Search Results for: Giant

Him by Laura Mullen

On 8 October, 2014 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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“This Valentine was created by running the hard sell of an on-line dating guru through ‘Dictation,'” says the Vimeo description by Laura Mullen, a practitioner of “hybrid poetics” with seven books under her belt. In an interview posted on her blog, afteriwas dead, she answered a question about the making of the video:

LG [Lola Gerber]: The video you showed at your reading at Naropa had both performance and writing in it. Can you tell me more about the process of creating this video? Did you write and then perform the writing? Or do you perform first and then write from that?

LM: Ah, you’re talking about “Him” (a play on Hymn), the Valentine’s day video (up on my Vimeo site, with other movies…). The text is the pitch of a famous dating guru, available on-line, full of promises (including that wonderful: “I will teach you how to speak the secret language of men”!)! I wrote it down, then read it into “Dictation,” which—as far as I can see—speaks “the secret language” of the pitchman, exposing the truth behind those promises made to lonely women. Then I recorded the result as a voice over—and attached it to the film (my friend Marthe Reed helped me make) of me peeing in a giant box of chocolates. But I led up to that with film work (with Afton Wilky) of Valentine’s Day merchandise, and also a Valentine’s Day performance (live) where I read from a journal entry about losing my virginity while smearing my face with Valentine’s day candy (actually, that didn’t work so well—it’s got too much wax in it, doesn’t really melt), while backed up by three brave women who (off-mic) described their loss of virginity experience…

It seemed like an apt follow-up to Monday’s posting of 15th February.

Call for submissions: Don McKay Video Poem Contest

On 13 September, 2014 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - calls for work, contests, festivals and other screening events

Don McKay Video Poem Contest flyerThere certainly are some interesting contests popping up these days. The Victoria Writers Festival in Victoria, British Columbia is sponsoring a contest for videos based on the poems of Canadian poet Don McKay.

Yes! To celebrate the publication of Angular Unconformity: The Collected Poems of Don McKay (Goose Lane Editions, 2014), we invite anyone with a camera and/or computer and a little editing savvy to create a video that “performs” any poem of Don McKay’s. You can easily find poems by this giant of Canadian poetry online, in bookstores and libraries, or hopefully on your own shelves. Prizes in two categories: Youth (under 18) and Adult.

THE SIMPLE RULES:

1. Videos must be no longer than five minutes.
2. Videos must include the entire poem.
3. Don McKay MUST be credited as the writer in the film itself and in the video description at YouTube or Vimeo, along with the title of the book or magazine in which the poem appeared, the publisher, and the date of publication.
4. Know copyright. Get permission to use audio, video and photography, or ensure that what you use is in the public domain. Moving Poems has compiled details about fair use, and links to troves of public domain video and audio here: Web Resources for Videopoem Makers. Best yet, shoot your own material. (Don McKay has given his permission for his poems to be used in this contest.)
5. Upload your video to YouTube or to Vimeo and send us the link at victoriawritersfestival@gmail.com. Please note if you are entering as a Youth.
6. Have fun – Don does!

The deadline is November 1, and the festival takes place November 6-8. Click through for details about judges, entry fees, and prizes, as well as samples of McKay’s poetry.

I’m glad to see my web resources guide put to good use, but I’m especially delighted to see a regular writers festival creating a space for videopoetry. I think this is part of a growing, international trend for writing or poetry festivals to include a screening of poetry films. In a few more years, it may seem odd to put on a writing festival and not include film or video in some way.

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Był sobie król / Once there was a King by Janina Porazińska

On 14 July, 2014 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Animation
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The ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival has just announced the 29 nominees for its 2014 competition, and this is one of them. It’s also a Vimeo Staff Pick — testimony to the high quality of the animation and production. Tytus Majerski’s description reads:

Stop-motion mixed with CG, short film based on a polish lullaby written by Janina Porazińska. Author of original music unknown. Performed by Maria Peszek.

A home made project, which I graduated with at my film school in Poland.
It combines cut out animation and 3d set-ups.

Janina Porazińska (1888-1971) specialized in children’s poetry, fairy tales and other folkloric material. The translation used in the titling is by Magda Bryll.

