Morbleu by Karen McCarthy Woolf
Dancer and choreographer Ella Mesma collaborated with poet Karen McCarthy Woolf for this dance-poetry film. Fiona Melville shot and directed the film and Andrea Allegra wrote the music. Nathalie Teitler was the producer and creative director for Dancing Words, “a project designed to explore what happens when you bring together the art forms of dance and poetry” (something I’ve been interested in here at Moving Poems for quite some time). The project website includes interviews with Woolf and Mesma about the making of the film. Here are three snippets from Woolf:
I’ve experimented with poetry film before, working with Morbleu director Fiona Melville, but I’d not thought about dance and choreography. What’s amazing to me is how suited it is to lyric poetry – the dancer’s movement is a visual shadow of the white space, the silence and the emotional arc of the poem. […]
For me a film or a collaboration is a way for a poem to take shape in a more three-dimensional format than the page offers – although of course the reader’s imagination is capable of projecting anything onto the screen of the mind! In this sense I see poetry film as an extension of form…
The film is not illustrative of the poem, it’s a new interpretation and that’s exciting. A new collaborative authorship has come to into existence. That to me is the transformative quality of art. Seeing a dancer interpret the words and movement of the piece that in turn responds to the text and soundtrack. Fiona also trained as a painter/fine artist, and I think that she brings that aesthetic to the work. Everyone has a level of expertise to bring to the table. In a sense a collaboration is also a visual ‘reading’ of a poem — you get to experience an audience’s understanding of the work and help shape a communal reinterpretation.
Do read the rest.
Bone Thinning by Beth McKinney
Xiaomiao Wang, a doctoral student at the School of Art at Texas Tech University, worked with poet Beth McKinney to make this film as part of an exemplary, interdisciplinary poetry-film initiative, JOINT: A Poetry/Video Collaboration.
In the fall of 2015, poet John Poch and video artist Alex Henery collaborated to make the video poem Sonnet on Time. This collaboration is one of the several catalysts that led to the JOINT collaboration at Texas Tech University.
Throughout the spring semester of 2016, JOINT: A Poetry/Video Collaboration engaged Texas Tech University (TTU) students of Professors John Poch and Jiawei Gong in creating collaborative works of poetry and video/film throughout the spring semester of 2016. The student pairs met individually to craft a collaborative vision and product, working collectively to study and critique the production of work by collaborating faculty, artists and students. We hope you enjoy our work.
The completed projects were screened on May 3rd at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema to a packed house. Dr. Wyatt Phillips, assistant professor of Film & Media in the Department of English, served as juror of the videos. Having viewed all the work prior to the screening, the Juror’s award winners were announced before all the videos were screened. The Audience Choice Award, collected on ballots after the screenings, was announced the following day.
And Bone Thinning was the film the audience chose. View all the films on the TTU website or the JOINT channel on Vimeo. There’s also more information about the project and the visiting artists (who included the poet Todd Boss, director of Motionpoems).
Qué es el amor? / What is Love? by Lucy English
Eduardo Yagüe translated Lucy English’s poem into Spanish as well as into film here, and the result is, I think, an excellent fit for her Book of Hours project, casting the text into the imaginative space of temps perdu. The geographic/linguistic distance and change in the expected sex of the narrator create additional resonances. And actor Steffan Carlson’s silence is so eloquent as to supply almost a third voice to the mix. Qué es el amor? is a brilliant demonstration of how to use the narrative style of filmmaking to comment upon and transform a lyric poem.
identity: other by Anna Banout
I found the combination of found text montage and video footage shot by children simply irresistible in this author-made videopoem by Anna Banout, who says on Vimeo:
Identity. Otherness. Intolerance. Prejudice. Freedom. Integrity. As a half-Syrian girl growing up in Poland, these issues have accompanied me my whole life – I was other before I even knew the true meaning of this word. In this film I’ve combined footage from my childhood – multicultural safe place; a place where otherness didn’t really exist – with a monologue on the theme of identity. The videos were mostly taken by children – me, my sister and cousins – and I’ve decided to choose them as they captured the fragility of seemingly unimportant moments that only a child could capture. The monologue is a fake poem – it was assembled by me from variety of speeches given by poets, writers, actors, artists, activists and other inspirational people whose words I found refreshing in the identity-themed discussion.
Who do I identify myself as? Other.
‘n Gewone blou Maandagoggend / An Ordinary Blue Monday by Ronelda Kamfer
Naomi van Niekerk‘s animation of a poem by Ronelda Kamfer. Like the Grand Prize winner What about the law, this was on the shortlist for the 2016 Weimar Poetry Film Awards. Both films were produced as part of a series of animated poetry shorts in Afrikaans called Filmverse, headed up by Diek Grobler under the aegis of the ATKV (Afrikaans Language and Culture Association). Here’s how Google Translate renders the website’s description of the project:
Classical poetry and the work of contemporary poets are used to create a “visual anthology” in which a dialogue is created between word and image. Each animation film is accompanied by its own soundtrack in which the poem is read among others. The end product is a DVD of about 30 minutes with the twelve animation films on which are displayed as a separate production. The DVD playback is accompanied by an exhibition of posters of each of the twelve animation films.
Grassland by Sarah Sloat
A Moving Poems production in which I experimented with some abstract live footage meant to evoke animation. I sourced the
text—by American poet Sarah Sloat—from The Poetry Storehouse, where I also used one of the sound recordings, a reading by poet Amy Miller, to pace the titling, but then removed it from the soundtrack.
