Posts By Dave Bonta
Tripping on Mt. Olympus by Yesha Townsend
Bermudian poet Yesha Townsend in an exemplary performance-poetry film by Alyson Thompson. The poem lives up to its title, so the low-key camera work (no cliched “trippy” effects) provides just the right balance, I think.
High Windows by Philip Larkin
An animation of Larkin’s famous 1974 poem—knowing the date is key to understanding what now seems like a somewhat dated text. And yet this is the first of three films that the Paris-based studio Troublemakers.tv have produced so far for a futuristic poetry-film project called the Poetry Movement, whose creators appear to believe they’re breaking new ground:
The Poetry Movement is the ‘adolescent’ chapter within The Josephine Hart Poetry Foundation. It stands as the next logical step in terms of the way we consume verse and will grow and develop into a creative space that encapsulates the beauty of imagination and inventiveness. Within today’s technology lead landscape now sits a place in which timeless literature can be reborn and set free. The Poetry Movement is a radical and accessible platform for brilliance, creativity and vision.
Acting as if they’ve invented the genre is of course not unique; the folks at Motionpoems too are often guilty of that. But there is definitely something different about the three films produced for the Poetry Movement so far. Watch their adaptations of Plath’s “Death & Co.” and a section of “The Wasteland” and you’ll see what I mean. The idea I guess is to appeal to a generation raised on video games. “High Windows,” literal as it may be, at least does not make me laugh uncontrollably, and treats the poem with respect. Onur Senturk directed. The recitation is by Harold Pinter. (See Vimeo for the rest of the credits.)
À une passante / To a Passer-By by Charles Baudelaire
An illustrative, atmospheric take on Baudelaire’s poem by the Sicilian London-based independent filmmaker Luana Di Pasquale, with William Aggeler’s English translation in subtitles. The Vimeo description reads:
This short depicts in 1 min. and 30 sec. Charles Baudelaire’s Poem – ‘A Passer-By’ from ‘The Flowers of Evil’ collection – an European Classic which was first published in 1857. This French poem describes the moment when the Poet meets the eyes of a Mourning Woman in Paris’s Flea Market. In our adaptation – the poem is set in London’s Soho where the Poet meets the fugitive eyes of a Sex-Worker, played by actress Lidja Zovkic.
This adaptated version of Charles’s Baudlaire’s poem was inspired by Bunuel’s film ‘Belle de Jour’ and its music by the avant-garde composer Edgard Varèse with a few film noir’s notes Produced/Directed by Luana Di Pasquale. Edited/VFX by Massi Guelfi.Original music by Matthias Kispert.
In the Dead of Winter We by R.A. Villanueva
Last week when I shared 2 Degrees by Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner with animation by Jonathan “jot” Reyes, I mentioned that Reyes has also made a fully animated poem. This is that film, made for the poem “In the Dead of Winter We” by the Filipino American poet R.A. Villanueva, from his book Reliquaria,” which won the 2013 Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry.
The film was nominated for the 2015 Webby Awards in the Best Online Video: Animation category, and the write-up there reveals some fascinating details, including the fact that Reyes and Villanueva are brothers:
What inspired you most to follow your dreams/vision while working on this project?
There could be no other way than to follow my vision. By definition, the entire project was a dream, it was a vision interpreted. This wasn’t a commercial, not a branding package. There were no clients, no expectations. All the work, all the years my brother put into crafting his lines, I could do no less than put everything I had into it. It was a culmination of every skill I had learned to date, an exhibition of years worth of tutorials with a pure purpose.What made your project stand out in your industry/field and unique from the rest? What obstacles did that present and how did you overcome them?
The was no budget allocated for this animation. It was created in a short amount of time. “In the Dead of Winter We” was completed in one week, worked on only during nights after I came home from my day job, and through one sleepless weekend. There was no money for voice over, so I called my brother and asked him to recite his poem for me as inspiration, not knowing it would be used for this. I actually think that worked out well as the tinny voice and ambient street noise added to the piece. A green blanket hung over my apartment’s front door served as my green screen. Restrictions force us into creativity.When did you first know that this work was going to be something special?