Mar Belle reviewed the film for the blog No Film School:

Have you ever noticed how parents seem to delight in terrifying their children? Whether it’s old wives tales of wind changes leaving their faces contorted or the devil stealing their souls post-sneeze, there are endless ways for adults to keep children in a perpetual state of fear. However, the cruelest has to be those moments before bed, when they’ll soon to be abandoned to a long, dark night with tales of cannibal witches or bone grinding giants stalking through their heads. Depicting the tragic story of a love triangle between a king, a princess and a page, Tytus Majerski’s atmospheric adaptation of Polish writer Janina Porazińska’s lullaby Once There Was a King, is cut from the same gruesome cloth that keeps nightlight companies in business.

Read the rest.

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To This Day by Shane Koyczan

On 28 February, 2013 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Animation
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Canadian performance poet Shane Koyczan headed up this collaborative project, which has its own website. The YouTube version has gone viral, with more than 5 million views in the first week. Quoting the website:

To This Day Project is a project based on a spoken word poem written by Shane Koyczan called “To This Day”, to further explore the profound and lasting impact that bullying can have on an individual.

Schools and families are in desperate need of proper tools to confront this problem. We can give them a starting point… A message that will have a far reaching and long lasting effect in confronting bullying.

Animators and motion artists brought their unique styles to 20 second segments that will thread into one fluid voice.

This collaborative volunteer effort will demonstrate what a community of caring individuals are capable of when they come together.

This was produced by Leah Nelson, Jorge R. Canedo Estrada and Alicia Katz at Giant Ant. The component 20-second clips were each posted to Vimeo by their creators, if you’d like to investigate any of them further. I’ll just reproduce the list of 86 animators and motion artists from the credits page of the website: Ryan Kothe, Mike Healey, Will Fortanbary, Brian San, Diego De la Rocha, Gizelle Manalo, Adam Plouff, Mike Wolfram, Hyun Min Bae, Oliver Sin, Viraj Ajmeri, Vishnu Ganti, Yun Wang, Boris Wilmot, Cameron Spencer, DeAndria Mackey, Matt Choi, Reimo Õun, Samantha Bjalek, Eli Treviño, Ariel Costa, Caleb Coppock, James Mabery, Samir Hamiche, Waref Abu Quba, Deo Mareza and Clara, Josh Parker, Scott Cannon, Thomas McKeen, Kaine Asika, Marcel Krumbiegel, Teresa del Pozo, Eric Paoli Infanzón, Maxwell Hathaway, Rebecca Berdel, Zach Ogilvie, Anand Mistry, Dominik Grejc, Gideon Prins, Lucy Chen, Mercedes Testa, Rickard Bengtsson, Stina Seppel, Daniel Göttling, Julio C. Kurokodile, Marilyn Cherenko, Tim Darragh, Jaime Ugarte, Joe Donaldson, Josh Beaton, Margaret Schiefer, Rodrigo Ribeiro, Ryan Kaplan, Yeimi Salazar, Daniel Bartels, Joe Donaldson, Daniel Molina, Sitji Chou, Tong Zhang, Luc Journot, Vincent Bilodeau, Amy Schmitt, Bert Beltran, Daniel Moreno Cordero, Marie Owona, Mateusz Kukla, Sean Procter, Steven Fraser, Aparajita R, Ben Chwirka, Cale Oglesby, Igor Komolov, Markus Magnusson, Remington McElhaney, Tim Howe, Agil Pandri, Jessie Tully, Sander Joon, Kumphol Ponpisute, James Waters, Chris Koelsch, Ronald Rabideau, Alessandro & Manfredi, Andrea López, and Howey Mitsakos.

Sonnet by Bill Knott

On 11 July, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 1 Comments - Videopoems
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Found via a Bill Knott feature issue at Salamander Cove. I’m not crazy about the piano here (“Meditation Impromptu 1” by Kevin MacLeod), but otherwise it’s a well-done video, and I love the poem. The teenaged videographer goes by the handle MusicalMarionette on YouTube. For more on Bill Knott, see HTML Giant, and check out his Collected Poems on Lulu.

