Search Results for: What is LIfe

Fable by Howie Good: Moving Poems contest winners (2)

On 26 April, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 4 Comments - Videopoems
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1ST PLACE: Swoon

This video captures the nightmarish aura of the poem, but at the same time becomes a separate work of art. It does more than interpret the poem; it reinvents the poem in a new medium. Its propulsive imagery, editing, and soundtrack create an unnerving sense of urgency that the original never attained, but that it greatly profits from in its second life as a video.

 

2ND PLACE: Rachel Laine

This video gives precedence to the poem’s words, but without sacrificing or marginalizing visuals. In fact, the dense, gloomy background visuals and monotone music heighten the tragic sense of the poem, punctuating its doomsday storyline and elegiac atmosphere.

 

3RD PLACE: James Brush

The most visually crisp of the videos submitted, it also uses some of the most unexpected imagery, as when the word “cornfield” is blackened out in the text. And how can you not love that ukele being plinked in the background.

*

Thanks again to all the entrants, congratulations to the winners, and thanks to Howie for acting as judge. (Those are his blurbs for each of the prize winners.) I’m very pleased with how this contest turned out: the goal was to showcase a diversity of approaches to the poetry-film or videopoetry genre, and I think we succeeded in doing that.

I am very open to suggestions for future contests. I don’t want to sponsor contests so often that they become a chore, but I’m not sure I want to wait a whole year before doing another one, either, so maybe in three to six months… I also don’t want to do the exact same thing next time with a different poem, unless perhaps it’s a radically different kind of poem; I’d rather come up with a novel challenge. Feel free to email me or leave comments with your ideas.

The Dinosaur Book is Green Fire by Brenda Clews

On 11 April, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 2 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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Canadian poet and artist Brenda Clews does it all here: drawing, filming, editing, even constructing the music. “The world is a green furor of creativity – the green fire of life,” she writes in the description at YouTube, where she provides a detailed description of her process, including this note about the music:

I created the music in a cool program, a ‘P22 Music Text Composition Generator (A free online music utility)’: http://www.p22.com/musicfont In this program, each letter has a sound. When you put text in, you can choose what BMP and instrument you’d like, and the program generates a midi file, with the sheet music. I layered my track in GarageBand 6.0.2 using different instruments, splicing and re-arranging. […]

From start to finish took about 12 hours, there were many layers, of image, text, and sound, each with filters, and I had to render a few times, which took hours, to see if what I had produced worked.

Mashup: Kiss by Paul Portugés

On 30 March, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Animation, Author-made videopoems
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Paul Portugés wrote the words and screenplay, and Cecil Hirvi supplied machinima/mashup and music, and well as providing the avatar for one of the three actors in Second Life.

Web resources for videopoets

On 14 March, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 5 Comments
Table of Contents

Determining what’s free to use

If remixing others’ film, audio or words, obviously the best approach is to get permission from the current copyright holder. Limitations and exemptions to copyright vary from country to country. For material by U.S. citizens, Fair Use doctrine applies. Check out the following two documents from the American University’s Center for Social Media:

Federal government works enjoy no copyright protection whatsoever, whether they are the words of federal government employees or footage taken by camerapeople in civilian or military service. The purpose for which you use the material – as well as the source from which you obtain it, are irrelevant from a copyright perspective.

And:

In answer to a common (but not intellectual property-related) question, documentarians don’t need photo releases from individuals who are filmed in parks, streets or other public places where they have no expectation of privacy. If you single out an individual for special attention, you may a need a release.

  • Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video
    From the introduction:

    Unlike many traditional creator groups, nonprofessional and personal video makers often create and circulate their videos outside the marketplace. Such works, especially if they are circulated within a delimited network, do enjoy certain copyright advantages. Not only are they less likely to attract the attention of rights holders, but if noticed they are more likely to receive special consideration under the fair use doctrine. That said, our goal here is to define the widely accepted contours of fair use that apply with equal force across a range of commercial and noncommercial activities, without regard to how video maker communities’ markets may evolve. Thus, the principles articulated below are rooted squarely in the concept of “transformativeness.”

    In fact, a transformative purpose often underlies an individual creator’s investment of substantial time and creative energy in producing a mashup, a personal video, or other new work. Images and sounds can be building blocks for new meaning, just as quotations of written texts can be. Emerging cultural expression deserves recognition for transformative value as much as more established expression.


