~ December 2015 ~
The Art of Poetry Film with Cheryl Gross: “Working Order”
Working Order
poem by Dora Malech
video by Gentleman Scholar, for Motionpoems
2015
Gentleman Scholar is a group of solution-driven artists situated at the intersection of story, style and technology. Wielding extensive experience in strategy, live-action production, animation, digital and print, we help the world’s leading agencies and brands tell their stories.
—bio on Vimeo
Gentleman Scholar created fabulous effects to illustrate the poem “Working Order” by Dora Malech. They have used a combination of animation programs to achieve a fluidity that enhances as well as captures the essence of the poetry. I personally prefer this painterly approach (there are several brush stroke filters in Photoshop that imitate painting) to the usual bells and whistles that go along with 3-D modeling, Maya and whatever else, that intends to dazzle the viewer.
The pace is fast and combined with a motion blur, Working Order gives the illusion that the paint is moving. It would be great to see it in 3-D. That would be a nice touch.
I love great art that moves. Gentleman Scholar are highly successful in their application of digital painting. A good many video-poetry artists struggle to get the same impact using illustration, photography and/or enhanced video. This group shines through and brings new life to the genre.
The combination of Malech’s poem and Gentleman Scholar’s visuals has resulted in a stunning work of art. By using this method they have not only bumped poetry video up a notch, but have succeeded in making it the quintessential platform of the 21st century.
For Gentelman Scholar’s own assessment of the video, as well as the full credits, see their website.
An Interview: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes
This film by Maggie Bailey blends interpretative dance with snippets of a 1961 interview with Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. Here’s the description from Vimeo:
An Interview stems from a desire to explore the life of Sylvia Plath. This short film analyzes Plath’s feelings about her relationship with her husband, daily life, and raising her children, through dance and gesture work, paired with excerpts of an interview with Plath and her husband, Ted Hughes. Though she says quite the opposite in this interview, we can infer that she feels a loss of identity and purpose in life, in the midst of caring for a new baby. The year of the interview is 1961, two years prior to Plath’s suicide. Directed & filmed by Maggie Bailey. Edited by Maggie Bailey and Tyler Rubin. Performed by Heather Bybee. Music by Michael Wall. Interview with Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes.
Winning by Jade Anouka
A new performance poetry video from director Sabrina Grant and actor and poet Jade Anouka, with original music by Grace Savage.
As Mãos / Hands by Bernardo Pinto de Almeida
The words and voice of the contemporary Portuguese poet Bernardo Pinto de Almeida are featured in this new film from Belgian filmmaker and composer Marc Neys A.K.A. Swoon, who writes, in part:
I used the reading on Lyrikline (Audio production: Casa Fernando Pessoa, Lisboa 2004 ) to create the soundtrack. The audio version is based on a former version of the poem before called ‘Maturidade 2’
The translation [by Ana Hudson] was used as subtitles.Bernardo Pinto de Almeida has a natural capacity for weaving a cloth so that the poem reveals itself as if a picture of a living body on a canvas of words and images.’
(Guy Barker, British poet, 1964-2009)Guy Barker’s quote (and the content of the poem) led me back to the footage Eduardo Yagüe made for me during the summer of 2014.
I guess I almost used every bit he filmed and am grateful for his ‘eye’Bringing it all together was fairly easy.
I graded some of the footage for a higher contrast.
It was the flow of the reading and the pace of the music that gently steered me to the cutting choices I made. [links added]
Subh-e-Azadi / The Dawn of Freedom by Faiz Ahmed Faiz
Sabina England’s expressive ASL translation of the great Urdu poet’s poem about the 1947 Partition of India and Pakistan. Be sure to click the CC icon to get the subtitles, and choose either Spanish (translation by Sabina England and Alberto Hernandez) or English (translation by Agha Shahid) by clicking on the settings icon. England notes that ‘The poem is recited by Naseeruddin Shah, a famous Indian actor, from the movie “Firaaq” (2008).’
Bela noć! (apokaliptične uspavanke) / White Night! (apocalyptic lullaby) by Goran Živković Gorki
Serbian slam champion Goran Živković Gorki, “the first homeless man on the Moon,” performs in a film by Dragana Nikolić. Đorđe Vić translated it into English for the subtitles. The poem appears in Gorki’s forthcoming collection Psihoslajdovi (The Psychoslides).
J’ai tant rêvé de toi / I Have Dreamed of You So Much by Robert Desnos
An animation of Desnos’ poem produced for French television by Emma Vakarelova.
