings, which were only combined with his sountrack at the very end — an interesting process.
Jonah by Robert Peake
Alastair Cook‘s 20th filmpoem uses a text and reading by Robert Peake. The film is due to premiere at the Felix Poetry Festival in Antwerp on June 15.
The poem’s back-story is fascinating. Let me quote from the first couple of paragraphs from Alastair’s description on Vimeo:
[P]rior to London, Robert lived in a small town full of artists in the foothills of the Santa Barbara mountains called Ojai (a Chumash Indian name meaning either “moon” or “nest”). He lived next to the directors of the local theatre company on one side, and a metal sculptor called Mark Benkert and his wife Marcia on the other. One morning just before dawn, a 400-pound black bear wandered through the theatre directors’ yard and out onto Robert’s street. He then climbed into a tree and became stuck.
Robert takes up the story: “he drew us all out, awed us with his presence, and brought us together as neighbours. Sadly, because it was also the first day of bear hunting season, he was shot out of the tree that night and killed by the wildlife “authorities.” Benkert swung into action, welding and cutting all night to produce a half-ton metal outline of a bear in rusted iron sheeting. Early the next morning, a capable rock climber, he hauled himself and the statue up the tree and placed it there–his bulletproof metal bear defying all. As far as I know, it is still in the tree. Mark and I became closer, and finally discovered that we held in common losing a son: my James in infancy, his Jonah gone at thirty-two from drugs and mental illness leading to suicide. The town commissioned Mark to create a bigger second statue to be displayed prominently.”
The Trees by Philip Larkin
Animation by Amy Swapp and Fiona Hobson. (For the text of the poem with proper punctuation and such, see The Poetry Archive.)
London by William Blake
This student film by Alex Robinson offers a new take on Blake’s “mind-forged manacles.”
This Is Not A Sales Pitch by Marianne Morris
A collaboration between artist Vanessa Hodgkinson and poet Marianne Morris, according to the video description at Vimeo.
The film is a mixture of a shoot at Leighton House Museum, London, where the artist is recreating Ingres’ Le Bain Turc, surrounded by her own personal ‘Orientalist’ objects that tell her story, and footage from a british documentary on the storming of the Iranian embassy in Iran in the early 1980s, as well as YouTube footage of more recent activities at the embassy in London, but also the British Embassy in Tehran.
The work aims to combine recreation in both painterly and documentary styles of film-making, with real life events filmed by members of the public.
The God of Sugar by Vicki Feaver
Alastair Cook‘s latest filmpoem features cinematography by James William Norton and a terrific score by Luca Nasciuti. Vicki Feaver is a highly regarded, regularly anthologized English poet with three poetry collections out.
Building a Dry Stone Wall by Melinda Lovell
Filmmaker Hannah Lovell notes that this is
A short extract from “The Hamlet”, a 25 minute documentary-poem collaboration with my mother Melinda Lovell, combining poems written and footage gathered over many years while living in a small hamlet in the south of France.
For more extracts from the project, see Hannah’s Vimeo page. Mother and daughter also run a literary micropress together, Inchivalla Press.
As I Walked Out One Evening by W. H. Auden
This is Your Crooked Heart. Director Peter Szewczyk notes: “W.H. Auden’s beloved poem set against London’s Bricklane. Shot improvisationally in one night.”
The Itch by Mark Gwynne Jones
http://vimeo.com/37387784
According to the description on Vimeo, these are
Words and pictures from the English Peak District, courtesy of Mark Gwynne Jones and Andy Lawrence… 2012
This film was made in one day, using the Canon 220 sx powershot HS, a cheap compact camera, and iMovie..
Lawrence and Jones are part of a band/multimedia partnership called Psychicbread which has produced a whole series of filmpoems with texts by Jones. According to the Horizon Review,
Four times fringe-award winners, Mark Gwynne Jones and the Psychicbread use poetry, music and humour as their messenger. From the girl who spent too long on a sunbed to the joys of driving a Sherman Tank at rush hour. . . the result is contagious, gritty and sometimes startlingly sensitive.