  • Creative Commons – About page

    Our tools give everyone from individual creators to large companies and institutions a simple, standardized way to keep their copyright while allowing certain uses of their work — a “some rights reserved” approach to copyright — which makes their creative, educational, and scientific content instantly more compatible with the full potential of the internet. The combination of our tools and our users is a vast and growing digital commons, a pool of content that can be copied, distributed, edited, remixed, and built upon, all within the boundaries of copyright law. We’ve worked with copyright experts around the world to make sure our licenses are legally solid, globally applicable, and responsive to our users’ needs.


  • How do I properly attribute a Creative Commons licensed work?

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Free and Creative Commons-licensed film and video

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Free video effects

  • Footage Crate
    Contains, as the name suggests, a ton of royalty-free footage, much of it in the form of moving transparencies of frequently used effects (blood spatter, fireworks, moving water, etc.).
  • Movietools.info
    “Your number-one source for completely free animated 2D and 3D background animations, lower thirds and more.”

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Free video- and audio-editing software

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Video-editing software available for a low price

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Free and Creative Commons-licensed texts and audiopoetry

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Free and Creative Commons-licensed sounds and music

  • Freesound.org
    “The Freesound Project is a collaborative database of Creative Commons licensed sounds. Freesound focusses only on sound, not songs.”
  • xeno-canto
    A crowd-sourced library of CC-licensed bird sounds from around the world.
  • Musopen.org
    “We provide recordings, sheet music, and textbooks to the public for free, without copyright restrictions. Put simply, our mission is to set music free.”
  • Wikipedia: Soundlist
    “This is an incomplete list of full length copyleft/public domain musical works available on Wikipedia or Wikimedia Commons.”
  • ccMixter Music Discovery
    “dig.ccmixter is where people come to find fantastic, liberally licensed music. The musicians’ community at ccMixter make modern, challenging, but satisfying music that they want you to hear!”
  • Jamendo.com
    All music at Jamendo is Creative Commons-licensed, but much of it is “No Derivatives.” Use the advanced search to search within specific CC licenses.
  • SoundCloud
    A music-sharing site heavily used by musicians and composers in the U.S. and elsewhere. Some of the tracks and samples are Creative Commons-licensed.
  • Free Music Archive
    “An interactive library of high-quality, legal audio downloads … directed by WFMU, the most renowned freeform radio station in America.” Many tracks are CC-licensed for creative reuse (and some are in the public domain).
  • Community Audio at archive.org
    Works uploaded by their makers. Some have Creative Commons licenses (though some of those specify “no derivatives”).

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Filmmaking tutorials

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Please let me know of other links I should add to this list.

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.

Lament by Dylan Thomas

On 25 February, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 4 Comments - Videopoems
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Update: Video has been made private.

Swoon is at it again with a compelling contrast of public and private moods.

Based on the poem ‘Lament’ by Dylan Thomas (read by himself)
The lament for (his) decay together with the lament for growing protests (Prague 68 – Cairo 11) against the positive growth in nature. Everything in life evolves…hopefully for the best.

How to Remain by Heather Haley

On 11 February, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Videopoems
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Heather Haley wrote and directed this entertaining film about a very serious subject. Here’s her gloss from the video description on YouTube:

The audience is along for a wild ride in AURAL Heather’s “How To Remain” with a compulsive protagonist resolutely heading toward an elusive goal of perfection, perpetually struggling to stay *on* and, or to stay thin. *How to remain in control* is at the heart of anorexia and bulimia. Ubiquitous images of the ideal woman provide pressure and anxiety for us all. She turns to her trusty steed but instead of her body disintegrating, the horse’s body withers away. A symbol of intense desire and instinct, the horse’s ribs start to protrude as it becomes increasingly emaciated until finally disappearing with a *POOF! * Though eating disorders are a serious matter, the story is really about facing our all-too-human mortality. REMAIN is the key word and our secret desire, fueling our heroine’s quest for eternal youth and beauty, i.e., immortality. She is in a race. A horse race. A rat race? Or a labyrinth. Reel time accelerates as it does in real life; time seemingly flying by with advancing years as we move toward our inevitable departure. Of course HOW we live is what really matters.

