The Day the Deer Came by Joanne Key
Alastair Cook of Filmpoem directs, with cinematography by James William Norton and sound by Luca Nasciuti. “The Day the Deer Came” was the Second Prize winner in the UK’s 2014 National Poetry Competition. The Vimeo description notes that “Filmpoems of the top three winning poems have been commissioned in partnership with Alastair Cook and Filmpoem. Filmpoems of all eleven winning poems will be available to watch later this year, and will tour at festivals around the country and beyond.”
For more on the poet, Joanne Key, see her page at the Poetry Society website.
The High Hills Have a Bitterness by Ivor Gurney (2)
“As part of Bristol Poetry Festival 2014, Liberated Words Poetry Film Festival asked for films on the theme of Gloucestershire WWI poet Ivor Gurney’s The High Hills Have a Bitterness, to commemorate the anniversary of the 1914-18 war,” notes the Vimeo description. I posted one of the other submissions, by Othniel Smith, last June. This one is by Helen Dewbery. Animated text, layered images and industrial soundtrack all come together very well. The Liberated Words description continues:
This film brings out the sense of loss: loss of self, the environment and industry. The quarries of the Mendip Hills, many of which are long gone and are now geological sites of Special Scientific Interest, are places to reflect on the ‘soul helpless gone’. The active quarries are used for road construction and other building work. It doesn’t take an expert to realise that they too will one day run out.
Helen is an associate member of the Royal Photographic Society and works in collaboration with poets to produce film poems and collections and images.
Sonnet 27 by William Shakespeare
It’s not every poetry film that gets featured in the New York Times. This is the 100th film to be completed in the ambitious and wonderful Sonnet Project, which describes itself as
a completely crazy idea dreamed up by Ross Williams from NY Shakespeare Exchange. 154 sonnets, 154 NYC locations, 154 actors. It’s a tapestry of cinematic art that infuses the poetry of William Shakespeare into the poetry of New York City. It’s huge, it’s visceral and it’s right here.
[…]
It became apparent that each sonnet was not simply a ‘video’ – not simply an actor standing at a monument reciting a sonnet – but a short independent film. Every single sonnet required time and effort beyond our imagining. But the finished product! Each one is expansive, narrative – a work of art.
We decided to focus on the journey rather than the destination – the Project will not be finished by April. But that’s ok. In fact, it’s more than ok because the Project has exploded into a sprawling, barely controllable, ever-growing, ever-changing tribute to Shakespeare’s art, New York City, and the artists that live here. And we love it.
I’ve barely begun to explore the films on the website, but I like what I’ve seen so far. They do seem to be quite varied in their approaches to the poems, imaginatively filmed and well acted. I love the whole idea of this project, and have added it to the recommended links on the front page of Moving Poems as well as to our links page. Here’s what the Times had to say about this film:
The [New York Shakespeare Exchange] group, which started the project in 2013, just completed its 100th film: Sonnet 27, starring Carrie Preston, an Emmy award-winning actress, and filmed on the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, It will premiere April 8 on the Sonnet Project website and app.
[…]
Ms. Preston and the director, Michael Dunaway, met their share of surprises too, while filming Sonnet 27, about an obsessive love creating a jangle of nerves. Ms. Preston plays a married commuter on her way home, exhausted but excited by a workplace affair. But the drive over the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, in a hired car, went smoothly. Too smoothly. “We were hoping for a traffic jam — it’s the perfect metaphor for being stuck in your own mind at the end of a long day — and we filmed at rush hour, but the traffic flowed perfectly,” Ms. Preston said.
Ms. Preston said she, Mr. Dunaway, and Karin Hayes, the co-director, went back over the bridge 10 times to get the shots they wanted, running up a much higher than expected bill. “What we forgot about was the toll,” Mr. Dunaway said. “I chalk it all up to the sacrifices we make for art.”
And finally, some notes about the use of the Sonnet Project website: Clicking on a sonnet/image on the front page gallery brings up a page with not only the YouTube embed of the film but also, if one scrolls down past the photo stills of the NYC location and the Next and Previous links, a tabbed menu with Text Analysis, Location, Actor, and Film Team. The analysis also reproduces the text of the sonnet, followed by an informal commentary in a populist style. Here, for example, is what they say about Sonnet 27:
Sonnet 27 plays with the duality of night and day, with day being full of work and night full of beauty because that is when the speaker can think on his lover.
Here Willy reflects on how thoughts of his beloved keep him awake, and even in darkness the image floats before him, like a jewel on a night-dark background, making the night beautiful. By day he is made weary by work and travel, and by night rest is denied him, for he has to make journeys in his mind to attend on the loved one, who is far away.
