Posts By Dave Bonta
Portobello by Morgan Downie
Another film by Alastair Cook for the This Collection project of 100 videopoems about Edinburgh, and his second in collaboration with Morgan Downie — the first was Scene.
Five limericks by Edward Lear
This is “Nonsense Poems,” by Francesca Talenti.
Film quotes with possible relevance to videopoetry
“A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet.”
–Orson Welles
“Film is one of the three universal languages, the other two: mathematics and music.”
–Frank Capra
“A film is — or should be — more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what’s behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later.”
–Stanley Kubrick
“Film as dream, film as music. No art passes our conscience in the way film does, and goes directly to our feelings, deep down into the dark rooms of our souls.”
–Ingrid Bergman
“My movie is born first in my head, dies on paper; is resuscitated by the living persons and real objects I use, which are killed on film but, placed in a certain order and projected on to a screen, come to life again like flowers in water.”
–Robert Bresson
“With a good script, a good director can produce a masterpiece. With the same script, a mediocre director can produce a passable film. But with a bad script even a good director can’t possibly make a good film. For truly cinematic expression, the camera and the microphone must be able to cross both fire and water. The script must be something that has the power to do this.”
–Akira Kurosawa
“Film music should have the same relationship to the film drama that somebody’s piano playing in my living room has on the book I am reading.”
–Igor Stravinsky
“Film will only became an art when its materials are as inexpensive as pencil and paper.”
–Jean Cocteau
“The film of tomorrow will not be directed by civil servants of the camera, but by artists for whom shooting a film constitutes a wonderful and thrilling adventure. … The film of tomorrow will be an act of love.”
–Francois Truffaut
Summer Grass by Carl Sandburg
“Imagery and sound by Megan Stewart.” (View more of work on Vimeo.)
Haiku (This cold winter night…) by Yosa Buson
Amusing little animation by Paul Watts, who seems to have remembered what so many Western haiku-appreciators do not: that irreverence is central to the form (it was a reaction against more serious renga poetry).
The Wind, One Brilliant Day by Antonio Machado
Machado is one of my favorite poets, so I was excited to see this from award-winning filmmaker Chel White, and with the recitation by none other than Alec Baldwin. Here’s White’s description from the Vimeo page:
Based on a one-hundred-year-old poem by the Spanish poet Antonio Machado, “Wind” is an allegorical perspective on climate change. In recent years, a number of films have been made on the topic of global climate change, but few have addressed the issue from a poetic perspective.
“Wind” is constructed with the poem as the film’s nucleus, book-ended by montages of astonishing time-lapse sequences by photographer Mark Eifert. In the film, scenes of the earth, weather, and human interaction, both negative and positive, dominate the film’s imagery. The music consists of a lesser known piece by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, with solo piano played by Thomas Lauderdale (of Pink Martini.)
Though written in the early 20th century, the Machado poem is particularly poignant today, bearing an uncanny relevance for climate change and planet stewardship. This film was commissioned by the environmental organization Live Earth, and is narrated by Alec Baldwin. The English translation is by Robert Bly.
(Thanks to Viral Verse for the introduction to Chel White’s work.)
we hear them cutting by T. L. Kelly
According to the author’s resume, this was
a poetry film collaboration with poetry by T. L. Kelly and film by Guilherme Marcondes and Andrezza Valentin and sound by Paulo Beto, in Born Magazine, October 2003. Screened in 2004 at Resfest Brazil and Anima Mundi, both in Brazil; and Zebra Poetry Film Festival in Berlin (where the film won a special mention).
Born Magazine has been around in one form or another since 1996, and is now probably the best-known web journal for literary animation, as well as a standard-bearer for artistic collaboration in general.
The magazine launched on the Web in 1997 with a focus on editorial design and traditional editorial topics, including essays, film and music reviews, and topical articles. As Web technology continued to evolve, contributing artists began focusing on the connections between literature and visual arts, and experimented with the dynamic relationship between text, cinema, audio, and interactivity. In response, Born redefined its mission in 1998, focusing on collaboration and media-rich interpretations of poetry, short fiction and creative non-fiction, and eventually arrived at its present incarnation.
Shelby the Dog by Robert Sward
A wise and funny poem by Robert Sward from Blue’s Cruzio Cafe, an online space for poetry animations that’s been in operation since 2004. The animations are by Beau Blue, but authors collaborate by providing readings, photos, ideas for storyboards, and other sugggestions, according to the About page.
Great to see all the discussion here this morning (well, afternoon for some of you). Minor housekeeping note: You’ll probably notice I just switched the default setting to show rather than hide comment threads. Though this might make the site initially more confusing to navigate for first-time visitors until they discover the global toggle button, I found I was getting annoyed by the fact that I had to toggle-on comments even on single-post views, and decided it would make for better usability if comment links in the sidebar worked by default. If you prefer things the way they were, though, let me know — I’m not wedded to this.
