Latest additions to the video library
¿Las oyes cómo piden realidades…? (Do you hear how they beg for realities?) by Pedro Salinas
Poem and voice by the great Spanish poet Pedro Salinas (1891-1951), one of the Generation of ’27 along with Lorca, Aleixandre, Alberti, and so many other wonderful writers. Click on the CC icon to read the English subtitles (my own translation).
I made an earlier version of this five years ago with the subtitles baked into the video, and when someone recently asked me for a version without them, I realized I’d have to completely redo it, both because I no longer have the software I used then, and also because the earlier version was too low-resolution. I found and used the same soundtrack, but unfortunately I don’t remember who’s responsible for the music, only that it had been released to the public domain on archive.org. The audio of Salinas comes from palabravirtual.com. The footage of amorous garter snakes is my own, filmed in April 2009.
In the subtitles, the short phrase in brackets appears in Salinas’s published text but not in his recitation. Since the line means “which is the nothing,” or “which is nothingness,” I guess he decided to make it literal by reading nothing.
Incidentally, for other Vimeo users who might be wondering about the subtitles, I used Amara (it’s free and easy to use) and followed their instructions for uploading the file to Vimeo. For those of us with fairly basic video editing software, I think it’s actually easier to add subtitles in this way, and I’m thinking it might be a good idea to start adding closed captioning to English-language videopoems as well, and quit discriminating against the hearing-impaired.
Allen Crawford’s Whitman Illuminated: Song of Myself
A gorgeous filmpoem by David Scott Kessler, made as a trailer for what looks like a gorgeous book. Here’s the description from the publisher, Tin House Books:
Walt Whitman’s iconic collection of poems, Leaves of Grass, has earned a reputation as a sacred American text. Whitman himself made such comparisons, going so far as to use biblical verse as a model for his own. So it’s only appropriate that artist and illustrator Allen Crawford has chosen to illuminate—like medieval monks with their own holy scriptures—Whitman’s masterpiece and the core of his poetic vision, “Song of Myself.” Crawford has turned the original sixty-page poem from Whitman’s 1855 edition into a sprawling 234-page work of art. The handwritten text and illustrations intermingle in a way that’s both surprising and wholly in tune with the spirit of the poem—they’re exuberant, rough, and wild. Whitman Illuminated: Song of Myself is a sensational reading experience, an artifact in its own right, and a masterful tribute to the Good Gray Poet.
Here’s Allen Crawford’s website. The score for the film, “I Contain Multitudes,” is the work of Ben Warfield, and both Warfield and Kessler are good friends of Crawford, according to his blog post about the trailer. I like what he says about book trailers:
David really did a wonderful job: viewers at first will wonder where the book is, only to realize that they had been seeing it all along. Book trailers are still a relatively new thing, but I think David has set a nice precedent by going with a slower pace and lyrical treatment: there’s no reason why a book trailer should look like a film trailer, after all.
[…]
My good friend Bill was kind enough to serve as our “Whitman” (How odd and fortuitous that one of my dearest friends should be a dead ringer for Whitman…)
(Hat-tip: Poets & Writers’ Clip of the Day)
New Third Form, Swoon’s View columns
September’s edition of “The Third Form,” Erica Goss’ column on videopoetry at Connotation Press, features interviews with two people whose work I’ve been following for a long time. Yorkshire poet Gaia Holmes (Moving Poems archive) was among the first poets to have her work animated for Comma Press back in 2006, and she’s been a consistent favorite of British poetry filmmakers over the years — a good example of how emerging poets or those from outside the establishment can get a big boost in visibility by letting their works be adapted for film.
“I don’t have any say about the videos,” she said. “I’m not involved in their making. I go to the screening and there’s the poem, but I’m happy it turns out that way. When a poem is out in the world, it’s open to anyone’s interpretation. For example, the video for ‘Occasional China’ takes the poem in a completely different direction from what I imagined.”
In the the second half of her column, Goss talks with American poet, filmmaker and digital literature expert Matt Mullins (Moving Poems archive), whose work first caught my eye back in 2009 — the year he discovered videopoetry, it turns out. The interview focuses on a series of three films he’s made collaboratively with the Belgian filmmaker Swoon (Marc Neys).
“I gave Matt several videos with music and said he could re-edit them, add new music, combine as he saw fit,” Swoon said. “The videos I sent Matt were finished products and/or experiments that were not properly used before. They might have never seen daylight if it wasn’t for Matt’s vision and creativity to breathe a new and different life into them.”
Click through for the full interviews and to watch the films.
Speaking of Swoon, I was pleased to see another installment of his column on videopoetry, as well. This month at Awkword Paper Cut he examines “The ephemeral worlds of Sandra Salter & Benedict Newbery,” a British animator-poet team who have made two films so far, both striking for their use of watercolor and a certain quality which Neys characterizes as “simple and naïve, almost. But … rich and … full of life.” As usual with a “Swoon’s View” column, his experience and insider perspective is invaluable, e.g.:
I’ve seen this video on different occasions, in different venues. On large screens, on small screens. It never fails, never disappoints. I rarely saw an animated video that came this close to imitating real life, yet not looking like it.
These videos prove that big budgets are not always needed to deliver fantastic work. A warm love for the words, intelligent use of sources and a playful feel for rhythm and illustration can do so much more than money.
Independent animator Neely Goniodsky invites submissions to Kickstarter-funded animated poetry contest
Well, this is different. And potentially very cool. As Goniodsky points out at the very bottom of the page, professional animation doesn’t come cheap. “If this were a commissioned project, my fee would be between 5K to 15K depending on the amount of work involved.” And she does have an impressive bio and demo reel. Do click through to get all the contest details, watch the demo reel, or even donate to the Kickstarter campaign to help fund it. (For as little as $5.00, you’d be able to view the film as soon as it’s made.)
(Hat-tip: poet Peter Cherches on Facebook)
La Lenta Máchina del Desamor (The Slow Machine of Unloving) by Julio Cortázar
Poems about falling in love are a dime a dozen, but when was the last time you heard a memorable poem about falling out of love? Spanish director Eduardo Yagüe rises to the challenge of matching images and sound (and some very effective moments lacking images and sound) to such a poem by the great Argentinian writer Julio Cortázar. (Note that this is probably NSFW since it contains full frontal nudity.) Laura Cuervo is the actress. The music is by Podington Bear (Chad Crouch) and the director voices the poem.
Thanks to Luis Yagüe for the highly serviceable English translation in the titling. The director has also uploaded a version without subtitles.
