~ Nationality: Canada ~

Downtown (video series) by Valerie LeBlanc

On 29 July, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 1 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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(1) In Your Wildest Dreams

http://www.vimeo.com/12361430

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(2) Pastimes

http://www.vimeo.com/12362779

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(3) Splitting Image

http://www.vimeo.com/12363074

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(4) Watching

http://www.vimeo.com/12363323

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(5) Nature

http://www.vimeo.com/12363561

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I’ve tended not to feature a whole lot of videos in which the emphasis is more on the video than the poetry, and the text couldn’t stand on its own. But that bias is a little unfair to the avant-garde videopoetry tradition, which has always emphasized the interdependence of the two. Canadian artist and writer Valerie LeBlanc’s Downtown series from 2003 is solidly within this tradition, and each video is definitely greater than the sum of its parts. The common-place thoughts ascribed to urban apartment-dwellers gain depth and pathos by juxtaposition with the unreal context upon which they are superimposed as simple kinetic text. In her very interesting notes on the series, LeBlanc discusses how she played with visual ambiguities and the expectations of viewers, and cites French philosopher Gilles Deleuze as a central influence:

Part of my practice involves using video in ways that are sometimes perceived to be proprietary to film. In my 2003 series Downtown, the images on billboards are literally positioned as ‘the thinking image’ [1] as defined by Gilles Deleuze in Cinema 2: The Time-Image. The images of people, laid out by marketers to sell condominium lifestyle, are juxtaposed with texts that speak thoughts for those future residents. The subjects contemplate existence and the videos end with the revelation that it is the voice of an image that speaks over time, in what is literally ‘a 2-dimensional world.’ In reality, on closer inspection, it becomes obvious that some of the subjects have taken on character weaknesses closely resembling the problems sometimes associated with high-density living. For example, in Splitting Image, the young Asian male on the balcony actually appears to be more in the headspace of committing suicide than ‘Living the Dream.’ When viewing the image even closer, it becomes obvious that this character with the fully developed imagination of the protagonist is less than a full image. He had been constructed from a face and shirt pulled from a marketers’ catalogue, and yet, he has everything he needs to sell inner-city condos. Not many, if any of the GRP’s (Gross Rating Point) passing audience members will probably notice that he has no hands and no lower body. The ‘half-man’ is floating above the balcony wall. And yet, with a quick drive by, he appears complete, the man who ‘owns’ in a desired real estate market.

Read the rest.

The Dinosaur Book is Green Fire by Brenda Clews

On 11 April, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 2 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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Canadian poet and artist Brenda Clews does it all here: drawing, filming, editing, even constructing the music. “The world is a green furor of creativity – the green fire of life,” she writes in the description at YouTube, where she provides a detailed description of her process, including this note about the music:

I created the music in a cool program, a ‘P22 Music Text Composition Generator (A free online music utility)’: http://www.p22.com/musicfont In this program, each letter has a sound. When you put text in, you can choose what BMP and instrument you’d like, and the program generates a midi file, with the sheet music. I layered my track in GarageBand 6.0.2 using different instruments, splicing and re-arranging. […]

From start to finish took about 12 hours, there were many layers, of image, text, and sound, each with filters, and I had to render a few times, which took hours, to see if what I had produced worked.

the lake by Karyn Eisler

On 11 March, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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A great example of how to create anticipation in a videopoem and make reading a more urgent act. This was featured at Referential Magazine. Karyn Eisler blogs at Living ?s.

Fear of Snakes by Lorna Crozier

On 22 February, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 2 Comments - Videopoems
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Canadian filmmaker Andreas Mendritzki (GreenGround Productions) has done a very difficult thing here: made an videopoem for a narrative poem by suggesting the action described in the poem without directly showing it. The result is extremely effective, in my opinion. Evidently I’m not the only one who thinks so — it won first prize at the 2009 Chicago International Children’s Film Festival.

Lorna Crozier is a major Canadian poet. Here’s her website.

Siren Song by Margaret Atwood

On 18 February, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 4 Comments - Videopoems
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A new videopoem by Belgian artist and composer Swoon. According to the notes at his blog, he first composed the music and found film images to match, then decided to add the poem:

I took some time working on a piece of music (first hunted, frightened. Melancholic other) with matching images.
Memories of what never was. The attraction between man and woman. A farewell. The impossibility of things undone.
A rabbit.

Somehow the words of Atwood gave the necessary lightness (counterweight) and they added an extra layer.

(Thus, at any rate, Google Translate.) Who knew a pet rabbit could be capable of such gravitas?

Three Poems by Steven McCabe

On 15 February, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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The poems are “Speed-dial a Rainbow,” “Bough,” and “Salome’s Veil.” McCabe directs with cinematography by Eric Gerard and editing by Konrad Skreta.

