~ Video Library ~
Requiem for a spoken word by Marc Zegans
In Requiem for a spoken word, a short poem by Marc Zegans comes into play with experimental computer animation by Jim Hall. Both artists approach their work with a jazzy, improvisational openness that makes for a quirky videopoem about a single word.
A number of Marc’s collaborations with different film-makers have been shared before here at Moving Poems, as well as an interview with him by Dave Bonta.
This video came to my attention while scrolling the list of finalists at the 2021 Ó Bhéal International Poetry-Film Competition in Ireland. It is also published on the website of +Institute for Experimental Arts in Athens, which runs the video poetry festival there each year.
Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll
Lewis Carroll‘s famous nonsense poem Jabberwocky has been adapted to the screen many times. This version from 2020 by Dutch artist Sjaak Rood was produced for TED-Ed as part of a series of collaborations between educators and film animators. Music is by Mark Nieuwenhuis with narration by Jack Cutmore-Scott. It was a 2021 finalist in the Ó Bhéal Poetry Film Competition in Ireland.
Moving Poems has previously shared two other film versions of Jabberwocky as well as an adaptation of Carroll’s The Mad Gardener’s Song.
Keeping Up with the Huidobros by Lina Ramona Vitkauskas
I fear we have not been keeping up with the always-original videopoetry of Lina Ramona Vitkauskas. This one from last year has a pretty intriguing origin story:
It began with Chilean poet, Vincente Huidobro. The opening / preface of his poetic masterpiece, Altazor, launches into a metaphysical cascade of imagery. This was exciting to a young poet like me—at age 29 with some Spanish knowledge and seeking a manifesto to climb (the name “altazor” is a combination of the noun “altura” / “altitude” and the adjective “azorado” / “bewildered” or “taken aback”).
I’d been experimenting with layered or looking-glass ekphrasis (a term that I’ve coined for this process). As I create cinepoems, a visual language in of itself, I found this poem in particular to be different: it was fueled by a homophonic translation (three languages fused: English, Spanish, and the visual). From this, a separate Lithuanian poem sprung, inspired by the overlapped sounds of street noise, a looped harpsichord, and selected juxtapositions of the poet’s translated phrases and/or words. Now four languages.
Note: It was also a synchronous discovery to find that the first issue of Huidobro’s international art magazine, Creación, featured Lithuanian-born, Cubist sculptor, Jacques Lipchitz.
Click through for an English translation of the Lithuanian poem as well as the full text of the homophonic translation included as voiceover.
June 2020 by Shabnam Piryaei
An author-made videopoem by the accomplished U.S. poet and filmmaker Shabnam Piryaei, whose work we’ve featured here in the past, but have gotten a bit behind on — see the mediapoems page on her website for more examples. She evidently prefers to let the films speak for themselves, presenting only credits. Here’s the description for June 2020:
filming:
Taymoor Akinmusire
Shabnam Piryaeipoem:
Shabnam Piryaeivoiceover:
Taymoor Akinmusire
I love the fact that she collaborated with a child on the filming. Such a hope-inspiring, life-affirming piece! And as a typical, language-obsessed poet I couldn’t help but be struck by Piryaei’s choice of someone to whom reading is new for the voiceover, and how for a videopoem that can help satisfy Pound’s famous directive, make it new.
For the Birds by Mike Hoolboom
Canadian Mike Hoolboom has been highly esteemed in the world of experimental film-making for decades. His work mostly falls within a subset of that genre involving unconventional approaches to narrative. The spoken words of his films also come across as a kind of prose poetry, and here his work crosses into the area of videopoetry.
Mike often voices his own films in the first person evoking a sense of autobiography, while subverting that perception with unlikely confessions, irony and dashes of absurdity. Still his films and words convey something truly personal and deeply moving.
A statement from him about this video, For the Birds:
One of my father’s favourite expressions, mostly passed away now: for the birds. Meaning: that was nothing. In this aviary anthology, the narrator describes a post-art life that leads, inexorably, to the nature of nature. He makes a vow to the birds, sincere to the last, still embracing the fantasy that language came before the world.
Moving Poems previously shared his prophetic 1998 film In the Future. I included another of his films, Rain, in the Poetry + Video program that toured pre-pandemic Europe in 2019.
Üç Selvi / Three Cypresses by Nâzım Hikmet
An animation by artist Zeynep Sıla Demircioğlu for a piece by Turkey’s greatest 20th-century poet, Nâzım Hikmet. The bleakness of the content is counter-balanced by the richness of the recitation by Geneo Erkal—all those lovely Turkish consonants. As a tree-lover there’s no way I couldn’t post this as soon as I saw it. Here’s Demircioğlu’s statement, on Vimeo and her website:
Communist poet and writer Nâzım Hikmet Ran’s poem “Üç Selvi” is about three cypress trees. In his metaphoric narrative, at first, trees live in harmony with nature. After their destruction joy of life is gone and the world is deprived of the sound of cypress leaves. Although Hikmet wrote this mournful poem in 1933, readers can find different meanings and enemies when they look at the dark side of Turkish collective memory.
Structures of Nature by Martin Gerigk
Here at Moving Poems we sometimes like to push at the boundaries of what may be considered videopoetry. Structures of Nature is another instance of this. Beyond any theoretical interest in stretching these boundaries, we share it simply because it is a virtuosic marvel of a film that centrally incorporates text among its elements.
The piece has had its widest recognition under the auspices of experimental film, screening at over 150 festivals and gathering multiple awards. Of course, experimental film is a major area of influence on so many videopoems. The relative freedom of subject and form inherent to both poetry and experimental film make for a natural partnership.
