Latest video reviews
Immigrant Sea by Forrest Gander
A friend lent me a copy of Forrest Gander’s 2021 collection Twice Alive: An Ecology of Intimacies, and in a moment of pure serendipity last Wednesday, skimming the acknowledgements, I see a mention of poetry films, so I go to Vimeo and find this video at the top of my feed, uploaded just a few hours earlier! I’ve been following Gander’s videopoetry for years, during which time his reputation as a page poet has skyrocketed, to the point where I think it’s fair to say he’s the most prominent American poet regularly making his own poetry films. And his videopoems have grown stronger as well (though you may have to take my word for this, as his earlier films have gone missing). His choice of images used to feel a bit arbitrary at times, but I don’t get that feeling from any of his recent films, which now feel as necessary and urgent as the texts on their own.
You can read the text of the poem in Harper’s (if you haven’t already hit their paywalled limit).
Janet Leigh is Afraid of Jazz by Marsha de la O
The latest videopoem by Matt Mullins, who writes:
Here’s Janet Leigh; she’s afraid of jazz in reverse as an overlay to diagrammatical stereographic explanations. The knife-blade shrieks are Doppler warps to a molasses of strips teased. Unimaginable synchronicities abound. The drain eye has an arm and spins water into sound. It’s all very pointed in its touching.
poem: Marsha de la O
concept/direction/audio-visual composition: Matt Mullins
Vimeo description
Via the Filmetry Archive. The poem by Marsha de la O was one of the texts supplied to filmmakers for their 2024 contest; this film placed second. I was especially impressed by how Mullins handled the challenge of including and suggesting jazz elements in the soundtrack without simply deploying a jazz track, giving the film an allusive depth and working to counter-balance what might have otherwise seemed too cerebral an approach to the imagery. And given the long history of jazz at poetry readings, Mullins’ Beat-style vocal delivery seemed just right to my ear.
The Bride Goes Wild by Amy Gerstler
This recent film by Janet Lees, who needs no introduction here, took top honors at this year’s Filmetry festival, part of the ten-day Capital City Film Festival (CCFF) in Lansing, Michigan. Its propulsive energy and light-hearted approach, while a bit of a departure from some of the slower, more meditative work that Lees is best known for, demonstrates a mastery of textured layering, and overall makes a great fit with the poem by Amy Gerstler — one of a selection of texts provided by the organizers:
This year’s theme was POETICS OF CINEMA. Pre-selected poems all engaged the concept of cinema in some way, and filmmakers were encouraged to create new work from them. The only rule is that filmmakers must include the text of the poem in full.
CCFF website
As for the poet,
Amy Gerstler is a writer of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, art criticism, journalism and other stuff. She has published thirteen books of poems, a children’s book and several collaborative artists books with visual artists. Index of Women, her most recent book of poems, was published by Penguin Random House in 2021.
author website
Be sure to browse the archive at Filmetry, which has been updated to include all of this year’s films—a great resource.
Balta puķe / The white flower: Latvian folk-poetry
This winner of the 2017 Maldito Festival de Videopoesía, by Spanish artist, filmmaker and videopoet Hernán Talavera, deploys an unspecified quantity of short, anonymous folk poems to great effect.
Dainas are small lyric poems coming from the oral tradition that constitute one of the most important and ancient treasures of Latvia. In 2001, dainas were declared Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO. “Balta puķe” (“The white flower”) is a dialogue between some of these dainas and images recorded in Latvia in the winter of 2015. This dialogue revolves around the concept of “memento mori” -remember that you have to die- that reminds us the inexorability of Death.
webpage (click through for the list of screenings)
Latvian language along with Lithuanian, are considered the most archaic Indo-European languages of those which are spoken today.
Talavera is one of the filmmakers included in Versogramas, a 2017 documentary about videopoetry, in which he said that places are the main characters in his videopoems; he sees them as “little universes.” “Solitude and emptiness are not negative concepts” for him, but provide relief from the suffering caused by our endless quest for stimulation. He added that he frequently removes sound or color from his videos in a “compromise with austerity,” pointing out that “when you close your eyes you may begin to hear better.” One can certainly see this in Balta puķe.
There’s also a version with Spanish subtitles: La flor blanca.
Hamlet’s “What a piece of work is man” soliloquy by William Shakespeare
London-based videopoet Mikey Delgado just surfaced after a three-year hiatus with this remix of war footage with a recitation from Hamlet, Act II, Scene 2, all of it uncredited in the best samizdat style, and it’s perfectly, horribly on-point. I’ve lost my mirth, too…
I have of late, but
wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth, forgone all
custom of exercises, and, indeed, it goes so heavily
with my disposition that this goodly frame, the
Earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most
excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o’erhanging
firmament, this majestical roof, fretted
with golden fire—why, it appeareth nothing to me
but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors.What a piece of work is a man, how noble in
reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving
how express and admirable; in action how like
an angel, in apprehension how like a god: the
beauty of the world, the paragon of animals—and
yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man
delights not me, no, nor women neither, though by
your smiling you seem to say so.
