Latest video reviews
Lac du Saint Sacrament by Marilyn McCabe
Some delicious-looking wintry images in this collaboration between videopoet Marilyn McCabe and photographer Dan Scott. It was featured last February in Atticus Review, with this artist statement:
Photographer Dan Scott and poet Marilyn McCabe are old friends who share an obsession with beautiful Lake George (once known as Lac du Saint Sacrament) in upstate New York, their old stomping ground. With this collaboration, they built on each other’s visions and creative exploration. For more on Dan’s art: https://www.danscott-photography.com/ For more on Marilyn’s poetry and video: MarilynOnaRoll.wordpress.com
Solo duet by Janet Lees
The latest film poem from Manx artist and poet Janet Lees seems fitting for this week of scorching temperatures in so many places. I’m sure she won’t mind if we paste in the full text of her Vimeo description, because it’s interesting to see what she excerpted from her original page-poem, “Retreat,” to make the film poem:
Poem & video by Janet Lees
Music by Tonic Walter & Nina Nst
The full poem, originally published in Earthlines magazine:Retreat
1
I have hung out my clothes
on the washing line at the edge of the world.
Silhouetted arms and legs
give dumbstruck kicks and jerks,
stiff with salt and too much mending
by hands that have lost
the scent of naked,
eyes that can’t see
to thread a needle.2
Viewed through glass: peat,
pelt. Imagined song
of blood and stone
fattening my tongue until
it fills my mouth, stops
my throat.
Between inside
and outside,
the flame roar of the wind,
cauterising open sores
where men have dug out earth from me
to burn to warm their hands.3
My blood
runs cold and clear
My bones are made
of the world’s dried tears
There is wreckage
and resurgence in my heart
At dusk I drink the sun
and then dead stars
live again in my skin
which breaks
and is
unbroken
Morning Walk by Joyce Sutphen
A new film from Motionpoems—the first in a couple of years—underwritten by the Center for the Art of Medicine at the University of Minnesota Medical School. My elderly mother takes a morning walk every day, so Joyce Sutphen‘s poem really resonated—especially as embodied by the actor here, Debra Magid. Zack Grant directs.
The text on the front page of Motionpoems suggests that while the nonprofit organization has shut down, we can expect more occasional films like this one:
Motionpoems Inc., was a 12-year initiative known for turning contemporary poems into short films, while also producing educational programs, public installations, and events. Founded by filmmaker Angella Kassube and poet Todd Boss in 2008, and officially dissolved in 2020 after having made 150+ shorts, today Motionpoems is a project of Todd Boss Originals.
The Life Breath Songs: toward a nature poem, written by the people of Scotland
In her first project as Makar (Scotland’s national poet), Kathleen Jamie invited Scots to submit lines for a trio of crowd-sourced film-poems with a clear rewilding theme, to coincide with the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow. As filmmaker Alastair Cook explains on the project’s page at Filmpoem:
The Life Breath Songs (Òrain Beò-analach) is a three film cycle from the #PeoplesPoem project supported by the Scottish Government and driven by the Makar, Kathleen Jamie –
The Life Breath Song
The Shivering River
Are We Listening?Commissioned by the Scottish Poetry Library from Alastair Cook, the triptych is called “The Life Breath Songs – toward a nature poem, written by the people of Scotland”, and is curated and arranged by Scotland’s Makar Kathleen Jamie and read by Eilidh Cormack. The cycle was directed and edited by Alastair with sound by Luca Nasciuti and cinematography by James William Norton.
For the texts of the poems, go to the Scottish Poetry Library. From the same source, here’s a good bio of Kathleen Jamie.
The Long Slow Effect of Gravity by Ian Gibbins
A 2020 poetry film by the Australian multimedia poet, musician and scientist Ian Gibbins, with
Footage taken around Adelaide CBD, Belair, Blackwood, Sturt River, Mount Compass and Middleton, all in South Australia, and Athens, Greece.
The soundtrack is in polyrhythmic 6/4 time and contains audio samples of bird calls, rain and various falling objects recorded in Belair, South Australia.
3D models of shark, roses and dog skeleton obtained and used under license from sketchfab.com. They were animated within Motion 5.
