Posts By Dave Bonta

Dave Bonta is a poet, editor, and web publisher from the Appalachian mountains of central Pennsylvania.

Aleppo by Howie Good

On 4 February, 2017 by Dave Bonta with 1 Comments - Videopoems
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A new videopoem by Marc Neys A.K.A. Swoon for a poem by Howie Good. Soundbites from Al Jazeera appear in the soundtrack together with Marc’s original music. When he shared it on Facebook, he included a brief note about its origin:

Howie Good wrote a strong poem, Aleppo. It called me and in one burst I created this video/soundpiece yesterday. Enjoy!

And a few days later, he indicated it might lead to more Swoon videopoems this year. Fingers crossed!

“Trump Draws”: satirical micro-videopoetry takes Twitter by storm

On 3 February, 2017 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Animation, reviews

Behold the wonder that is @TrumpDraws: a Twitter account dedicated entirely to animated GIFs of Trump signing executive orders. The description reads, “i’m the president and i like to draw”. Created just four days ago, @TrumpDraws has 319,000 followers. It began with “house”


and moved on to “kat”, “horse” and “turkey” (evidently made with one of the president’s own, small hands)


before arriving at Trump’s favorite subject:


These alternative executive orders may seem silly and absurd at first, but cumulatively they do speak truth to power, critiquing the child-like capriciousness of President Trump’s so-far incoherent attempts to govern via poorly executed fiat.


What sorts of orders are these? Is it enough for the powerful to point and speak?


Is it fair to children to compare their crude yet often brilliant, uninhibited creations with the rambling, self-centered utterances of a sociopathic septuagenarian?


Like all effective poetry, these miniature videopoems lead not to any definitive solution but to a radical reappraisal of the quotidian, stripped of all deadening cliches. In an increasingly perilous political environment they offer levity, yes, but more importantly they serve the salutary goal, more often honored in the breach, of refusing to normalize what is in fact both deeply aberrant and abhorrent.

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At the border by Jan Baeke

On 3 February, 2017 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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This videopoem from Public Thought, the collaborative team of Dutch poet Jan Baeke and designer and media artist Alfred Marseille, was screened at ZEBRA 2016. Completed last July, it is sadly more relevant than ever: a “Poetic reflection on the ambiguities of the refugee crisis, media coverage, extremist propaganda and EU politics,” as Baeke and Marseille describe it. (Click through for the text.)

Daisy Chain by Lucy English

On 2 February, 2017 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Videopoems
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A recent addition to Lucy English’s ambitious, multi-filmmaker Book of Hours project, this time from director Eduardo Yagüe—his third for the project, I think—with music by Podington Bear, voiceover by Rebecca Tantony, and an appearance by the actress Gabriella Roy. The stark contrast between the wintry footage and the summery text creates an interesting spark gap for the imagination to leap.

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Hybrid by Nigel Wells

On 1 February, 2017 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Videopoems
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A recent video by Marie Craven extends her experimentation with kinestatic videopoetry in an ekphrastic direction. She described the process in a public Facebook post (links added):

Hybrid: a new collaborative video. The process of making it started with the original art by Marguerite de Mosa. Then came the music by SK123. Then finally the words, written by Nigel Wells in response to an early draft of the video. It’s a change in the order of how I usually put things together for a videopoem, and it was interesting trying things this way. Thanks to the great collaborators, Marguerite, Steve and Nigel, for working with me on this!

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Dog by Richard Scott

On 31 January, 2017 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Animation
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An animation by Kate Jessop:

A young man comes to terms with his sexuality and confronts his bully in his home neighbourhood of Merton (London).
Specially commissioned for the Southbank Festival of Neighbourhood 2013, adapted from the poem by Richard Scott.

Click through to Vimeo for the text of the poem (or watch the newly uploaded version with subtitles).

Call for submissions: Rendez-vous vidéo-poésie du Festival de la poésie de Montréal 2017

On 29 January, 2017 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - calls for work, contests, festivals and other screening events

I missed it last year (in part because I’m completely out of the loop with the Francophone videopoetry scene), but for the second year in a row, the Montreal Poetry Festival will include a videopoetry competition. Entries must have been made in 2016 or 2017, and either be the work of a Quebec artist or include extracts from Quebec poems. The deadline is March 6.

Video-poetry Rendez-vous will take place in the programming of the upcoming Montreal Poetry Festival, which runs from May 29 to June 4, 2017.

10 videopoemes will be selected to be screened at an evening at the Festival.

A jury of active members of the poetic and video community will present a prize of $ 500 to the winner of the competition.

Thus Google Translate. Here’s the whole call in French. It’s not clear whether videopoems in the other languages of Quebec, such as English or Cree–Montagnais–Naskapi, would be considered.

