Posts By Dave Bonta
Lebensweisheitspielerei by Wallace Stevens
A film by the Greek composer, musician, filmmaker and video artist Makis Faros, who writes in the Vimeo description:
The project is based on a poem of Wallace Stevens titled “LEBENSWEISHEITSPIELEREI”.
The lyrics : “The proud and the strong Have departed” marks a huge portion of the history of the African states calling for their independency at the decades of 60 and after. People who were cut off from their land, used to be dependent on slave labor and within a culture imposed on them, had to stay stool when their invaders departed. These mechanisms can also be found at the contemporary consumer societies of the western world. The video focuses on the endless vicious game of them: those who remain, between desire and the “grandeur of annihilation”
This was uploaded by Vital Space Projects, who have a number of other interesting experimental films on Vimeo.
Sandburg and Photograph by Lennart Lundh
https://vimeo.com/84858997
A simple but effective videopoem. Nic S. used a text from The Poetry Storehouse contributed by Illinois-based writer and photographer Lennart Lundh, but as she notes at her blog, the video imagery came first.
For this one, I started with the footage and then searched for the poem.
One of the challenges for a videopoem maker not yet handy with his or her own camera (that would be me) is finding video footage that a) works and b) is copyright-free and c) is either free or inexpensive. There are a few sites (eg Motion Elements or OrangeHD) that put up video clips for free use, and I trawl them regularly, downloading and saving footage against future need. The clip subjects are super-odd and almost comically random and nearly always fall in the ‘you never know’ category.
In this case, I found a series of shots taken of and through the side rear view mirror of a car. They struck me as metaphorically powerful and I went back through the Storehouse poems, deliberately looking for one which would match the metaphor. Lennart’s elegantly tragic simple/complicated piece, with its telescoping rearward/forward depiction of time and space jumped out at me very quickly.
“Shot Through the Heart”: a poetry film competition from Southbank Centre
London’s Southbank Centre is holding a love-themed poetry film competition with Alastair Cook, Thomas Zandegiacomo Del Bel and Malgorzata Kitowski as judges.
Shot Through the Heart – Southbank Centre Poetry Film Competition
Friday 14 February – Friday 30 May
Calling all poets and filmmakers! Love is in the air at Southbank Centre and we want you to create poetry films that explore the joy of first love, the pain of lost love, the confusion of displaced love, the purity of platonic love, or any other kind of love.
There are two categories to enter:
Poetry films on the theme of love made for adults
Poetry films on the theme of love made for children (under 12)
Throughout the summer, Southbank Centre’s celebrates the Festival of Love. Our biennial Poetry International festival (17 – 24 July 2014) explores many different themes including the various ways in which love can impact on writers’ lives. Poetry film will be a major part of this year’s Poetry International.
A poetry film can be many different things, as Alastair Cook, Filmmaker and Director of Filmpoem Festival in Dunbar, explains –
‘A poetry film is… a single entwined entity, a melting, a cleaving together of words, sound and vision. It is an attempt to take a poem and present it through a medium that will create a new artwork, separate from the original poem.’
Dates:
Shot Through the Heart Competition opens: Friday 14 February 2014 at 12noon
Shot Through the Heart Competition closes: Friday 30 May 2014 at 6pm
Prizes:
Southbank Centre is very keen that each submission is seen as a collaborative artwork between poet and filmmaker, so this prize is awarded jointly to the winning poet and filmmaker in each category. Poems must be by living poets and follow the copyright guidance and rules here.
Poetry films made for adults:
• Shortlisted films will be shown in Purcell Room at Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre, on Friday 18 July 2014 and all shortlisted filmmakers will be invited to the screening. The winner and a runner-up will be announced on the night.
• The winning film will receive £500 to be shared between poet and filmmaker as well as a pair of tickets each to Poetry International’s Gala Reading.
• The runner-up poet and filmmaker will receive a pair of tickets each to Poetry International’s Gala Reading.
Poetry films made for children:
• Shortlisted films will be shown in The Clore Ballroom at Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre on Saturday 19 July 2014. The winner and runner-up will be announced on the night.
• The winning children’s film will receive £500 to be shared between poet and filmmaker as well as a pair of tickets each to Poetry International’s Gala Reading.
• The winning film will also be shown in Imagine Children’s Festival 2015 headlining a children’s poetry film event – this is one of our busiest festivals, attracting thousands of audience members every year.