Whore in the Eddy by Heather Haley

On 31 May, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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A new videopoem by Heather Haley, and her first produced in full collaboration with her son, Lucas Raycevick, as editor. Here’s the description at Vimeo:

Fierce, full of stiletto irony, verve–yet rife with sensitivity–“Whore In The Eddy’ explores a winding road of twisted fates. “There but for the grace of God go I.” Two women, one forsaken, the other spared. Two tales told though images of a lush, denuded forest littered with fallen giants, cut short like the lives of so many women.

Heather also blogged about the making of the film in some detail. An excerpt:

I tried to find found footage but matching it with ours didn’t work as my 17-year old son/editor pointed out. He’s been helping me on videopoems since age eight, but this is our first real collaboration, a challenge in and of itself but mostly highly gratifying. He kicks my butt! Will not allow shots that are too shaky or out of focus. So funny. I said, hey, I’m not trying to be Steven Spielberg. I will make choices you wouldn’t. We argue for a bit and he wins. ‘Cause he’s right. We have standards. That’s my boy. He amazes me; taught himself to edit video at age ten, began producing machinimas and has had his own YouTube channel since. He’s got a lovely podcasting set-up going too which he allows me to use sometimes. We’ve developed a system in the house so he remains undisturbed while recording. He places a funky beaded necklace—a souvenir of Hawaii—on the door handle. I’m so lucky, he’s a great kid and he works cheap; the third major challenge, a zero budget. (I’ve spent fifty bucks on a dress and seven bucks on flowers.) We barter. I copy edit his fan fiction in return for video editing services.

Meet the Bluffs by Cecelia Chapman

On 7 March, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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Cecelia Chapman directed the film and wrote the text, which may be read at Referential Magazine. The soundtrack was provided by Jeff Crouch (music) and Blaine Reininger (chant). At her tumblelog, Chapman contextualizes the film:

She does look like that art director that fired you, he the coke dealer at last years xmas party. But they are the inhabitants of apartments about to fall into the sea. MEET THE BLUFFS. They want the good life. Entertaining their friends drinking local cabs on the terrace watching the great fireball hit the horizon. Jogs on the beach. But wait! There is no more beach!

For a long time it has been apparent that the left side of the continental shelf, balanced on a plate that likes to shift, is slipping into the sea. But never doubt the selling power of California real estate agents and developers! Despite the bulldozers, workers hanging outside smoking, cranes throwing giant rocks into the sea to defend the cliff, an infinite variety of caterpillar equipment parked in the private parking lot, warning signs all over the area, midnight evacuations in soul-humbling storms to the apartment down the block, the apartments continue to rent. And the mile long cliff of small gated private communities continues to fall into the sea when the big north storms hit.

Spleen by Charles Baudelaire

On 29 July, 2009 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Musical settings
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHnIak7l3o8

Baudelaire’s famous poem from Flowers of Evil turned into a chanson by Léo Ferré, from a recital given in 1969. The Fench text and multiple English translations may be found here; I’ve appended the translation by Edna St. Vincent Millay, which may or may not be the best (I don’t know French), but is certainly the most song-like.

When the low, heavy sky weighs like the giant lid
Of a great pot upon the spirit crushed by care,
And from the whole horizon encircling us is shed
A day blacker than night, and thicker with despair;

When Earth becomes a dungeon, where the timid bat
Called Confidence, against the damp and slippery walls
Goes beating his blind wings, goes feebly bumping at
The rotted, moldy ceiling, and the plaster falls;

When, dark and dropping straight, the long lines of the rain
Like prison-bars outside the window cage us in;
And silently, about the caught and helpless brain,
We feel the spider walk, and test the web, and spin;

Then all the bells at once ring out in furious clang,
Bombarding heaven with howling, horrible to hear,
Like lost and wandering souls, that whine in shrill harangue
Their obstinate complaints to an unlistening ear.

— And a long line of hearses, with neither dirge nor drums,
Begins to cross my soul. Weeping, with steps that lag,
Hope walks in chains; and Anguish, after long wars, becomes
Tyrant at last, and plants on me his inky flag.