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Marchant grenu / Walking Grainy by Henri Michaux

On 28 January, 2017 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Videopoems
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This film version of an Henri Michaux poem by Francois Vogel was one of my favorites at the 2014 ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival. The program description:

A whimsical look at movement in the city. While reciting the poem, Francois Vogel »walks grainy« on the stairs of Montmartre, in Paris.

For this version, Vogel recites an English translation of the poem, but if you know French, the original is also on Vimeo.

(Hat-tip: ZEBRA Poetry Film Club.)

Song for Koko by Tommy Becker

On 27 January, 2017 by Dave Bonta with 1 Comments - Author-made videopoems, Musical settings
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A poetic music video or a musical videopoem? Tommy Becker‘s videos for his Tape Number One project are hard to categorize, which is why I haven’t featured them here as often as I should. They blend “the artist’s poetics, songwriting, performance, costuming with found footage and computer design,” according to the statement on his website.

“Song for Koko” is from 2015. The accompanying text on Vimeo reads:

An elephant escapes from the circus and begins a rampage down a city street. His trunk tosses aside everything in his path. We cheer for him. Why? A man sits on an alligator and attempts to tie his mouth shut. The alligator contorts his body, throwing the man off before turning to bite. We are unsympathetic. Why? We take our children to the zoo to look at the monkeys. The children complain about their inactivity and we feel a sense of betrayal as we admit to ourselves that our observations are a fraud. What’s important in these situations of conflict and captivity is that we are seeing animals as equals. They are no longer the lesser species. A life force is being held against its will or once again running wild through the streets. The moment the lion lunges at the tamer we understand his motives. We relate viscerally to his oppression as we connect to the soul of its being.

Rapunzel Brings Her Women’s Studies Class to the Tower by Susan J. Erickson

On 25 January, 2017 by Dave Bonta with 1 Comments - Book trailers, Videopoems
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Bellingham, Washington-based poet Susan J. Erickson reads a poem from her 2016 collection Lauren Bacall Shares a Limousine in this film by poet and editor Ellie A. Rogers. The soundtrack is by Louis McLaughlin.

Rogers has just blogged about making the film:

Susan J. Erickson has red cowboy boots and impeccable diction. She’s a poet hero of mine who I met back in the land of Douglas fir, though we’re both ladies of the 10,000 lakes.

Sue won the Brick Road Poetry Press prize last year, and her book, Lauren Bacall Shares a Limousine, is out now. Her collection of lady persona poems is tonally diverse, smart, and powerful.

Sue asked me to make a book trailer for her. We chose to work with her poem “Rapunzel Brings Her Women’s Studies Class to the Tower” partially because I now live near a giant bell tower and tracts of forest, but mostly because this poem is a linchpin poem. Rapunzel is trying to “relinquish the rib of victimhood.” She pushes back against the story we tell about her. She tells her class “your voices are searchlights that can sweep the horizon to reveal fault lines and illuminate passage.” What a good lesson.

Âne Dormant / Donkey Sleeping by Jacques Prévert

On 24 January, 2017 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Animation
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A charming animation made for French television in 2014 by Caroline Lefèvre. (There’s also a version without subtitles.) It’s one of thirteen shorts made by different directors for the collection “En Sortant de L’École,” a televised tribute to Prévert. For more on the making of Âne Dormant, see the blog.

Call for Entries: Juteback Poetry Film Festival 2017

On 21 January, 2017 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - calls for work, festivals and other screening events

Juteback Poetry Film Festival poster

The late, lamented Body Electric Poetry Film Festival is back with a new name! The Juteback Poetry Film Festival will take place on May 20th at the Lyric Cinema Cafe in Fort Collins, Colorado. Festival director R.W. Perkins will collaborate with Matt Mullins to program the festival. They note:

At the Juteback Poetry Film Festival we are looking for innovative and technically sound filmmaking, coupled with a strong grasp of poetics. It is our hope to showcase a wide range of talented film-poets from around the world to best represent the budding art form of videopoetry.

Submit online through the website. I’ll paste in the instructions:

THE JUTEBACK POETRY FILM FESTIVAL SUBMISSION GUIDE

  • All films must be submitted online. Please use the form below to complete your submission. To submit please load your film to Youtube, Vimeo or media sharing site of your choice, then provide the link in your submission. If you choose to use a privacy setting on either Youtube or Vimeo please be sure to provide us with a proper access code to view your film.
  •  All films must be completed before the deadline of April. 16th, 2017. As long as your film has been completed before the April 16th deadline please feel free to submit.
  •  All non-English films must have English sub-titles.
  •  All films selected for the festival grant Juteback Productions, LLC the rights to use all video images and press materials from the film for promotional purposes.
  •  Juteback Productions, LLC is permitted to retain copies of each film selected as part of our festival library and for media educational use.
  •  You may submit more than one film, please repeat process for each entry.
  • Films must be no more than 15 minutes in duration.

Submit here. And follow the festival on Facebook and Twitter.

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