Immediately. It had to be special. It was for my brother. It was intensely personal. It wasn’t just about me and family, it was for them. In our day jobs, we’re often asked to sacrifice personal goals for the sake of buzzwords: product, branding, experience, etc.. Clients strip away meaningful bits as they see fit, as if at a salon. They craft it in their image, in what they want to see. For this, there was no client, no expectation. Whatever I put out there would be my own interpretation, and it could be nothing less for my family. In the end, it became the fusion of my family’s collective creativity.
Advice Dyslexic by Lisa Vihos (2)
Back in April, I shared Dale Wisely’s video interpretation of this poem from the Poetry Storehouse; here’s Swoon’s version. This is the first I can remember that Swoon (Marc Neys) has put himself in a videopoem as an actor (assuming that’s acting, and not just the way he starts each day). The result makes an extremely effective fit with this unsettling text.
(Update) Marc has posted some process notes to his blog. Here’s a snippet:
I felt like making a small series of videos with myself in front of the camera again (it’s been a while), this being the first one, another for a poem by Yves Bonnefoy coming up later this year. I love working from the safe and confined place that is my home. Setting up the camera, finding the right angle… exploring the possibilities and getting the most out of almost nothing.
I wanted the video to be subtle, almost no movement or action. A silent dialogue between me and a bust of my father (made by my sister). Slightly absurd and somewhat sensitive.
“wherelings whenlings” by e.e. cummings as interpreted by John Cage
A beautifully filmed rendition of John Cage’s composition Forever and Sunsmell, performed by Dorothy Gal, Christopher Salvito, and Jessica Tsang and filmed and recorded by Christopher Salvito.
The title and text of Forever and Sunsmell are from 26, one of 50 poems (1940) by e.e. cummings. Some lines and words have been omitted, others have been repeated or used in an order other than that of the original. The humming and vocalise (not part of the poem) are an interpolation.
That’s from the video description. There’s a longer analysis of the piece at allmusic.com that talks about its place in Cage’s artistic development. For the complete text of the original poem, click through to Vimeo.
Call for Submissions: 4th International Video Poetry/Film Poetry Festival in Athens
The +Institute [for Experimental Arts] and Void Network have just issued a call for the 4th International Video Poetry Festival 2015, linking to guidelines which refer to it as the International Film Poetry Festival. Regardless of which name you use, the deadline for submissions is November 20, and this will be their fourth year of putting on an event which stands out from the crowd of international videopoetry/poetry film festivals for its street-wise style and anarchist philosophy:
The yearly International Video Poetry Festival 2015 will be held for fourth time in Greece in Athens. Approximately 2000 people attended the festival last years
There will be two different zones of the festival. The first zone will include video poems, visual poems, short film poems and cinematic poetry by artists from all over the world (America, Asia, Europe, Africa). The second zone will include cross-platform collaborations of sound producers and music groups with poets and visual artists in live improvisations.
The International Video Poetry Festival 2015 attempts to create an open public space for the creative expression of all tendencies and streams of contemporary visual poetry.
It is very important to notice that this festival is a part of the counter-culture activities of Void Network and + the Institute [for Experimental Arts] and will be non-sponsored, free entrance, non commercial and non profit event. The festival will cover the costs (2000 posters, 15.000 flyers, high quality technical equipment e.t.c.) from the incomes of the bar of the festival.All the participating artists and the organizing groups will participate voluntary to the festival.
Void Network started organizing multi media poetry nights in 1990. Void Network and +the Institute [for Experimental Arts] believe that multi media Poetry Nights and Video Poetry shows can vibrate in the heart of Metropolis, bring new audiences in contact with contemporary poetry and open new creative dimensions for this ancient art. To achieve this, we respect the aspirations and the objectives of the artists, create high quality self organized exhibition areas and show rooms, we work with professional technicians and we offer meeting points and fields of expression for artists and people that tend to stand antagonistically to the mainstream culture.
Click through for links to photos from past years as well as the guidelines.
