~ January 2015 ~
Dave Bonta: Top Ten Multi-Poem Films and Videopoems
I wasn’t going to contribute a list to this series myself, since Moving Poems readers are already exposed to quite enough of my half-baked opinions, but this past week I found myself taking a closer look at multi-poem films and videos as I prepared to make one of my own. What strategies have film- and video-makers employed to gather multiple poems, whether by a single poet or several different poets, into coherent and cohesive assemblages? And what, if anything, might such longer and more complex videopoems suggest about the perennial struggle of videopoetry and poetry film to achieve a whole greater than the sum of its parts?
Bones Will Crow (poets: Aung Cheimt, Khin Aung Aye, Ma Ei, Maung Pyiyt Min, Maung Thein Zaw, Moe Way, Moe Zaw, Pandora, Thitsar Ni, and Zeyar Lynn)
Craig Ritchie and Brett Evans Biedscheid, 2012
A brilliant trailer for an anthology (Bones Will Crow, Arc Publications, 2012) that also works as a stand-alone silent film. Craig Ritchie, whose still photos appear in the film, appears to have taken the lead in putting it together. The animations by Brett Evans Biedscheid / Statetostate were “Commissioned by English PEN.”
Antiphonal (poets: Alistair Elliot, Bill Herbert, Christy Ducker, Colette Bryce, Cynthia Fuller, Gillian Allnutt, Linda Anderson, Linda France, Peter Armstrong, Peter Bennet, Pippa Little, and Sean O’Brien)
Kate Sweeney, 2014
See the original post at Moving Poems for the full story of this project. As I wrote there, this is an eight-minute filmpoem that still ends up seeming much too short. Digital artist Tom Schofield and filmmaker Kate Sweeney have created a truly masterful, immersive work that pays tribute to one of the glories of Medieval art.
First Screening (poet: bpNichol)
bpNichol, 1984
Canadian visual poet bpNichol jumped into digital literature with both feet. Thirty years on, these animated concrete poems still inspire and delight. (This is also on YouTube.)
Twenty Second Filmpoem (poets: Andrew McCallum Crawford, Mary McDonough Clark, Al Innes, Guinevere Glasfurd-Brown, Elspeth Murray, Janette Ayachi, Jane McCance, Donna Campbell, Ewan Morrison, Angela Readman, Gérard Rudolf, Zoe Venditozzi, Jo Bell, Sally Evans, Pippa Little, Tony Williams, Robert Peake, Stevie Ronnie, Sheree Mack and Emily Dodd)
Alastair Cook, 2012
For his 22nd Filmpoem, Alastair Cook got the brilliant idea of asking 20 poets to write short poems to accompany 20-second clips of found footage. The result—as I wrote on Moving Poems at the time—is both playful and profound, a lovely demonstration of the magic that can happen when poets write ekphrastically in response to film clips.
the rest (poems: Michelle Matthees)
Kathy McTavish, 2013
Something about those long bass notes on McTavish’s cello and the shifting play of lights and shadows behind the slowly scrolling texts makes this feel distinctly heroic (I was going to say “epic,” but the kids have ruined that word through overuse) somewhat in the manner of Pindar’s odes. McTavish is a terrific multimedia artist, and if you like this, there’s much more where it came from: “transmedia landscapes which flow from the digital web into physical installation and performance spaces.”
Cirkel – Circle (poets: Charles Ducal, Delphine Lecompte, Jan Lauwereyns, Leonard Nolens, Lies van Gasse, Marleen de Crée, Michaël Vandebril, Stefan Hertmans, Stijn Vranken, Xavier Roelens, and Yannick Dangre)
Swoon, 2013
A videopoem by Swoon (Marc Neys) incorporating 11 poems by 11 different Belgian writers, telling a single story of life, lust, love and loss. The poems range in style from experimental to formal verse, all ably translated by Willem Groenewegen. (Read more at Moving Poems.) Using visual storytelling to maintain viewer interest in lyric videopoetry is a strategy I often see makers of longer films adopting.
Twelve Moons (poems: Erica Goss)
Swoon, 2013
The connective glue here, I think, is the singular yet compound voice—words by Erica Goss, readings by Nic S. and music by Kathy McTavish—as well as the semi-narrative device of tracing “the hidden influence of the moon on one person’s life,” as Atticus Review‘s summary put it. Released to the web originally as 12 separate videopoems, Marc Neys also conceived of the series as a cohesive unit. I saw it screened at the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival in Berlin last October and I’d say that he succeeded, based on one unsophisticated but dependable metric: I was disappointed when it was over.