• Both winning films will be shown at 2014’s ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival in Berlin.
New, two-week course on film poetry from Literature Wales
Llenyddiaeth Cymru/Literature Wales is offering a course called The Language of Film Poetry. Let me just paste in their description of the course and instructors (none of whom I was familiar with):
Course 20: The Language of Film Poetry
31 March – 13 April
Tutors: Zillah Bowes, Asher Tlalim and Jane Corbett
Guest: Chris Pow
Fee: £1,750 per personParticipants will be selected. Please download the course document for full details on how to apply.
Whatever your background in documentary film-making, this practical course will help you develop your creativity and find fresh ideas in your work. During the course, you’ll make a short film poetry exercise in response to a written poem of your choice. In a series of workshops, we’ll focus on how to think about sound and image in a juxtaposed way. In the first week, tutorials will focus on developing your idea and shooting your short film, and during the second week, on editing it.
Zillah Bowes is an award winning film-maker and poet. Her films as a cinematographer include Enemies of Happiness, and She, A Chinese. Her debut as a director, Small Protests, was nominated for a Grierson Award, screened internationally and won, among others, the Current Short Cuts award. Zillah trained at the National Film and Television School, where she currently teaches. www.zillahbowes.com
Asher Tlalim has run workshops on Film Poetry at the Sam Spiegel Jerusalem Film School and the National Film and Television School in the UK. An Israeli Film Academy Award winner based in London, he’s been the screenwriter, editor and director of many of his films. His films have been shown at the Berlinale, Montreal, Hamptons, Hollywood and many other film festivals.
Jane Corbett is a screenwriter and novelist, who’s written award-winning screenplays for film and TV over the past twenty years. For many years she ran her own successful film-making course in central London and currently teaches at the National Film and Television School.
www.janecorbett-writer.comChris Pow is a senior tutor in sound design and mixing at the National Film and Television School. He teaches all aspects of sound design for documentary, fiction and animation. Before joining the NFTS he was a dubbing mixer and director of facilities company Universal Sound.
There’s more information in the linked PDF. The introductory paragraphs suggest that the focus of the course is more on making documentary poetry films than on filmpoetry, videopoetry, cinepoetry, etc., but that’s not entirely clear:
This is a practical course to introduce and explore the language of film poetry in documentary filmmaking. Whatever your background in documentary filmmaking, this course will help you develop your creativity and find fresh ideas in your work.
During the course, you will make a short film poetry exercise in response to a written poem of your choice. As it is the centenary of Dylan Thomas, you are also welcome to respond one of his poems.
During the first week we will explore the concept of film poetry and its parallels with written poetry. We will look at the differences between film prose and film poetry. In a series of workshops, we will focus on how to think about sound and image in a juxtaposed way. We will look at how to create expressive images and explore the use of non-synchronous sound and music.
Regardless of which sort of poetry film will be taught, it’s exciting to see such a course being offered, and the venue looks gorgeous. Visit the webpage to download an application.
Telegram by Amy MacLennan
For all you lovers, here’s a videopoem by the indefatigable Belgian filmmaker Swoon (Marc Neys).
Since the beginning of The Poetry Storehouse last year, a gentle stream of new arrivals and voices filled up the shelves. It was about time I went shopping for words again.
It’s such a fun place to nose. Different styles, themes, voices and ideas… This time the poem ‘Telegram’ by Amy MacLennan caught my eye. […]The images came fairly easy. I wanted a very subtle, understated almost, scenery. slow movements, details of bodyparts and a slow veil of colour…
The video practically made itself…it felt right from the start. A good sign.
The poem first appeared online in Linebreak, and in print in MacLennan’s chapbook Weathering (Uttered Chaos Press, 2012).
Nic S. (who provided the reading used in the soundtrack) interviewed Amy MacLennan for our ongoing series of interviews at the Moving Poems Forum with poets and remixers who have provided or worked with material from The Poetry Storehouse. Here’s what MacLennan had to say about “Telegram”:
I never expected to hear that kind of music, see that kind of video, hear that kind of voice merged into something that I had provided words for. The pacing was crazy interesting for me. I saw other things in my own poem that I wouldn’t have thought before because I was too attached to the rhythms of “Telegram.” I watch this now and think, “Wow. My words were the beginning to THIS? Oh my goodness!”