Driving through the city towards whatever is beautiful by Warsan Shire
A commissioned poem by Warsan Shire in her capacity as Young Poet Laureate for London in a film from VisitLondon.com. (I wasn’t able to discover who actually filmed and edited it.) It’s an excellent poem that almost redeems the banal advertisement for London in which it is incorporated. Here’s the YouTube blurb:
How do you capture the way a city makes you feel? The anticipation of getting out into the city while driving over Westminster Bridge, the calm that being close to the River Thames induces, or the sense of time standing still as you relax in the park. Watch and share as Warsan Shire opens her heart and pens an intimate love letter to the capital. In her personal London Story, the latest of her commissions as part of her role as Young Poet Laureate for London, she uses the city as the backdrop for an exploration of her feelings of falling in love.
Arctica: three poems by Stevie Ronnie
https://vimeo.com/146147123
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https://vimeo.com/146160092
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https://vimeo.com/146166630
To make up for my prolonged absence (I’ve been relocating to the UK for the winter), here’s a whole triptych of filmpoems from Filmpoem itself: the crack team of filmmaker Alastair Cook and composer Luca Nasciuti, working in commission for a fascinating project from Northumberland-based poet Stevie Ronnie.
In July 2013 writer and multidisciplinary artist Stevie Ronnie visited the High Arctic as part of the Arctic Circle international residency programme. Arctica is a year-long series of interlinked artworks on the subject of climate change that Stevie has made in response to that experience.
These works are interdisciplinary in nature encompassing literature, performance, photography, artist’s books, film and a public art installation.
That’s from the Arctica website. A dedicated page on the Filmpoem website includes descriptions of each film:
[…] The films also feature Arctic footage shot by US-based artist Michael Eckblad alongside found footage from Alastair’s collection.
‘What I Should Have Said’ is the first Filmpoem of the Arctica triptych. It takes us into the air as we settle in to listen – then brings us back to ground in the Arctic. This is a love poem to the family that Stevie left behind, originally composed shortly before he set off on his Arctic journey. ‘What I Should Have Said’ appears in Stevie’s collection of poetry ‘Manifestations’ (Red Squirrel Press).
‘Time and the Two Year Old’s Hands’ is the is the second Filmpoem of the Arctica triptych. It reaches the midway point of the triptych and turns back on itself, the hourglass turning over, injecting an urgency into this plaintive call for the survival of our children. The poem ‘Time and the Two Year Old’s Hands’ was composed as a creative response to the IPCC report on Climate Change that was commissioned by Tipping Point, the Free Word Centre and Spread the Word for the publication ‘Weatherfronts: Climate Change and the Stories We Tell’.
‘From Arctica’ is the is the third Filmpoem of the Arctica triptych. It brings us back from the Arctic to Northumberland and was originally composed in response to the tragic and unexpected death of a child in Stevie’s local community. This difficult and moving ending to the tryptich is about the about the acceptance of the unspeakable, the unthinkable and those things that are around us that we choose not to see. ‘From Arctica’ is an extract from a yet to be published poetic narrative that explores climate change, light, dark and our relationship with death against the backdrop of the Arctic landscape.
Watching them back to back, there’s a definite gestalt effect for me. Also, these filmpoems certainly put my own difficulties adjusting to a more northern latitude (London! Yowza) in perspective.
The Art of Poetry Film with Cheryl Gross: “Ursula”
Ursula
poem by Robert Peake
film by Robert Peake and Valerie Kampmeier
2013
Ursula reminds me of a time when the world was adjusting to the aftermath of World War II. This videopoem has the feeling of the Beat era. I love the grainy black-and-white imagery, the car and street video played in reverse.
I love the bear metaphor. Women aren’t usually referred to as bears, at least to my knowledge. I suppose bear is a term for a woman whose ethics are questionable. However, I feel the images of the bear and woman at the end could work better if they were interwoven from the beginning rather than left at the end. It’s almost as if the artist is making sure we understand the symbolism. I think he should give his audience more credit. I’m sure we would get the meaning without having to be told. It’s nice footage and should be utilized throughout the video. This would give the visual a stronger presence. Sometimes this particular medium gets choppy. I would rather see the artist perceive the work more like a painting rather than a puzzle.
Black and white, a car video in reverse, Ursula is a real “dame.” She is the quintessential babe who travels through a Kerouac novel—And The Hippos Were Boiled In Their Tanks comes to mind. (That’s the book he co-wrote with Burroughs.) She is a tough-cussing, cigarette smoking, hard-drinking, die-young broad. Ursula is the meat and potatoes of a generation that rejected the post-WW II suburban Americana to live the subterranean lifestyle. Ursula is nostalgia at its best.