Will’s Wordplay
This sonnet is the only one in the canon that is pangrammatic. A pangram or holoalphabetic composition uses every letter of the alphabet at least once!
The other tabs are equally informative. I’ll be interested to see whether the app is as useful as the website. Have I mentioned I love this project? Many thanks to Erica Goss for bringing it to our attention with a link on Twitter earlier this week.
Love Poem in Thirds by Sam Rasnake
She’s the expected question
whose answer is the world.
All the cosmic strangeness of love is on display in this kaleidoscopic remix by Marc Neys AKA Swoon of a Poetry Storehouse poem by Sam Rasnake. He says in a blog post,
As with many other videopoems of mine, the soundtrack came first; [SoundCloud link]
I used Nic S.’s subtle reading in this track and added fading and fleeting piano notes in the mix.
The idea for the images for the video came through Jeff Mertz‘s ‘The City Without You‘.
His mirrored times-lapses full of movement and light expressed a certain longing. A feeling I also found in the poem and in Nic’s reading.In the editing process I decided to leave out most parts where the cars and the traffic were too recognizable and focused on the ‘mandala-like’ figures of light.
Rasnake’s poem has proven to be an unusually fruitful source of inspiration for filmmakers. Nic S. herself has made video remixes for the second and third parts, and Othniel Smith has made a video with the whole text. Click through to the Poetry Storehouse to watch all three.
El sueño del árbol (The tree’s dream) by Lilián Pallares
A videopoem by Charles Olsen (Antena Blue), intended as a trailer for the book from which the text is sourced: Pájaro, vértigo (Editorial Huerga & Fierro, 2014) by the Colombian writer Lilián Pallares. Be sure to click on the CC (closed captioning) icon to read Olsen’s English translation. The guitar music in the soundtrack is by Quique Meléndez.
Last exit to Luton by Fran Lock
A “filmpoem by Alicja Pawluczuk. Commissioned in collaboration with Alastair Cook and Filmpoem,” according to a page for the poem at The Poetry Society’s website. “Last exit to Luton” by Fran Lock was the Third Prize winner in the UK’s 2014 National Poetry Competition. Click through and scroll down for more on the poet.
Mother by Tim Atkins
One doesn’t tend to expect an ecofeminist poetry film from a male director and poet, but Graeme Maguire and Tim Atkins have given us just that. Here’s Maguire’s description on Vimeo:
DIRECTOR: Graeme Maguire
POETRY: Tim Atkins
SOUNDS: Paul D. McDowell
STARRING: Sarah Maguire, Gordon Raphael, Annie Gardiner, Sheridan Lunt and ‘Bump’
ASSISTANCE: James Sharkk
PROPS: Valerie Snelgrove
THANKS TO: Band Films, BristolMOTHER is a short film shot on super-8 and contains no dialogue. It is accompanied by a poetic interpretation by Tim Atkins and a guitar sound track by Paul D. McDowell. It is the story of a heavily pregnant woman on her journey towards birth. She carries a piece of paper inscribed with a symbol. Exhausted, she searches for the origins of the symbol in the hope of finding help. What she finds is more powerful than she could ever have imagined.
The starting point for Mother was the word ‘translation’. The film is about the medicalisation of birth and the ever-present persecution of midwives (witches). It symbolically tackles the issues of consent, control and blind trust in the male authoritarian within the medical institution. Mother is about the destruction of this institution by the ultimate power of nature.
Halloween by Hugo Claus
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UPDATE (3 Oct. 2015): Swoon has re-edited the English version, replacing the Jovan Todorovic film clip with footage by Jan Eerala.
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Belgian artist Marc Neys A.K.A. Swoon recently released two entirely different films for a poem by his great countryman Hugo Claus: “a ‘European Dance-version’ (using Hugo’s reading from Lyrikline) and an ‘American Road movie version’ using a fantastic reading Michael Dickes made from the English translation by John Irons,” as he put it in a blog post.
The visual idea for the Dutch version came to me watching a great series of short videos by dancer/artist Nadia Vadori-Gauthier: One Minute of Dance a Day:
‘since January 14, 2015, I’ve been posting one minute of dance to this blog every day, simply, without editing or effects, in the place and state of mind I find myself that day, with no special technique, staging, clothing, or makeup, nothing but what is there.’
I asked if I could use one of her ‘minutes’ (2 février 2015 – 20e danse) for this videopoem. I could.
I simply adore this combination of Hugo’s poem, his voice and her dancing in the snow.