This replaces an earlier video I made for the same poem that I was never quite happy with, because its point of departure from the text was a bit too obvious and clever for my taste. (That one never made it onto Moving Poems.) The footage this time is a clip of fiber optic tips from Beachfront B-Roll, source of some the least generic free stock footage on the web, and the soundtrack is a public-domain field recording from Freesound.org of a prairie in eastern Oregon, complete with meadowlarks.
Speaking of Freesound, they’re currently on a fundraising campaign to cover their development and maintenance costs, which I’m guessing are not insignificant. Please give if you can. They’re a great resource for filmmakers and audiophiles.
What abou’ de lô (What about the law) by Adam Small
This animation by Charles Badenhorst of a poem in Afrikaans by Adam Small is the Grand Prize winner of the first Weimar Poetry Film Awards.
Die Jury des 1. Weimarer Poetryfilm-Preises, bestehend aus der Erfurter Dichterin Nancy Hünger, dem Leiter des ZEBRA Poetryfilm-Festivals (Berlin/Münster) Thomas Zandegiacomo Del Bel sowie dem Wiener Filmemacher Hubert Sielecki wählte den südafrikanischen Beitrag WHAT ABOUT THE LAW (2014, 3:14 min) zum Sieger des mit 1000,- € dotierten Jurypreises. Regie führte der südafrikanische Animationskünstler Charles Badenhorst; das dem Film zugrundeliegende Gedicht verfasste der südafrikanische Autor Adam Small.
The Audience Award went to Steel and Air, a film based on a poem by John Ashbery directed by Chris and Nick Libbey and commissioned by Motionpoems, which I shared back in March. The full list of nominees is on the Poetryfilmkanal website.
Nostalgia by Johnny B.A.N.G. Reilly
A “visual poem” directed by Dutch filmmaker Judith Veenendaal using a text written by the UK voiceover actor and poet Johnny B.A.N.G. Reilly. Noel Schoolderman was the director of photography and Adam Taylor wrote the music. I found the film thanks to an article by Olivia Zhu in 3 Quarks Daily, “Johnny B.A.N.G. Reilly, Being Free,” which also includes another poetry film featuring Reilly’s words and reading, an ad for Johnnie Walker (which is much better than the whisky, and is well worth clicking through to watch). Zhu discusses and compares the two films at some length, speculating that “The pairing of poetry and film might be what helps re-awaken popular interest in poetry.” Check it out.
“Y era el demonio de mi sueño” (And he was the evil spirit of my dreams) by Antonio Machado
| Y era el demonio de mi sueño, el ángel más hermoso. Brillaban como aceros los ojos victoriosos, y las sangrientas llamas de su antorcha alumbraron la honda cripta del alma. —¿Vendrás conmigo? —No, jamás; las tumbas —Vendrás conmigo… Y avancé en mi sueño (poema de Antonio Machado) |
And he was the evil spirit of my dreams, the most handsome of all angels. His victorious eyes shot fire like pieces of steel, and the flames that fell from his torch like blood lit up the deep dungeon of the soul. “Would you like to come with me?” “No, never! Tombs “You will come with me…” And in my dreams I walked (translated by Robert Bly) |
Eduardo Yagüe (GIFT Producciones) made this videopoem in 2014 as an homage to the great Spanish poet Antonio Machado on the 75th anniversary of his exile and death. Eduardo’s reading is exceptionally good, and slow-paced enough that even those with just a little bit of Spanish should be able to follow along. Music by Jared C. Balogh accompanies the voiceover.
I first learned this poem (number LXIII from Galerías) through Robert Bly’s translation (above) in Roots and Wings: Poetry from Spain 1900-1975. (Alan S. Trueblood also translated it for a bilingual edition of the selected poems, but not quite as effectively.)
aft by Holly Corfield Carr
A fascinating multimedia project from artist-poet Holly Corfield Carr. Her description on Vimeo:
A harbour travels around a line. The line travels around a boat. The boat travels around your body, star-jumping in the water’s private weather. Written through the rhythms of Bristol’s last shantyman, Stanley Slade, Aft is a sightseeing trip with the ferryman across Bristol’s Floating Harbour.
Commissioned by Spike Island with Bristol Ferry Boats as part of the Spike Open 2015.
Own binoculars and someone else’s obol recommended.
Carr goes into more detail about the project in a blog post:
I have to thank Spike Island and Bristol Ferry for commissioning this poem for Matilda, the Bristol Ferry boat that chugs brightly across the Floating Harbour from Temple Meads to Hotwells, via the city centre, Spike Island, Arnolfini and SS Great Britain. It was a proper joy of a project and thanks to the patience of the crew and passengers, I took several trips to watch the city from the water, standing at the back window, feeling the engine’s rhythm in my feet. I composed much of the poem on site, on the boat, measuring my line to the cm width of the window.
I started to listen to the sea shanties of the Bristol sailor Stanley Slade, which were recorded by Peter Kennedy in 1950 and are now held in the British Library’s sound archive, and let the length of the halyard’s lines also instruct the breath and breadth of the poem that was then transferred directly, in Bristol Ferry yellow, to the windows of Matilda.
At first, I saw the couplets banding around the cabin as a two-level Plimsoll line, a measure of the rising waters (or a sinking boat), or as a twin rope, each a precaution against the severance of the other. Certainly on the page, the poem presents its shortening of breath much more clearly and you can read the full text here.
But on the boat, it wasn’t all visible at once. Walking the line to read the poem across the wide windows, rocking back a little to read the second line from where the first line landed you, and all the while reading as the boat pulls you across the water, makes something knotty of the reader.
As you read, the city interrupts, aligns your reader’s attention with the sudden sight of mooning stags, lads! lads! lads! on tour, traffic on the bridge, seagulls lifting in the wake of another ferry, the train, kayaks and paddles and sunburned backs, a tiny flotilla of crisp packets.
