Posts By Dave Bonta

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

Videopoetry makers Swoon and David Tomaloff featured at CoronationPress.com

On 6 January, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - literary magazines and websites

Check out this terrific interview with Belgian filmmaker Swoon and American poet David Tomaloff about their recent collaboration on a triptych of videopoems. I loved learning about their collaborative process and how they thought of each other’s work, and as an amateur maker of videopoems I was especially impressed by some of Swoon’s thoughts about his approach, such as:

I love working with found material. Trying to give images, shot for a whole other purpose by someone you don’t know in a place you’ve never been, a new life and, more important so, a new meaning, is very liberating. It gives you a weird sense of power. Even the material I shoot myself is often not shot directly for a specific film. I try to build a library of images, shot by me and found footage, where I can wander around in when making a new film. On the other hand, it’s also very nice if I can shoot images the way I want them to be for a specific idea and poem.

Read the rest (and watch the triptych).

, , ,

Isn’t It Time We… by John Siddique

On 5 January, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Author-made videopoems
Poet: | Nationality: | Filmmaker: ,

http://vimeo.com/23682194

This is “Hawthorne Moon,” the one installment in John Siddique‘s Thirteen Moons video series which isn’t an animation. It was shot and directed by the poet himself with final editing by Walter Santucci.

14th Avenue Tshwane (née Pretoria) by Gérard Rudolf

On 4 January, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Videopoems
Poet: | Nationality: | Filmmaker:

Alastair Cook‘s 16th filmpoem is also his third collaboration with South African poet and actor Gérard Rudolf. Alastair writes,

14th Avenue Tshwane (née Pretoria) is a poem by Gérard Rudolf from his collection Orphaned Latitudes. It is my first work of 2012 and illustrates the year’s intent: it is made from tangible film, not digital recordings, and 2012 is the year of using the digital to edit the analogue. I cannot edit without digital, I cannot make film without analogue. The year of Rollei, Bolex and Collodion. See you soon and Happy New Year!

This film contains Standard 8, Super 8, 16mm and miniDV, edited digitally.

The text of the poem appears on the publisher’s page for Orphaned Latitudes.

Videopoetry “for the earth” sought for 2012 VideoBardo festival in Buenos Aires

On 3 January, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - calls for work, festivals and other screening events

I’m not sure exactly how often it’s held, but the Buenos Aires-based International Festival of Videopoetry (VideoBardo) will be on its fourth incarnation this year, and the deadline for submissions is July 31st. The call for submissions is in Spanish and English:

2012 is a year of deep changes. Humanity suffers from electronic hiperconnection and natural hipoconnection (with Nature and with the Earth that we are part of). Due to these facts, serious and urgent issues about environment, climate and humans have been provoked. We support The Earth Summit 2012 Río +20 of United Nations that will deal all those issues. We must do something as poets, artists and human beings; we must rethink all these matters. That is why our IV International Festival of Videopoetry 2012 has as specific theme “For the Earth”; its purpose will be to become aware of the fact that We Are Earth.

If you’re on Facebook, there’s also an event page with the CFS. And do join the open group for the Visible Verse Festival, where Heather Haley shared this link and shares many other calls, not all of which get posted here.

,

Piece Work by Robert Peake

On 3 January, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Author-made videopoems
Poet: | Nationality: , | Filmmaker: ,

Poet Robert Peake’s first venture into the genre arose spontaneously and in collaboration with his wife, Valerie Kampmeier, who provided the music and the idea, as she describes on her blog:

This afternoon was the last day of the Christmas holidays, unexpectedly sunny, crisp and breezy. After the departure of some visitors, Robert and I were about to go out for a walk and some tea and cake, when he suddenly pointed to a patch of light on the wall behind me. The reflections from the garden of waving branches and the wrought iron of a clothes post were casting flickering shadows onto the wall in an astonishing fashion, almost like a silent movie. Robert grabbed his iPhone and captured some video. “You could use that for a poem-film, “ I remarked, thinking about the beautiful short videos some friends had made recently.