In the Circus of You (poems: Nicelle Davis)
Cheryl Gross, 2014
Like Twelve Moons, this animated cycle of four poems from Nicelle Davis’ latest collection is unified by her distinct voice — and also by Gross’ unique artistic vision. Together, as Davis puts it, they “create a grotesque peep-show that opens the velvet curtains on the beautiful complications of life.” Their collaborative partnership works in part I think because they both gravitate toward a similarly high level of quirk.
Cento for Soprano (poetry by Christopher Phelps, selected and rearranged by Kevin Simmonds)
Kevin Simmonds, 2012
Composer and pianist Simmonds underplays his role as filmmaker in the credits and in the Vimeo description, which reads: “A cento is a poem comprised of various lines taken from different poems. This work for soprano, piano and voice is inspired by the poetry of Christopher Phelps.” I’ve seen the cento technique used effectively for poetry book trailers, too. What makes this film so powerful, to me, is the juxtaposition of soprano Valetta Brinson’s beautiful, seemingly disembodied head with the opening line, also repeated at the end: “It’s hard remaining human in the city.”
These sentences are not a poem.
Dot Devota, Emily Kendal Frey, Caitie Moore, Laura Theobald, and Kate Greenstreet, 2011
“Whose story is it, anyway?” asks Laura Theobold near the end of this uniquely improvisational, collaborative videopoem. Whether or not the texts here are poems or lines from a poem, the over-all effect is certainly lyric (with a narrative thread), and I love the quiet radicalism of the multi-author/filmmaker approach. Greenstreet is a masterful videopoet and no stranger to longer compositions, but here her role (according to the credits) was that of an instigator, co-writer and editor.
*
That last film in particular points to one of the things I most prize about videopoetry: at the same time that it expands our notion of poetry beyond mere text on a page, it also challenges the Romantic conceit of a single, genius creator, and exposes the polyvocalic essence of poetry. Influenced by remix culture, even the director’s pedestal seems to be shrinking, and the line between director and writer blurring where it still exists. While I love short, shareable poetry videos on the web as much as anyone else — and Lord knows they’re Moving Poems’ bread and butter — I hope this selection inspires other filmmakers to be a bit more ambitious with their translations of poetry into video or cinematic art.
A Man’s a Man for a’ That by Robert Burns
https://vimeo.com/116846135
A new poetry film by Alastair Cook and Luca Nasciuti is always worth celebrating. This is one of three:
Filmpoem director Alastair Cook invited Makar Liz Lochhead, the National Poet of Scotland, to read three of Robert Burns’s poems and together with Italian composer Luca Nasciuti they have created three beautiful interpretations of some of Burns’s most loved works: I Murder Hate, Such a Parcel of Rogues in a Nation and A Man’s a Man for a’ That.
Watch all three films on the Filmpoem website. For more on Liz Lochhead, see her page at the Scottish Poetry Library.
The Art of Poetry Film with Cheryl Gross: “Östersjöar” (“Baltic Seas”)
http://vimeo.com/ondemand/ostersjoar
Watch the full-length film at Vimeo On Demand (enter the code “movingpoems” for a free, 2-day rental through Jan. 31).
Poem by Tomas Tranströmer
Filmed by Eva Jonasson and James Michael Wine
Original score by Charlie Wine
Longwalks Productions website
This is probably the longest yet most beautiful video poem I have reviewed so far. Since I am primarily a visual person, the video/graphic aspects usually spark my interest first. That’s not to say that the poem is not equally as important, but sometimes when the two are placed together one overrides the other.
This is not the case in Baltic Seas. It is lengthy and slow, which allows the viewer to take in every aspect of what it has to offer. It tells a story in six parts. Although many images are repeated, each section has its own canvas. We are on a life-long voyage. The first part is about the ship. The poet conveys it as an organism with power and purpose, taking its passengers in the hopes that they will obtain the knowledge this particular journey has to offer.
Section Two opens with images of a graveyard and speaks of an island with trees. Its focus is an old woman’s melancholy, remembering her past. We are led into a combination of life and death, “we walk together.” Then there is talk of war. The visuals are of the Nazi invasion, described as “a gust of wind.” “Terror confined to the moment” — in other words, this too shall pass. We see a memorial stuck into the sand. It’s a mine reminding us of a time when darkness had fallen. This should not be forgotten. Unlike most memorials it is quiet and gentle, thus allowing the theme to continue to unfold in a graceful manner.
In Section Three we are again reminded of the passage of life, through images of a baptismal font. The story carved is biblical, but the poet then speaks of numbers. The filmmakers use the Hex Color/binary code to illustrate this. It’s set into the sky, thereby continuing the passage of life, bringing us from antiquity to the post-modern world. Even the sea and its island cannot escape time.