“In the forests the gilded leaves” by Osip Mandelstam

On 28 January, 2011 by Alex Cigale with 0 Comments - Videopoems
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inSJvzMth7Q

This video is from a series of Slavyansky Bank television commercials using works of famous Russian Silver Age poets. The dramatization of Osip Mandelstam’s poem is by the Kazakh Russian film director Timur Bekmambetov (see the Night Watch trilogy for more information on the director).

Сусальным золотом горят
В лесах рождественские елки,
В кустах игрушечные волки
Глазами страшными глядят.

О, вечная моя печаль,
О, тихая моя свобода
И неживого небосвода
Всегда смеющийся хрусталь!

1908

In the forests the gilded leaves
of the Christmas pines are on fire,
And from the bushes the toy wolves
Glower with their terrifying eyes.

Oh, my never ending sadness,
Oh, my barely whispered freedom,
And of the dispirited horizon
The eternally mocking crystal!

1908

This occasion represents an opportunity for me to develop my thoughts toward an introduction to Osip Mandelstam’s particular symbolic vocabulary, having just received two acceptances of my translations that between them span his whole life’s work. Cardinal Points is taking 2 early miniatures (like this one, from 1908-1910) along with two late ones and 3 of his children’s verses from the mid-20s, when he’d given up on verse and wrote critical prose and poetry for children (the only things he could publish and have a source of income from). And Modern Poetry in Translation is taking a selection of his last poems, from the so-called Voronezh Notebooks. The thing is, the significance of this one is all subtext, one of the earliest efforts of a 17-year-old, newly-minted Symbolist which may yet be said to come to define his entire life’s work (a kind of teleology, holographic anamorphosis in respect to time, an enfolding and unfolding of fate.)

Most (perhaps almost all) Russians have been and are mystified by the meaning of this one (and the rest of Mandelstam’s work) and react to it on an almost instinctual, emotive, gut level, as though it were a piece of pure Impressionism (or rather the Expressionism that chronologically was still to come). This video, in a totally anachronistic fashion, which yet works perfectly so that the poem almost seems to reflect Mandelstam’s foreboding-filled reading of his own fate, envisions a juxtaposition between a scapegoating of a Jewish youth that is then somehow malevolently enacted through the mature poet’s antagonistic relationship with Stalin. Or rather the reverse, the youth a flashback, as though the poem was in reality written to refer allegorically to the political woods and wolves.

But no, this was not so! The date of composition is 1908, indeed one of his very first poems. How eerie then! Just as the smallest part of a hologram contains the whole image, so the epiphany relative to time, not déjà vu but its opposite, a sense of projection into future time, a moment of existentialist tunnel-vision that envisions in sum total a life lived, a time capsule that is then opened exactly 30 years later at the moment of the poet’s death! Just as each cell contains in its double-helix strands of DNA , later transcribed and regulated, in toto at least the instructions for the whole human being, so the woof and warp of fate are to a degree predetermined; as the saying goes, character (regulated by environment, nurture, and circumstance) is fate. It is as though each poet is born to do the work that only she was born to do.

In Mandelstam’s case, this work announces itself in 1911 with a departure from Symbolism and the formation of The Guild of Poets (aptly named for its emphasis on the element of craft), or Acmeism (in the Parnassian sense of “the best of world culture,”) for which Mandelstam then becomes the leading proponent and exemplar. This break with Symbolism however was not a radical one, nor even intended as a disavowal but rather a modification, its primary intention being to shift the focus of symbolism away from the ethereal to the mundane, to the world of objects (“direct expression through images,”) toward “Beautiful Clarity” in the words of the poet and critic Mikhail Kuzmin, from the Dionysian back to the Apollonian. Mandelstam’s symbolic vocabulary I mention at the outset consists of words like “tree,” “candle,” “forest,” “building,” “stone.” It may also be said then that the present early poem initiates the shaping of a world-view, of a symbolic vision that then pervades the remaining 30 years of Mandelstam’s life’s work, and more specifically his complicated and never resolved relationship to Judaism and Christianity.

Sometime during 1911, Mandelstam surreptitiously and almost certainly for practical reasons converts (perhaps on a visit to Finland) so as to avoid the racial quotas and enter St. Petersburg University to complete the studies he had begun at Heidelberg. Being from a thoroughly secularized family, Mandelstam had never felt any Jewish inclinations and because of the “disability” was, if anything, always conflicted about his race. On the other hand, having had no spiritual education, Christianity held out at least the promise of a spiritual life. A conversion to Orthodoxy however, because of the appearance of compulsion and of unethical convenience, not only held little appeal but was likely distasteful, so that even the choice of the conversion (variously cited, to Methodism or Lutheranism) was a source of dis-ease. In all of this, there is a remarkable similarity to Mandelstam in the religious content of Joseph Brodsky’s life and work, so that both of them may be, and have been, viewed as essentially Christian poets.

