Dwa Nieba by Bożena Urszula Malinowska

http://vimeo.com/20305333

Filmmaker Marcin Konrad Malinowski‘s first videopoem, for a poem by his mother. Here’s the English translation he provided:

You and me,
Two heavens,
With a little bit of hell,
With the energy of a volcano
That has gone somewhere,
You and me.

His mother passed away four years ago, he told me in an email, leaving behind a box of poems.

UPDATE: Marcin has started a blog on Tumblr about the project, which hopefully will give rise to many more videopoems of this caliber: Dwa Nieba. (It’s in Polish, but Google Translate can give a pretty good idea of the contents.)

3 Comments

  1. Reply
    Therese L. Broderick 2 March, 2011

    I interpreted the spare text alone as having an affectionate, wistfully sad tone. When I watched and listened to the videopoem, I was startled by its harshnesses — black and white film, torturous sound track, disturbing body images. This text could be presented (audio, video) with several different interpretations. I wonder how the mother intended it to be delivered? I wonder, when the mother wrote the poem, who the “You and me” were? Intriguing post that leaves me asking so many questions…

  2. Reply
    Dave Bonta 2 March, 2011

    Yes, I love the way the text combines with the film to make something which is more than the sum of its parts: the defintion of good videopoetry. Of course, it may not be the interpretation his mother intended, but every creative reading makes a new poem, does it not?

  3. Reply
    Dave Bonta 2 March, 2011

    Malinowski shares some thoughts about videopoetry at his Polish-language tumblelog, if you want to run it through Google Translate or Babelfish: here.

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