~ Max Richter ~

Primera magnitud / First magnitude by Josep Porcar

On 12 October, 2016 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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An author-made, bilingual videopoem by the Catalan poet Josep Porcar, using as a text the first poem from his new collection, Nectari. (There are also versions in German and Spanish, as well as the original.) Porcar has been making video remixes for other people’s poems for years now; this is the first I can remember with one of his own poems. The translation here is by Isabel Prieto, the music by Max Richter, and the footage by Uzay Sezen. (As a plant geek, I was pleased that the passion flower is identified in the credits, including the Latin binomial.)

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Rozmowa z Kamieniem / Conversation with a Stone by Wisława Szymborska

On 21 September, 2016 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Videopoems
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Szymborska’s most widely anthologized poem in a film interpretation by Pat van Boeckel, using footage shot on Sado Island, Japan, including (at the very end) a sculpture by Karin van der Molen. The usual English translation by Stanizław Barańczak and Clare Cavanagh from View With a Grain of Sand is given as onscreen text, with the poet’s own recitation in the soundtrack. I suppose some might find the images of an abandoned Buddhist temple a bit too obvious here (“great empty halls”, “two thousand years”), but I thought they made a perfect fit. The music is by Max Richter — the very same track van Boeckel used more recently for the documentation of his Rilke-inspired video installation.

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Ich lebe mein Leben im wachsenden Ringen / I live my life in widening circles by Rainer Maria Rilke

On 7 September, 2016 by Dave Bonta with 1 Comments - Videopoems
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Rilke’s “primordial tower” (uralten Turm) is given literal shape in this otherwise wonderfully suggestive film of a video installation based on the famous poem from the Book of Hours. The film, directed by the artist Pat van Boeckel, takes a kind of call-and-response approach—which seems highly appropriate, given the subject matter—by having a voiceover of the poem at the very beginning (with the English translation by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows in subtitles), followed by the installation in a kind of reverse ekphrasis. According to the Vimeo description, the installation was “Made for art project Internationales Waldkunst in Darmstadt.” Max Richter composed the music.

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