Baltic Seas is a constant reminder that we continue to come full-circle. The environment changes and yet remains the same. It clarifies the lives that were lived and the ones that were lost, as remembered by the old woman. She, the old woman, through loss of family and her own death has somehow risen above it.
This is one video poem not to rush through — and not to be missed. You need to spend time and enjoy every aspect. It is to be digested rather than guzzled, like a fine wine. My only concern is that we live in a world where most people have the attention span of a gnat. My question is, in our overly caffeinated society, who has the thirty minutes?
Invest the time; you won’t be sorry. It’s a work of art you will remember for a very long time. If you are someone who is involved in making video poetry, it is something to aspire to.
Imprinted by Neil Flatman
I’ll admit it: I’m a sucker for single-shot videopoems. The text (by Neil Flatman, from The Poetry Storehouse) could so easily have elicited something melodramatic. The above remix is by Charles Musser, with music by Youngest Daughter. Nic S. also did a remix of the poem:
https://vimeo.com/101175533
Still fairly low-key. I like the use of text-on-screen. The soundtrack is more subdued, with a jazz piano ballad by Fabric.
Not Talking by Chris Woods
Concept, camera, direction and editing are all credited to Christopher Hughes (Shining Tor Productions), though I can’t help thinking the content of the film might have been influenced by the title of the book in which the poem originally appeared: Dangerous Driving by Chris Woods (Comma Press, 2007). Regardless, it’s a good example of how a narrative approach to filmmaking can work with a lyric poem.
Not Talking was “Made in partnership with Bokeh Yeah and Comma Press”; Bokeh Yeah is kind of the successor to the earlier Comma Film project, as I understand it. One way or another, at least four films have now been made based on poems from Dangerous Driving, each by a different director. Manchester would seem to have a very active poetry-film community indeed.
Christopher Hughes blogged a bit about how he came to make this film:
It seems like an age since Adele Myers approached me to come along to her group, Bokeh Yeah, and join in their poetry film challenge. Even though I agreed, I was initially quite dismissive of poetry films as they didn’t appear to worry about the things I worried about with narrative short films. Things like continuity, dialogue, plot, character, etc. They could shoot any abstract images they wanted and juxtapose them in any way that took their fancy under the general heading of ‘artistic interpretation’. It all seemed a bit too easy to me – or at least, that’s what I thought.
Anyway, I’d said I’d do it so I chose a poem that I liked and came up with a concept that gave me a chance to reference my beloved spaghetti westerns and away we went. I won’t go into more detail about the film, just watch it for yourselves, except to say, that I’m quite happy with it.
Thomas Zandegiacomo Del Bel: Ten Favorite Funny Poetry Films
“Always look on the bright side of life” (Eric Idle). So here are ten funny poetry films which have participated in past editions of the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival, a project of the Literaturwerkstatt Berlin in cooperation with interfilm Berlin. Enjoy!
Oedipus (poem by Nathan Filer)
Rong, 2005
The Art of Drowning (poem by Billy Collins)
Diego Maclean, 2009
Missed Aches (poem by Taylor Mali)
Joanna Priestley, 2009
https://vimeo.com/13830005
Der Conny ihr Pony (poem by Gabriel Vetter)
Robert Pohle and Martin Hentze, 2008
Financially strapped (poem by Katrin Bowen)
Katrin Bowen, 2008
Höpöhöpö Böks (poem by Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl)
Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl, 2008
Dialog über Österreich (poem by Gerhard Rühm)
Hubert Sielecki, 2012
Giraffe (poem by Annelyse Gelman)
by Annelyse Gelman and Auden Lincoln-Vogel, 2013
On Loop (poem by Christine Hooper and Victoria Manifold)
Christine Hooper, 2013
Carnivore Reflux (poem by Eddie White)
Eddie White, 2006
Further experiments with videohaiku
The footage I linked to for a videohaiku challenge last week elicited very few responses, though each of them was very interesting. Perhaps composing a credible haiku is challenging enough without the additional burden of such WTF imagery to work with. However, in a classic example of beginner’s mind out-pacing the professionals, my friend Rachel Rawlins, who doesn’t consider herself a poet at all, suggested some lines which I thought worked very well. After some rather intense back-and-forth via email and Skype, here’s what we came up with:
To recap, the challenge was to treat the footage as if it were one part of a typically two-part haiku, either preceding or following the cut-point (usually represented in English by an em dash or colon). I find that composing this kind of videohaiku is much easier if you mentally substitute words for footage. So for this one, one could start with something like “[nudist handball—]”, e.g.
[nudist handball—]
not even netting
comes between us
which was an earlier joint effort of mine and Rachel’s.
