Through meticulous cut-up, collaging and stop motion, Nico Vassilakis makes words dance across the screen, moving our eyes in all different directions. This video poem is dynamic and colourful, and brings into question what happens when we 'see' a word - where do we distinguish between the image a word forms in our minds, and the image it forms on a page or screen?
The experimental animated film Song of the Flies (El Canto de las Moscas), translates the desolation caused by the violence of the Colombian armed conflict through the poetic voice of Maria Mercedes Carranza (1945–2003) and the audiovisual dialogue between 9 Colombian women. In 24 places, as a transit over the course of a day (Morning, Day, Night) a map of terror is drawn where massacres took place in Colombia in the 1990s. Archival images, the artists’ personal memories and the use of loops and analogue materials bring to life the landscapes ravaged by violence and build a polyphony of memory and mourning, a universal song of pain.
Poems by some of the greatest writers of all time are brought to life through lyrical animation and readings by some of today’s most respected performers.
On the planet Gandahar where peace reigns and poverty is unknown, this utopian lifestyle is upset by reports of people at the outlying frontiers being turned to stone. Sylvain is sent to investigate this mysterious threat.
A young shepherdess and a chimneysweep plan to get married and escape the clutches of a tyrannical king in love with her, assisted by the guile of a cheeky mockingbird, the king's archenemy.
A film-poem created for Counterclock Journal's 2023 Patchwork: Film x Poetry fellowship, featuring an original poem by Mackenzie Duan and animation by Evan Bode.
In a lush and lively forest lives a hedgehog. He is at once admired, respected and envied by the other animals. However, Hedgehog’s unwavering devotion to his home annoys and mystifies a quartet of insatiable beasts: a cunning fox, an angry wolf, a gluttonous bear and a muddy boar. Together, the haughty brutes march off towards Hedgehog’s home to see just what is so precious about this “castle, shiny and huge.” What they find amazes them and sparks a tense and prickly standoff.
Loose impressionistic brushstrokes sketch a series of portraits of two faces, one male and one female, while the verse on the soundtrack tells the tale of both one and a thousand relationships.
An experimental visual poem combining film, animation, photography, and archival footage inviting people to occupy the Black Body and examine the lived Black experience for a brief moment.
Rubén tries to describe the color blue as "The color of dreams, of art, of the ocean and of the firmament", thereby unleashing half a century of poetry.
An animated poem about a dog, her human, and the consequences of a nasty habit.
A cellist attempts to rescue a woman swept out to sea, only to find he must battle a series of overly possesive sea creatures.
Rosie Ming, a young Canadian poet, is invited to perform at a Poetry Festival in Shiraz, Iran, but she’d rather be in Paris. She lives at home with her over-protective Chinese grandparents and has never been anywhere by herself. Once in Iran, she finds herself in the company of poets and Persians, all who tell her stories that force her to confront her past; the Iranian father she assumed abandoned her and the nature of Poetry itself. It’s about building bridges between cultural and generational divides. It’s about being curious. Staying open. And finding your own voice through the magic of poetry. Rosie goes on an unwitting journey of forgiveness, reconciliation, and perhaps above all, understanding, through learning about her father’s past, her own cultural identity, and her responsibility to it.
In this farewell letter to Ana (aka Anorexia), I reveal the suffering associated with this illness. I sincerely express my deep desire to regain my freedom and vitality by sharing not only my progress but also my relapses. Through the interweaving of drawings and poetry, I share this quest for reconstruction, which I hope will help raise awareness of this mental illness and bring a little hope to people affected by it and those around them.
This film visualizes humanity’s quest to relentlessly pursue goals. In the human fight for progress, the march forward cannot be stopped, even when individual people become weary and die. This animated short is based on a poem by the Chilean filmmaker and poet Juan Forch. Chilean painter Hernando León created the design.