Now, I must admit that I am projecting in all of this an element of psychologism, but in my defense will say that the act of translation, that reading par-excellence, is above all an act of empathy. Also, a poet myself, I understand that much of a life’s work is not by design but a matter of enactment of unconscious content. Support for such broad assertions would require an analysis of the following poems (see notes,) something that is of course outside the scope of this introduction (but which has certainly been undertaken in the academic context.)

Collection of Osip Mandelstam links:

10 extant audio recordings of Mandelstam reading his own poems.

Video of Joseph Brodsky’s analysis and reciting (in Russian) of Mandelstam, in comparison to Tsvetaeva, Akhmatova, and Pasternak and in the context of the catastrophic times of World War, Revolution, and Socialist conformity.

Bruce McCleland’s translation of Mandelstam’s book Tristia with facing, transliterated (“sounded-out”) texts.

Another early cryptic miniature, “Thin cross” (1910,) in Offcourse selection of 6 of my translations of Mandelstam miniatures.

A few more Mandelstam (& Tsvetaeva) miniatures in my translation, including 4 from the Voronezh Notebooks that (though not in these) often contain Christian symbolism.

The seemingly ambivalent, post-conversion “The Lutheran” (1912), with its penultimate line: “We neither worship heaven nor fear hell….”

Mandelstam’s book of children’s verses, Primus, with my English translations.

Advance screening of Korean film Poetry in NYC Feb. 9

On 26 January, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - festivals and other screening events

The following press release from Poets House just came over the transom, and I thought it might be of interest to those in the New York City area. —Dave

Poets House is delighted to present an advance screening of the new, award-winning Korean film Poetry with an introduction and discussion by film critic Michael Atkinson. A reception to follow.

Wednesday, February 9, 2011, 6pm

Poets House, 10 River Terrace, at Murray Street

This event is FREE FOR POETS HOUSE MEMBERS. To renew your Poets House membership, click here. $10 for the general public.

RSVP by Friday, February 4, 2011 to rsvp@poetshouse.org or by phone 212-431-7920, ext. 2832. (Email strongly preferred.)

Advance praise for the film Poetry

Advance praise for the film Poetry

“An extraordinary vision of human empathy.” – Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

“A life-size movie about loss and self-discovery.” – Wesley Morris, The Boston Globe

Acclaimed Korean director Lee Chang-dong (“a major figure in world cinema” – The New York Times) follows his award-winning Secret Sunshine with the story of another woman raising a child on her own.

Mija (an extraordinary performance by veteran actress Yun Jung-hee) is a proper, sixty-ish woman struggling to provide for her adolescent grandson. Faced with the discovery of a heinous family crime, she finds strength and purpose upon enrolling in a poetry class — a creative process that allows her to understand and escape her own pain.

Best Screenplay winner at the Cannes International Film Festival and an official selection at the New York, Toronto and Telluride Film Festivals, Poetry is a masterful study of the subtle empowerment of an indefatigable woman.

Poetry opens in New York City on February 11. Click here for the film’s official page.

MICHAEL ATKINSON is a former film critic for The Village Voice and has written for The Believer, Spin, Details, LA Weekly, The Boston Phoenix, The Stranger, Interview, and more. He is also the author of five books, and he lectures on film history and screenwriting at C.W. Post/Long Island University and New York University.

Potets (The Sweater) by Alexander Vvedensky

On 19 January, 2011 by Alex Cigale with 2 Comments - Animation
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This masterful animation by Alexander Fedulov is of the Russian Absurdist Alexander Vvedensky’s poem “Potets,” “The Sweater” or, rather, a neologism for “He Who Sweats,” referring to “death’s dew.” I had previously translated Vvedensky’s powerful prison prose (which stands up well, I think, in comparison to Kafka and Camus) as well as a different long poem, “The Meaning of the Sea” (as yet unpublished). I suggest reading the former to get a sense of the proto-existential themes particular to all of Vvedensky’s work (“I’m dying…. I’m dying.”) From his late 20s, Vvedensky (1904-1941) faced repeated arrest, perishing in transport to one of Stalin’s Gulag concentration camps. His insistent trochees of course represent a sense of the absurdity and powerlessness before such impersonal forces of doom.