Enjoy! (There’s also a version with French subtitles: https://vimeo.com/118980966)[…]
The source of the ‘road movie’ version is a music video by the collective ESNAF
Their video for ‘The Long Haul’ by NO (cinematography by Jovan Todorović) had all the ingredients I needed for the English version of the poem. I believe the little storyline is the perfect match for the poem and Michael Dickes’ reading.
Frangipani Grove by Cindy St. Onge
https://vimeo.com/123074886
Nic S. has remixed a video of a horse and rider by Gregory Latham with a Poetry Storehouse poem about what endures after the death of planets by Cindy St. Onge. Somehow it works—for me, at any rate. I’m not crazy about the music (which is by David Mackey) and I think I might’ve preferred St. Onge’s own reading at the Storehouse to Sebastian’s. But the juxtaposition of images is strong and surprising enough to make up for that.
Sueños Culinarios (Culinary Dreams) by Pedro Mercado
This is Sogni Culinari, a humorous, surreal poetry film by Venezuelan director Clarissa Duque and AWA Producciones, based on a poem by her friend Pedro Mercado. The actors are Nabilia Gąnem and Javier Figuera, and the recitation is by Luigi Sciamanna. The Italian translation is by Marco Baldo and the English by Lorenzo Duque. There’s also a version with subtitles in the original Spanish.
For the full credits, see Vimeo or the film’s own website. Sogni Culinari also has a Facebook page and a Twitter account (which is how I found out about it). It’s kind of cool to see a surrealistic short getting this much promotion and publicity. And why not? It’s very well done, and they clearly spared no effort in the production. Duque talked about it on the blog Directors Notes. I was especially interested to hear how her script expanded on the text with details from her own dreams:
The idea for Sogni Culinary began once I read a poem written by my friend Pedro Mercado. That poem is recited exactly as in the original by the character of the dreaming man as voice over throughout the film. The very first time I listened to the poem, I felt bombarded by different images and sensations. One of the first ones that came up in my mind was that feeling when a great love breaks your heart and leaves it behind like pieces of waste laying on the ground. Everybody has felt at least once in their life that terrible sensation of emptiness produced by an unrequited love.
Alongside that is my passion for the culinary arts. I learned when I was still a child how every single ingredient of a dish is like a magic recipe, itself capable of activating every human sense and evoking all kinds of sensations in the human body. My father, a great cook, always used his skill as a tool to get what he desired. He was able to close great deals after his partners, captivated by the sensitivity and power of his food, would accept any proposition my father made to them. Never the less, he also managed so many times to solve romantic problems with delicious banquets. I always thought that he was a kind of magician. With time, I understood that love and food, even though they can also be my weakest points, will always be the greatest passions in my life.
Since my childhood, my oneiric world has been very intense. I wake up from nightmares very often where I am a fish and I end up dying asphyxiated outside of the fishbowl. The people around me, trying to calm me down always tell me “It was just a dream”. Therefore, this time with my new short film I couldn’t miss the opportunity to transmit not only my two greatest passions in life (Love and Food) but also a part of my own oneiric world. I have to confess, filming the scene of the fish was very stressful, even more so because lately I’ve been working for animal rights.
The production of Sogni Culinary was just wonderful. It was January 2015 and we didn’t have any money but we were all looking forward to starting the new year working on a new project, but not those that you don’t like but take to pay the rent. We actually wanted to start working on a project that you get really passionate about and involved with. We wanted to make cinema, so I gathered a group of friends and proposed that we start working without a budget but all together for this culinary dream. Luckily, everything that was needed came along. Rental company Pata Negra let us use a Red One camera, an optic kit, a dolly and lights with all their accessories. As we say in Venezuela “Now we got all the toys”. The crew from Artecomestible made the food makeup which was very rigorous work with lots of attention to detail. The shooting was very pleasant, even though it lasted for a very long day from 6.00am in the morning till 2.00am of the following day. Actually, we’re a tight crew so, when we are at work filming on the plateau, we feel like a fish in the water (literally).
Filming real food can turn out to be a very difficult art. The hardest shot we did was with the meatball, trying to make it bleed in a Tarantinoesque style. The hose placed inside the meatball got blocked many times by the fork, then we had to shoot it several times until it finally worked and looked just as I had dreamed. We knew from the beginning that we could achieve all the special effects that we wanted in post-production. For example; the water falling down from the paintings hung on the walls. Glendis Lopez and I have worked together in art direction many times and now we know that we don’t want to lose the sense of reality and handcraft in our productions. We like to keep the old school style. Still, it was very complicated for her and Filou Frechou to build the scenography with the system of pipes behind the walls but as expected, it turned out to work perfectly and we only had to repeat the shots twice.