Haiku are untitled, but Tom Konyves argued in an email that a videohaiku should have a title nonetheless. This was in the context of a critique of my first effort in this vein. I talked about it with James Brush, the author of the text, and he agreed. So we decided to call that piece flower (videohaiku) — though we didn’t remake the video itself, just changed the title on Vimeo, which was perhaps a bit of a cop-out. But for the second one with Rachel, you’ll notice we did put the title right on the video, using a freeze-frame as background.
There’s a long tradition of occasionally using bizarre imagery in written haiku and senryu. I found some truly WTF footage in the IICADOM collection (the Belgian equivalent of the Prelinger Archives), in an undated home movie identified simply as “Rural Life.” My mental substitution for the footage was “Hitler in the garden.” (This was in part a response to Othniel Smith’s video in this week’s Cheryl Gross column.) Anyway, here’s what I came up with:
I decided both videos worked fine as silent films, but I don’t think that’s necessarily part of the videohaiku prescription. I thought the ambient insect noise in flower was a good addition, and could work just as well with visitor here.
I’m now beginning to consider the best way to string videohaiku into videorenga. In classic Japanese linked verse (renga or renku), each stanza apart from the opening and closing verses is part of two different two-stanza poems in succession, which creates a dilemma for filmmakers: repeat each verse or not? And how to represent the shorter stanzas (two lines in English-language renga; 14 “syllables” in Japanese)?
I’m not going to issue another formal videopoetry challenge for now, but I am interested in continuing to work with other writers, and possibly other video remixers as well, so if you’d like to be part of that, let me know (bontasaurus@yahoo.com). Renga is a quintessentially collaborative approach to composition, and it seems to me it might be a natural fit for the remix/mashup culture of the web. But first we need to generate a prototype, I think.
Free Östersjöar (“Baltic Sea”) rentals for Moving Poems readers
You may remember my post from late December about the 31-minute poetry film based on a long poem by the great Tomas Tranströmer that’s now available through Vimeo On Demand. Director James Wine emailed with this offer:
Thanks so much for spreading the word through Moving Poems. We are nudging the audience closer to the first 1000 mark, with viewers in 20 countries on 4 continents — so far! Here in Sweden we are working on a celebration around Tomas’ birthday in April with screenings across the country.
We know the price bites many, but the cost breakdown after the 25% Swedish VAT, the platform charges and plain old taxes, it’s just about 30% left! (At least there is healthcare and free university for all!) No grants or outside funding contributed to the production.
But as thanks to you, we have put a promotion together for your followers, if you like: free rentals starting today through the end of the month. Just hit Rent and enter the code.
The Rental Promotion Code is: movingpoems
Also have put up on Vimeo Part 1 for embedding freely.
https://vimeo.com/116962956
(Be sure to click the “CC” icon to get the English subtitling.)
Here’s the link to the full-length film.
Frankly, I’m poor as the proverbial church mouse, but USD $5.00 doesn’t strike me as too much for a 48-hour rental of a high-quality, feature-length film. That said, I’m always happy to save some beer money. Thanks to Mr. Wine for his generosity.
To / For by Luisa A. Igloria
A text-on-screen-style videopoem by Swoon (Marc Neys) with a text from Night Willow, a 2014 collection of prose poems by Luisa A. Igloria. Back in September, Marc blogged some process notes about the video, calling it “The latest experiment in my series of videos where I re-think the relationship of image, sound, and text”.
Combining lines from the poem with the suitable footage, trying out different fonts and sizes for the text on screen, placement of words… It’s a puzzling way of editing.
I’m not only editing film anymore, I’m carefully trying to blend sound, image and text in one cut. It feels more like composing. It makes me rethink the way I worked (and still work) with audible videopoems.These ‘film Compositions’ are meant to be played full screen and loud!
Marc talked about this style of editing in a brief interview I filmed for Moving Poems, Swoon on finding a new angle in videopoetry composition.
And God… by Eric Blanchard
Australian filmmaker Marie Craven demonstrates one way to get away with out-right illustration in a videopoem. Had she used footage of pinball games in a poem that references pinball, it would’ve seemed merely redundant, I think. But instead she hit upon the idea of using colorful still images (by Donald Bell) alternating with dark, silent-film-like title cards bearing the lines of the poem. Cut these images in time with up-tempo, pinball-esque music by CIRC, and rather than simply depicting a game of pinball, the video actually enacts or reproduces the effect of a highly kinetic ball careening around in an inert cabinet. “The whole thing / goes tilt.” And the poem is raised to a new level, I think.
The text by Eric Blanchard, first published in Pudding Magazine, was sourced from The Poetry Storehouse.