Fedulov’s work here is a prime example of Russian animation’s long and honored tradition. His imagery, inspired by Vvedensky’s other poems, such as “The Meaning of the Sea,” speaks well for the work as a whole and I will only offer my translation of a few of the beginning verses (through minute 3:00 of film) as a way into the poem; its insistent driving rhythms, what Frost had called “sound sense,” say most of what can be said about life’s irrevocability.

“The sons cease their dancing — you can’t have fun forever, and quieting down sit silently by the father’s extinguished bedside. They look into his fading eyes. They want to repeat everything. The father expires. He becomes engorged like a cluster of grapes. We are afraid to keep looking at what is called his face. The sons covertly and silently enter each into his own superstitious wall.” So ends Part 1 (of 3) at minute 7:00 with the following message slowly revealed in materializing letters: “The Sweat is the cold perspiration that is produced on the forehead of a dying man. It is the dew of death; that is the meaning of The Sweat.”

And here is the beginning of Part 1:

The sons stood by the wall, their feet sparkling
shod in spurs. They turned joyful and intoned:

Divulge to us, oh dearest father,
What is the meaning of a Sweater.

The father, sparkling with his eyes, replied:

My sons I say, do not confuse
Day’s end with daughter of spring.
The Sweat is terrible, grey and blue.
I’m your father, angel, and saint.
I’m acquainted with his cruelty,
My own death is drawing near,
On my head can be seen gaping
Tufts of hair, bald spots, melancholy.
And if life continues then soon enough
None of the following will remain,
Neither falcon nor a single hair.
Just to know that death is nigh,
Knowledge, sight is woe and blight.

The sons, having rung the church bells,
Began to thunder into their tongues.
We’re asking about something else entirely!
We are wearing out our thoughts like imps.
Will you just tell us already father,
What is the meaning of a Sweater.

And the father exclaimed: the Prologue!
In the Prologue, the main thing is God.
Now my sons you must go to sleep
So that your answer comes in dreams….

The verse sections alternate with scenario-like prose paragraphs in the manner of a play (which are acted out as interludes in the animated film without being sounded). An example from the beginning of part 2: “The father hovers over the writing table, but do not think that he’s a spirit.” And a bit later: “The father ceases to speak in verses and lights up a candle, holding it in his teeth like a flute. At the same time he slides into the armchair like a pillow.” And so forth; until the final words: “But of course, we knew all this from the beginning.”

See the complete text of “Potets” in Russian. For full credits on the film, see the notes at Vimeo. For more on Vvedensky, in addition to Alex’s translation of his prison prose mentioned above, see also “Vvedensky in Love” by Thomas Epstein and Eugene Ostashevsky’s translation of “The Demise of the Sea.” And for more on Alexander Fedulov, see the Russian-language blog maintained by his son, Kirill Fedulov.

All This Day Is Good For by Tom Konyves

On 17 December, 2010 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Author-made videopoems
Poet: | Nationality: | Filmmaker: ,

A spam lit videopoem! Tom writes,

In this ode to the simultaneous, true and false perceptions collide in a 360-degree panoramic sweep of a moment in time, rendering life and art in equal measure.

The text in this videopoem was assembled from hundreds of spam/scam e-mails I have been collecting over the years, representing the lies we are confronted with every day; yet the random phrases extracted from these passion-laden letters cannot help but also contain unintentional glimpses of truth. In between mundane and altered reality lies that precious essence of life I see as poetry.

Alex Konyves assisted with — well, almost everything, it seems. And Robin Pittman helped with the motion graphics.

Heather Haley reports on Visible Verse festival

On 15 December, 2010 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - festivals and other screening events

The organizer and instigator of Visible Verse blogs about this year’s special restropective of the first ten years of what has become the premiere videopoetry event in North America. A sample:

Friday night’s Vancouver Videopoem Festival 1999-2002 retrospective screening was the biggest challenge as we had to mediate the clunkiest and oldest formats: ¾ inch tape and beta. I rolled up my sleeves and got down to business around 9 AM. At 6, PC Art Director Steve Chow expressed shock that I was still there. “Real time, my man!” I said. “No way around it. And remind me never to do this ever again.” It was nerve wracking!

Read the rest.

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