Be Drunk (Enivrez-vous) / Bądźcie Pijani by Charles Baudelaire
https://vimeo.com/85184160
A Polish-language videopoem with English subtitles (sorry, French people) by Gaba Sibilska, who says in the Vimeo description:
It’s an attempt to re-interprate Charles Baudelaire’s poem in a way that fits in our world – world of young people. It’s the inevitable future that frightens the youth. In the juvenile joy of life and affirmation of fun, one can find denial, lies, fear, despair, a desperate attempt to escape from the reality. Eventually, though, every young person must realize that however change of perception may ease the fear, it has no affect on time. And no matter how distant it seems, the end of carefree youth will come one day…
House Clearance by Gaia Holmes
A charming stop-motion animation by Terry Wragg, who notes that
‘House Clearance’ was first published in Lifting the Piano with One Hand by Gaia Holmes, published by Comma Press (2013).
Terry Wragg is a member of the Leeds Animation Workshop, and had a filmpoem called Working Metal screened in the The Body Electric Poetry Film Festival last year. For more from Gaia Holmes, visit her poetry blog (and, of course, check out her other poetry videos at Moving Poems).
Black Canary by Peter Wullen
A film by Chris H. Lynn with a text by Belgian poet Peter Wullen, read by Una Lee. In a blog post introducing the film, Wullen writes:
The aim of a poet is not to win prizes. To be famous. To be popular. Even not to produce books. That’s left for the others to decide. The aim of a poet is to leave as much traces as possible during a lifetime. Like seeds we blow in the wind. Like water we flow in all directions. We project fire. We consume everything before we are consumed ourselves.
Videopoet Martha McCollough featured in Swoon’s View
American video artist Martha McCollough has been making terrific animated poems, supplying her own texts, for a couple of years now, and I’m always happy to include her work in Moving Poems. Her descriptions are usually pretty minimal, though, and she doesn’t have a website, so I didn’t know much about her or her thinking behind the films. So I was very pleased to see her work featured at Awkword Paper Cut in Marc Neys’ first “Swoon’s View” column of 2014. She says, for example, about one videopoem:
I work as a graphic designer, and one of my jobs was to create a seating chart for the “Business Continuity Room”, which I’m told is an actual underground bunker to which key employees are expected to retreat during catastrophes so that they can continue work without being inconvenienced by interruptions (such as, I don’t know, hurricanes? nuclear war? The total collapse of civilization?) “It Turns Out” considers the fate of the “not quite key” employee under such circumstances.
Either Or by Maxine Kumin
This wonderfully abstract animation is the latest poetry film from Motionpoems, ably introduced on their site:
Socrates had some either/or thoughts about death. Poet Maxine Kumin has some thoughts about those thoughts. Filmmaker Adam Tow adds his thoughts to hers.
It’s with a heavy heart that we note the poet’s own death yesterday at the age of 88 — something Motionpoems couldn’t have anticipated when they chose this as their February selection. Their free emailed newsletter contained an interview with her; I don’t think they’d mind if I quoted it:
MOTIONPOEMS: Why did you decide to cut the Socrates quote with nearly six lines of cosmic imagery?
MAXINE KUMIN: I delayed the quote so I could set up the smallness, the insignificance of our planet in the great reach of space. Otherwise, there couldn’t have been any suspense and hence no poem.
MOTIONPOEMS: There’s an interplay in the poem between up and down, present and future. Your last line, “So much for death today and long ago,” seems inspired by the movement of the smoke, the squirrels, and the nuthatch, and the promise of snow. Why?
KUMIN: You notice it isnt the smoke, its the shadow of smoke, not snow but the promise of snow, tho the critters are real and present. I’m trying to say how evanescent the choice between life and death is, just as Socrates gives us his matter-of-fact but no less terrifying either/or.
MOTIONPOEMS: Motionpoems are used in classrooms a lot. If you were to recommend a writing prompt or exercise using this poem as a model, writing teachers and students might find that very useful.
KUMIN: Anything that gets students reading, especially outside their chosen field, makes a good jumping-off place for a poem. You dont have to be reading Socrates or Faulkner. Im a great jotter down of lines that pique my interest, from the newspaper to something weighty about, say, Jefferson … who was one of the first to bring the mule to this country … That would make me want to write about that hybrid the mule. (I havent but still might.)
For a good appreciation of Kumin’s long and illustrious career, see the Poetry Foundation’s biography. For more of Adam Tow’s work, visit his website.
