~ Video Library ~
If I Told Him: A Completed Portrait of Picasso by Gertrude Stein
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[Edited 10/19/17: The original upload has gone missing, so it’s been replaced with two excerpts.]
This is Shutters Shut, choreographed by the legendary duo Paul Lightfoot and Sol León, A.K.A. Lightfoot León, and premiered by the Nederlands Dans Theater II in 2003. Paul Lightfoot told Ballet magazine, “In a way Shutters is a study, it’s an exercise.”
This performance is by Gauthier Dance, the dance ensemble of Theaterhaus Stuttgart. The dancers are Armando Braswell and Rosario Guerra. The film was edited by Valerie Haaf-Seidel, with camera work by Fritz Moser and Werner Schmidtke. (There’s another performance on YouTube, by Nederlands Dans Theater II itself, but that’s only an excerpt and seems to have been uploaded by someone other than the copyright holder.)
Limbo by dikson
A good example of the music-video style of poetry video, directed by Laurence Dobie. Dikson is a slam poet from Zimbabwe. The text is here.
Inscrição (Inscription) by Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen
Director Cine Povero notes:
A poem by Portuguese writer Sophia de Mello Breyner (1919-2004)
Read by Natália Luiza (“Ao Longe os Barcos de Flores”)
Music: “Guidemebytheshiplights, part 2” by Matt StintonFilmed at Terra Nostra Park (São Miguel Island, Azores) and Sintra National Park (Portugal).
To sample more of Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen‘s work in English translation, see the Poetry International website.
The Lab Aquaria by Colette Bryce
This was the first of the three films Kate Sweeney made in collaboration with poet Colette Bryce for her residency at the Dove Marine Laboratory. (The other two are Ballasting the Ark and Turbines in January.) Sweeney wrote:
‘The Lab Aquaria’ seeks to capture a tone, a feel of the lab; a sort of visual mood or reflection that leaves an after-image of the poem. Colette wished to include one site-specific piece about the Dove laboratory and we visited together to collect imagery in photography and video.
Though there are a couple of direct matches between text and film image, the film as a whole escapes the trap of excessive literalism, and comes across as a lyrical meditation on marine life and the work of science.
[UPDATE] The three films were shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Prize for new works in poetry in 2013.
Clenched Soul by Pablo Neruda
This is — the credits tell us — a production of the San Diego State University School of Theatre, Televison, and Film. Alexander Ameen, Miles Feld and Kurt Conety jointly directed a disturbing and imaginative interpretation of Neruda’s “Clenched Soul” as translated by W.S. Merwin.
Jayne Cortez live with Denardo Coleman: three poems
1. Find Your Own Voice
2. I’m Gonna Shake
3. She Got He Got
The recent death of Jayne Cortez prompted a post on Metafilter calling attention to her pioneering and musically compelling work with jazz musicians. Though most of the YouTube material is audio-only, the above videos were expertly filmed and recorded. They’re from a concert/reading in 2010 with Denardo Coleman accompanying his mother on drums. Andrew Lynn directed, with camera work by Elanor Goldsmith, Ira McKinley and Joshua Thorson. The description on YouTube reads:
“A Dialogue Between Voice and Drums,” live at The Sanctuary for Independent Media in Troy, NY on October 23, 2010. A firespitting evening with drummer Denardo Coleman, featuring a voice celebrated for her political, surrealistic, dynamic innovations in lyricism, and visceral sound. Cortez’s literary work and impassioned activism, inspired by the ideals of human dignity and social justice, have been called blues poetics, part of the foundation of hip hop and performance poetry. Denardo Coleman is a musician, composer, producer and drummer with the Ornette Coleman Quartet.
Darkroom by Erica Goss
Erica Goss should be familiar to regular readers of Moving Poems for her monthly column about videopoetry, The Third Form, but she is also a very good poet in her own right, as this new collaboration with Swoon (Marc Neys) demonstrates. This was actually a tri-national collaboration, because the cinematography was by Alastair Cook, re-edited by Marc. For the text of the poem, as well as some process notes, see Marc’s blog.