Call for submissions: Motionpoems’ Big Bridges Film Festival
Five finalist poems have been selected for Motionpoems’ Big Bridges project, and now a second competition has been announced, this time to select films made from three of those poems. The deadline is August 10, so you don’t have very much time. Links to the poems and full details are on the Motionpoems website. I’ll quote the description from their email newsletter, which was more succinct:
CALL FOR FILMS: $2500 in Prizes
Motionpoems invites filmmakers to create short films designed to inspire engineers, architects, and designers with ideas for the future of big bridges. America’s bridges are failing, and Target Studio at the Weisman Art Museum of the University of Minnesota is stirring public conversation by mounting a multidisciplinary exhibit that dreams big about big bridges. A national poetry contest has resulted in five finalist poems on this theme; we’re making three of those poems available to develop into your own short film; you could come away with a share of $2500 in awards. The deadline is August 10, 2015. Click here to read finalist poems, read the guidelines and enter the contest.
The Big Bridges Film Festival will be held on September 30, 2015 at the University of Minnesota.
Stefanie Orphal on the aural dimension of poetry film
German literary scholar Stefanie Orphal, author of Poesiefilm: Lyrik im audiovisuellen Medium [Poetry Film: Poetry in the Audiovisual Medium], has an essay up at Poetryfilmkanal on “The fascination of hearing poetry films.” Here’s an excerpt:
In recent years there has been an increasing awareness of matters of sound and acoustics, in film studies as well as in other areas. Our understanding of poetry film can benefit a lot from this development. The principal point that we can take from this research is this: Not just on the level of signs, in terms of text-image-relations, but on the level of perception itself sound and image are fused into something completely new, into a third thing that is more than the addition of both elements. While experimental film maker Maya Deren meditated on this effect as early as 1953 on a podium on poetry and the film, contemporary scholars like film theorist Michel Chion have systematically laid out how what we hear, shapes what we believe only to see in the audiovisual experience.
One of Chion’s central terms is ›synchresis‹, by which he describes the psychophysiological phenomenon that lets us attribute discrete events that we see and hear simultaneously to the same source, e. g. the dubbed voice to the actor on screen. Such an effect – also called cross-modal association – is subtly operative in the perception of all audio-film, but it is crucial to the experience of poems in an audiovisual context, because voice over poems are often clearly not part of a diegetic world and what we hear is set apart from what we see creating counterpoint and contrast. But even in the most modernist and experimental efforts of counterpoint or of contrasting sound-image-relations, in our perception both sound and image are always drawn together, contaminating each other as Michel Chion puts it. The effect of this play of forces can be intriguing. What is fascinating about poetry film, to me, is the stunning effect when such a complex combination of elements brings about something new, the impression that something is revealed in the image or in the poem.
2 Degrees by Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CaZXCNfa04
Marshallese poet Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner‘s impassioned poem about climate change in a video from CNN, part of their correspondent John D. Sutter’s two degrees series. It aired in late June. Jonathan “jot” Reyes, the creative director of video development at CNN, included half a minute of motion graphics in a film that otherwise hews closely to the standard TV formula for poetry: shots of the poet alternating with a collage of complementary footage, more or less illustrative of the text. For a dash of irony, you can watch this on the CNN website, where it’s preceded by an automobile ad. But a longer, interactive web feature on Sutter’s visit to the Marshall Islands also includes the video poem (which is the term he uses for it), along with some prefatory text:
During my brief time in the islands, I met people like Angie [Hepisus] who are witnessing climate change and who are trying to do what’s best for themselves and their families. By sharing their stories, they hope the rest of us might listen — might realize our actions have consequences for places we’ll never see, for people we’ll never meet. I also had the pleasure of meeting Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner, a young mother and poet who has emerged as one of the country’s pre-eminent storytellers. A teacher at the College of the Marshall Islands, the 27-year-old also studies the oral stories that form the fabric of her nation and culture.
The article continues with two of Jetnil-Kijiner’s stories; click through for those. As Sutter points out, she spoke at the UN last fall, reading a different poem which was also made available as a video.
Incidentally, this isn’t jot Reyes’ first foray into videopoetry. I’ll be sharing another of his creations soon.
