[Frameworks] video translation of poetry/prose

[jimmyschaus1]

Thank you very much for passing along these great suggestions and being so
generous with your knowledge, it's all very helpful.

best,
Jimmy

On Sun, Jan 10, 2021 at 12:10 PM Carlos Adriano <adriano.carlos.ca at gmail.com>
wrote:

> a kind of counterpoint...
>
> a forthcoming book: "The Poetry-Film Nexus in Latin America: Exploring
> Intermediality on Page and Screen"; edited by Ben Bollig and David M. J.
> Wood:
> http://www.mhra.org.uk/publications/Poetry-Film-Nexus-in-Latin-America
>
> next tuesday, a talk about it:
>
> http://jlacs-travesia.online/en/2020/10/29/the-poetry-film-nexus-intermediality-and-indiscipline-in-latin-american-audiovisual-cultures/?fbclid=IwAR3L8CV21R4HtlXgYaW7V26OKNBEhEtp37U9kfDdpT8stTpjxSayKQB9f1o
>
> carlos adriano
> brazil
>
> Em dom., 10 de jan. de 2021 às 02:57, FrameWorks Admin <
> frameworks at re-voir.com> escreveu:
>
>> Hi Jimmy,
>>
>> There are some early examples such as *Manhatta* (1921) by Paul Strand
>> and Charles Sheeler, a film portrait of New York structured around a Walt
>> Whitman poem.
>>
>> P. Adams Sitney in his 2008 book "Eyes Upside Down" draws parallels
>> between the poetry of Ralph Waldo Emerson and traditions of American
>> experimental film. Emerson marks the transition from a puritan America of
>> religious severity towards a sensitivity of personal perception, nature,
>> expansion and beauty. Emerson’s disciples - Whitman, Thoreau, Gertrude
>> Stein - broadened these traditions towards sensuality, sexuality and
>> perception and introspection. Musicians like Charles Olson and John Cage
>> and filmmakers like Mekas and Brakhage took direct inspiration from these
>> poets.
>> Emerson’s poem “Nature" contains the famous phrase “I am a transparent
>> eyeball - I am nothing, I see all.” Sitney describes this as an
>> appreciation of the wonder and beauty of nature, and links it directly to
>> the cinema of pure visual experience and the ecstasy of natural phenomena
>> he sees in films such as Menken’s *Notebook*, Mekas’ *Rabbit Shit Haikus*
>> (*Lost Lost Lost* reel 5) and Brakhage’s *Mothlight*.
>>
>> Jonas’ *Walden* freely cites Thoreau of course and there are parallels
>> in his observations of nature, solitude, society and economy. If you
>> compare some of Jonas’ poems from Idylls of Seminiskiai you can identify
>> the same logic of glimpses and invented vocabulary to describe textures,
>> colors and visual impressions as can be found in the filming style he
>> developed at the time of shooting *Walden*. The title cards “Walden” and
>> “I thought of home” connect with the theme of exile and memory of childhood
>> in the same way as those poems about Lithuania written in the camps in
>> Germany. Jonas’ later short film *Imperfect Three Image Films* attempts
>> to directly impose the Haiku form onto filmmaking by using only three shots
>> with at least one of them indicating the season (the title includes the
>> word “imperfect” because he deviated from this form as well).
>>
>> More directly, Stan Brakhage quotes nearly literally from Gertrude
>> Stein’s "Stanzas in Meditation" in his film *Visions in Meditation #1*.
>> Brakhage writes extensively on Stein on page 196 of “Essential Brakhage.”
>> On page 330 of "Eyes Upside Down” Sitney quotes Brakhage’s full description
>> of *Visions in Meditation #1* and his attempt to recreate in film
>> Stein’s demonstration of the slippage of language (for example in “A rose
>> is a rose is a rose”) to detach the image from its content to allow
>> subjective and multiple meanings for the viewer. Comparing Stein’s poem
>> with this Brakhage film can be useful for your students.
>>
>> You can also look at poets who became filmmakers, such as the Lettrists
>> Isidore Isou, Maurice Lemaitre and their followers. Their poetry was an
>> abstract sound performance linked to a polemic manifesto on the destruction
>> of poetry and you can see their attempts to destroy film, painting and
>> other forms as evolving from their poetry. More usefully for your students,
>> you could show Isou’s *On Venom and Eternity* chapter 3 when the
>> protagonists visit a Lettrist poetry recital, the film being scratched
>> accordingly.
>>
>> Hope this helps,
>> Pip Chodorov
>>
>>
>> On Jan 10, 2021, at 3:44 AM, jimmyschaus1 <jimmyschaus at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I'm working on a class assignment where students write a short piece of
>> poetry or prose and then make a video where each shot corresponds to one
>> sentence or line in the text.
>>
>> Can anyone point me towards a prior example of this, or something else
>> that engages translation in a similar way?
>>
>>
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