When we got home from our walk, I began improvising to the footage on the piano, while Robert listened and wrote. Within twenty minutes we both had something. Remarkably, when Robert read his poem aloud, it was exactly the right length. He recorded it, synchronized it with the video, and then I recorded my part on top onto a different track so that we could experiment with individual volume and colour.

Read the rest (and visit Robert’s blog for the text). It’s always exciting to see a new poet entering the videopoem/film-poem genre, and the high quality and organic process here bodes well for Peake and Kampmeier’s future efforts.

Howie Good: three poems from Dreaming in Red

On 2 January, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Videopoems
Poet: | Nationality: | Filmmaker:

Swoon Bildos combined three poems — “Blue Territory,” “Ghost Train,” and “The Theory of Meaningful Coinicidence” — for a videopoem in support of Howie Good‘s new collection, Dreaming in Red. Profits from the sale of the book go to the Crisis Center in Birmingham, Alabama, which works on suicide prevention and provides services to victims of sexual assault, day treatment for the indigent mentally ill, and other services.

Something by Charles Bukowski

On 29 December, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Videopoems
Poet: | Nationality: | Filmmaker:

“A short poem by Charles Bukowski illustrated by film, texture and stills. Original soundtrack by immprint.” It’s worth noting, however, that the London-based graphic design company used the same soundtrack in another video, for William Blake’s poem “The Sick Rose.” This is one of three Bukowski videopoems they’ve uploaded to Vimeo so far. It’s not clear who commissioned them.

The Call by Michelle Bitting

On 28 December, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 1 Comments - Videopoems
Poet: | Nationality: | Filmmaker: ,

Michelle Bitting‘s latest poem film.

Was it I by Sheila Packa

On 27 December, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Kinestasis
Poet: | Nationality: | Filmmaker:

It’s been too long since I last featured one of Kathy McTavish‘s lovely pieces of cello-accompanied video art for a poem by her regular collaborator, poet Sheila Packa. This is a piece from Packa’s new collection, Cloud Birds.

Most of the time, videos that consist only of still images don’t seem like a good fit for a site called Moving Poems, but McTavish’s videos are too full of life and movement to exclude.

One Art by Elizabeth Bishop

On 26 December, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 2 Comments - Videopoems
Poet: | Nationality: | Filmmaker: ,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAiik7SKXX8

Another videopoem from John Scott‘s projected feature-length documentary, Elizabeth Bishop and the Art of Losing. See “Sandpiper” for more information and links. Jason Harrington supplied the animation here.

Nicholas Was… by Neil Gaiman

On 23 December, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 2 Comments - Videopoems
Poet: | Nationality: | Filmmaker: ,

It would be hard to top last year’s animation of “Nicholas Was…” by Beijing motion graphics studio 39 Degrees North, but Trine Malde and narrator Aaron Kay took this in a completely different direction with “a mixture of rotoscoped animation, live action and found footage to comment on the stress and evil of christmas consumerism.”

Slow Wave Through The City by Jacq Kelly

On 22 December, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Videopoems
Poet: | Nationality: , | Filmmaker:

The latest filmpoem from Alastair Cook, who describes it on Vimeo as follows:

Slow Wave Through The City is a poem by Jacq Kelly, published by Colin Herd this year. It crossed my path digitally and I watched the film in my head as I read, my adopted city of Edinburgh speeding by.

Jacq lives in Edinburgh but dreams of moving to Sweden and becoming a viking. Until this happens, she spends her time writing poetry, fiction and trying to make a difference in politics as a campaigner.

Slow Wave Through the City was filmed in Edinburgh on 8mm film in Summer 2011 on a long walk with the poet; it was shot using Ektachrome Super8, processed in Kansas by Dwaynes.

By way of a coda, this is a first, a Scottish Filmpoem. Looking through all 15 films, this is the only one which has only Scots contributors for the film, narrative and music. This was not deliberate, but is fitting, since it’s devoted to Edinburgh.