~ Videopoems ~
Videopoetry, filmpoetry, cinepoetry, poetry-film… the label doesn’t matter. What matters is that text and images enter into dialogue, creating a new, poetic whole.
The Art of Poetry Film with Cheryl Gross: “Wayne the Stegosaurus” and “Cigar Box Banjo”
Wayne the Stegosaurus
poem: Kenn Nesbitt
co-directors: Aran Quinn, Jeff Dates
3D lead artsts: Rob Petrie, Jeff Dates
produced for Motionpoems
2014
Wayne the Stegosaurus is a delightful, airy children’s poem written by Kenn Nesbitt. The animation is rendered beautifully and produced by The Mill, a Chicago-based production company.
The poem is intended for children. I watched it a few times looking for a clue if the artists were withholding a nightmare. No such luck. Just a plain and simple video poem intended purely to entertain.
The animation is delightful. Pastel hand-painted watercolors move about. The action appears to be frame-by-frame and alludes to a stop-motion effect. I may be wrong, but since this is a high-production studio, Wayne the Stegosaurus was probably completely done on computer. It’s a treat to see the artist’s hand at work and it would be nice if this had been done “old school,” but no matter how it was done, the outcome is magnificent and charming, and the viewer can’t help but fall in love with it.
That being said, there is nothing to analyze or rip apart. It’s perfect in its simplicity.
Then I stumbled upon Cigar Box Banjo by Kim Addonizio. The content is much grittier and more to my taste.
Cigar Box Banjo
poem: Kim Addonizio
voiceover: Johanna Braddy
director and sound designer: Danny Madden
editor: Mari Walker
performers: Hannah Elder, Jon Thibault, and Iere Castagne
produced for Motionpoems
2015
The editing is terrific. The footage is seamlessly woven together and reads like an indie film, powerful and poignant. It’s well done, not at all corny, and a good mixture of old and new footage. The song “Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground,” written and performed by Blind Willie Johnson, is a perfect addition and allows the piece to flow very nicely. I also have to mention that the design on the entire piece is sophisticated and exciting to watch. I found it refreshing, and I have nothing negative to say on this one either. I liked watching both videos back to back.
Aside from both being poetry films, Wayne the Stegosaurus and Cigar Box Banjo are very different. Wayne embraces a colorful, safe world, while Cigar Box tells an entirely different story. But both are well written and visually outstanding — examples of video poetry at its finest.
Editor’s note: A huge congratulations to Cheryl — and to her collaborator, the poet Nicelle Davis — for having a film accepted for ZEBRA, the world’s foremost poetry film festival, for the third time in a row! Active Shooter Event will be screened at the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival Münster|Berlin, October 27-30, 2016 at the Schlosstheater cinema in Münster, Germany. —Dave B.
Ich lebe mein Leben im wachsenden Ringen / I live my life in widening circles by Rainer Maria Rilke
Rilke’s “primordial tower” (uralten Turm) is given literal shape in this otherwise wonderfully suggestive film of a video installation based on the famous poem from the Book of Hours. The film, directed by the artist Pat van Boeckel, takes a kind of call-and-response approach—which seems highly appropriate, given the subject matter—by having a voiceover of the poem at the very beginning (with the English translation by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows in subtitles), followed by the installation in a kind of reverse ekphrasis. According to the Vimeo description, the installation was “Made for art project Internationales Waldkunst in Darmstadt.” Max Richter composed the music.
At Thirty by Paula Bohince
A poem by Paula Bohince adapted to film by Thibault Debaveye for Motionpoems, who refer to it on Facebook as
our first crowdsourced voiceover! Thanks to our voiceover artists John W. Goodman, Jeannie Elizabeth, Louis Murphy, Amy Miller, Jennifer Jabaily-Blackburn, Veronica Suarez, Carrie Simpson, Michelle Meyer, Juliet Patterson, Will Campbell, and Clare McWilliams.
Debaveye’s description on Vimeo:
Feeling empty. Null and void. Finding a new identity.
“At Thirty”, a visual poem about this feeling of being there but not being present.
Non-existent silhouette of ordinary people as they go about their lives in everyday chores.
See Motionpoems’ upload for the full credits, and visit their website to read the text of the poem and a brief interview with Bohince.
If I Could Tell You by W. H. Auden
https://vimeo.com/180747404
This is Holocene, a film by Berlin-based photographer and filmmaker Esteban Iljitsch that juxtaposes Auden’s poem (in Tom O’Bedlam’s almost too-perfect reading) with footage of Iceland for a powerful meditation on time and mutability. The Vimeo description:
It’s been two years now since we took off to Iceland with some cameras, a raincoat and a five-wheel-hooptie.
In the never ending summer days we lost sense of time and space, got dizzy walking around sulfur fields, had lobster soup next to black beaches and accidentally rejuvenated our feet in a hot spring.
There must have been reasons for all this – if we could tell you, we would let you know.Concept: ESTEBANxILJITSCH
Director/DP/Edit: Esteban
Actor: Manuel Iljitsch
Factotum: Hannes Kleager
Colorist: Nicke Jacobsson
Sounddesigner: Moritz Staub
Voiceover: Tom O’Bedlam
Poem: „If I Could Tell You“ by W.H. AudenThanks to the great people involved who made this possible and Anna for pushing me to finish it!!!!
River Étude by Sandra Louise Dyas
What mysteries lie hidden in a single name? As if in answer to the OTTERAS videopoem Navn Nome Name and its celebration of a telephone book’s worth of names, Iowa-based artist Sandra Louise Dyas set out to pay closer attention to one great river of a word, as the Vimeo description explains:
River Étude is an experimental video poem inspired by the Mississippi River and John Cage. When I was very little, I learned how [to] spell Mississippi and Dubuque by singing the letters. Life offers you nothing to hang onto. To survive you must learn how to let go and swim. Become the water. Stop resisting.
Afternoon by Max Ritvo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iv_oKqPwidA
American poet Max Ritvo‘s death of cancer at 25 was widely mourned on social media last week. As the New York Times noted, much of his work was devoted to chronicling his struggle with Ewing’s sarcoma, which he contracted at 16. The above video is one of a pair of animations by Nate Milton produced to accompany an NPR podcast, as the YouTube description explains:
Ritvo visited the Only Human podcast for the second time during what he called his “farewell tour”. His debut collection, “Four Reincarnations” will be published later this year. Listen to the episode here: http://www.wnyc.org/story/max-ritvo/
See also the other animation, “Poem to My Litter.”
Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll
This “experimental visual poetry” directed by Katie Williamson stars Walter McCord in an imaginative riff on Lewis Carroll’s great nonsense poem. The soundtrack includes, if I’m not mistaken, a track by the Master Musicians of Jajouka.
Quattro Ottobre (October Fourth) by Francesca Gironi
A unique piece even by the highly eclectic standards of the poetry-dance film genre. For one thing, the dancer/choreographer, Francesca Gironi, also wrote the text. For another, video artist Jack Daverio‘s imagery complements and expands the text in such a way that this could easily be characterized as a videopoem senso strictu. It’s described on Vimeo as an “Ironic dialogue between poetry and video art. Self escape becomes hyper presence.” The music is by Luca Losacco.
Quattro Ottobre was a finalist at the Doctorclip poetry film festival as well as in the Carbon Culture Review Poetry Film Competition 2016, judged by Zata Banks, who describes it as “A strong example of a dance-led poetry film incorporating sound design, visual layering and a voiceover poem about the self.” (Click through for biographies for Gironi, Daverio and Losacco.)