How to Remain by Heather Haley

On 11 February, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Videopoems
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Heather Haley wrote and directed this entertaining film about a very serious subject. Here’s her gloss from the video description on YouTube:

The audience is along for a wild ride in AURAL Heather’s “How To Remain” with a compulsive protagonist resolutely heading toward an elusive goal of perfection, perpetually struggling to stay *on* and, or to stay thin. *How to remain in control* is at the heart of anorexia and bulimia. Ubiquitous images of the ideal woman provide pressure and anxiety for us all. She turns to her trusty steed but instead of her body disintegrating, the horse’s body withers away. A symbol of intense desire and instinct, the horse’s ribs start to protrude as it becomes increasingly emaciated until finally disappearing with a *POOF! * Though eating disorders are a serious matter, the story is really about facing our all-too-human mortality. REMAIN is the key word and our secret desire, fueling our heroine’s quest for eternal youth and beauty, i.e., immortality. She is in a race. A horse race. A rat race? Or a labyrinth. Reel time accelerates as it does in real life; time seemingly flying by with advancing years as we move toward our inevitable departure. Of course HOW we live is what really matters.

Anansi Hides the Moon by Brenda Clews

On 10 February, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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“Poem, painting and video by Brenda Clews,” as it says in the closing credits. Brenda’s process notes at her blog are almost as interesting as the result:

A painting, ‘Parchment Figures: Doubles, Doppelgängers, Clones,’ hanging on a wall. Sunlight moving through wind-waving branches falls through a window onto it. You can also see the shadows of the window itself. That morning I was absorbed watching the light and shadows dancing quietly over the painting and videotaped it. Then, on an evening walk I came across a light on a patio with a thick white gauzy curtain around it, and shot some footage with my iPhone video camera. Later, playing with the footage, I added the billowing curtain and its light next to the painting of doubles and shadows. Then I cut sections of a photograph of the painting out, animated them and added them to the film. Finally, pondering on what I had produced, I wrote a whimsical poem of the African trickster spider god, Anansi, and wove it in with handwritten notes.

Read the rest.

In Earth Dreams by Daniela Elza

On 24 January, 2011 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Animation, Concrete and visual poetry
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Interesting kinetic text animation by Daniela Elza’s husband Dethe, “programmed in NodeBox, final video produced using QuickTime and iMovie.” To me, this kind of fits in the “concrete poetry” category (though I admit that’s subjective, and I should probably just merge it into a kinetic text category).

Ghost Haiku by Susan Cormier

On 21 December, 2010 by Dave Bonta with 1 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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Susan Cormier A.K.A. queen of crows is both author and director. In the notes at YouTube, she says:

The guys in the foreground seemed kinda creeped-out by me and my camera — obviously, they couldn’t see what I was actually watching. If anyone knows who they are, please send them a link. I generally don’t use people’s images without their permission, but this shot was too precious to discard.

All This Day Is Good For by Tom Konyves

On 17 December, 2010 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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A spam lit videopoem! Tom writes,

In this ode to the simultaneous, true and false perceptions collide in a 360-degree panoramic sweep of a moment in time, rendering life and art in equal measure.

The text in this videopoem was assembled from hundreds of spam/scam e-mails I have been collecting over the years, representing the lies we are confronted with every day; yet the random phrases extracted from these passion-laden letters cannot help but also contain unintentional glimpses of truth. In between mundane and altered reality lies that precious essence of life I see as poetry.

Alex Konyves assisted with — well, almost everything, it seems. And Robin Pittman helped with the motion graphics.

Purple Lipstick by Heather Haley

On 5 November, 2010 by Dave Bonta with 1 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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A poem about domestic violence, on YouTube courtesy of a magazine called Shattered Thought which appears to be no longer online. Heather Haley, however, is very much still online — in fact, the annual videopoetry festival she organizes in Vancouver, Visible Verse, will be celebrating its 10th anniversary on November 19-20. This is the premiere videopoetry event in North America. Go if you can.

The Videopoems page of her personal website says about this film, in part:

Heather’s videopoem Purple Lipstick still garners kudos having been an official selection at the VideoBardo 2nd International VideoPoetry Festival in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the 3rd Zebra International Poetry Film Festival in Berlin, Germany and the Women in Film Festival in Vancouver where she was a guest speaker. Purple Lipstick also screened at Commfest, Wildsound, Female Eye in Toronto, Northwest Projections and Reel to Real in Seattle.

Purple is the colour of a fresh bruise and domestic violence the single greatest cause of injury to women in Canada. Purple Lipstick confronts its insidious nature through compelling juxtapositions. A disembodied female voice employs vivid language, absurdist against a backdrop of banality, images of *normal* family life. Numb in her isolation and still in her nurse’s uniform, a wife and mother prepares dinner. The inherent terror of her home life is invoked with excruciating tension. Its brutality can only be alluded to.

Shot on Bowen Island near Vancouver, Purple Lipstick features actors Bazil Graham, Ripley Ferguson, Cairo Ferguson and slam poetry star Alexandra Oliver-Basekic.