The concept, video, editing, music and soundtrack of Structures of Nature are all by German artist, Martin Gerigk, whose bio states that he is primarily a composer and arranger for orchestra and chamber music, with audiovisual art a second string in his creative work. Certainly, the soundtrack is a prime feature of the film’s great impact.
Forget viewer control over sequential perception or any ability to take in all elements of this film at once. The best way to view it is to let go of these traditional expectations and allow the mind to process it on levels beyond straightforward cognition. One of Gerigk’s intentions is to evoke a synaesthetic experience, in which the stimulation of one sense evokes an experience in another. From the film-maker’s statement on the piece:
In my sensory world, sounds are firmly linked to certain colors and forms, a phenomenon called synaesthesia. I have experienced my environment that way since my birth. Over the years, therefore, the idea arose to visualize this variation of perception and make it tangible for everyone to experience. Even as an adult, I still find myself astonished at the secrets of nature. The filigree cosmos of the microscopic, the nested laws of nature; here, the formation of swarms, the principle of emergence, is certainly one of the most fascinating phenomena we know. Especially, since we ourselves live the behavior of swarms, every day, regarding our dealings with one another, our communication, the formation of communities, as well as our division of tasks within society. The world is changing with increasing speed. Digitalization networks us, joins us, changes our communication, and sometimes lets us forget that we and our achievements continue to be an expression of the rules and principles of nature. In order to visualize precisely these laws, Structures of Nature was created. A synaesthetic journey through inner and outer worlds of experience. Thus, I have endeavored to complement the speech and music to be heard, and all the sounds, by commensurate film sequences which correspond to my own visual synaesthetic perception. Each cinematic composition simulates the basic geometry and the color and form of what is heard but also completes the subject of what is described.
The 18 minute length of Structures of Nature is another basic way the film departs from the usual briefer expectations in videopoetry, but Gerigk’s astonishing creative mastery makes the viewing time so worthwhile.
What I fear most is becoming “a poet” by Katerina Gogou
This took the top honors in the 9th Ó Bhéal poetry film competition last fall, and I can see why. It’s a masterclass in bringing still images to life—and they’re powerful images, too: flaming trumpets facing off; an empty chair birthing clouds or smoke juxtaposed with the text “I fear that i might learn to use meter and rhythm / and thus I will be trapped within them”; clouds circling overhead as the words “they see to us being ashamed for not working” appear. Filmmaker Janet Lees‘ deep images are usually in service to her own texts, but this was a commissioned film, as the Vimeo description makes clear:
Filmmaker: Janet Lees
Poet: Katerina Gogou
Translator: G Chalkiadakis
Composer/musician: Tromlhie
Produced by +the Institute for Experimenal Arts and commissioned by the art platform filmpoetry.org, as part of the Digital Culture Programme, Ministry of Culture / Greece.Katerina Gogou (1949-1993) was Greece’s greatest modern anarchist poetess. Her poems have become synonymous with the radical culture of Greece and with Exarcheia, the Athens neighbourhood known as the anarchist quarter. Born into the Nazi occupation of Greece, she lived through the years of far right military junta oppression and the country’s resurgent anarchist movement in the 1980s. An activist herself, she became a prophet of the movement and her poems anthems for it. She died of an overdose on 3 October 1993.
The judges’ comments may be read in the announcement post on +the Institute for Experimental Arts website:
There were so many beautiful filmpoems entered into the competition, I loved watching every single one of them, and appreciated all of the work, imagination and innovation that went into making them. In the end, the piece called What I fear most is becoming a poet stood out as a stunning example of filmpoetry as a unique art form. Janet Lees has created a powerful visual rendering of Katerina Gogou’s poem. I was both floored and inspired by it. Comhghairdeas ó chroí!
Paula Kehoe
What I fear most is becoming “a poet” is such an evocative and moving piece. Katerina Gogou’s poem, enormous in itself which speaks so intimately about the poet’s world of peril and uncertainty, met with this filigreed balance of soft pianissimo and perfectly-paced typography, the haunting, completely captivating visuals, the almost hesitant text (in places), and the very absence of voice bringing us so much closer to the poet’s inner sanctum… all just fantastically done. A highly worthy winner.
Paul Casey
From the same source, here’s Janet’s director’s note:
For me this poem resounds with the psychological distress Katerina experienced as a result of experiencing and bearing witness to collective trauma. Despair and loneliness hover over every line, but there is also a core of steel in the shape of her unwavering conviction and commitment to the cause and to her people. To bring this great poem to life as a poetry film, I drew on my own urban images and footage. In animating the stills, I used the recurring motif of fire and smoke to indicate rebellion and oppression/passion and despair. I worked with the composer/musician Tromlhie to bring out the poem’s emotional journey in musical form and to complement the poem’s slow build – layer upon layer of the fear of ‘becoming “a poet”’.
The northern Ireland-based CAP Monthly interviewed Janet after her win about how she came to poetry film and how she looks at it. It’s well worth a read.
murder girl gets wired by Caroline Reid
murder girl gets wired is written and spoken by award-winning South Australian poet and performer, Caroline Reid. She describes its subject as “hard-edged urban youth culture in late night small city Australia”. The film-maker in the collaboration goes by the artist name featherfurl, and also makes music and gif art.
The eerie suburban images are night-time photographs that are given filmic motion via subtle and unusual visual effects. The soundtrack, engineered by Jeffrey Zhang, is a stand-out feature, with two softly-layered voice tracks accompanying the central reading of the poem.
The inventive use of simple media elements, coupled with the powerful writing, creates outstanding videopoetry in this piece.
murder girl gets wired is the second film we have featured at Moving Poems from Caroline Reid and collaborators. The first was Lost, a finalist in the Ó Bhéal Poetry-Film competition in Ireland in 2019, and part of Zebra Poetry Film Festival in Germany in 2020.
