Vitae summa brevis

Vitae summa brevis from alex mckenzie on Vimeo.

The above is another short experimental 'Poetry Seen' film.

What I'm interested in exploring with these films is finding a visual element to accompany a poem - to allow that poem a presence in the digital age.

The challenge is to find or create filmed footage - ideally with some subtle link to the text of the poem - that doesn't then bury the poem under the weight of that visual element.

Another concern I have is that poetry can and should create images in the mind of the reader - and so by attaching a visual element to a poem there is the danger of interrupting that process. I don't think there is a way around that problem other than to say the 'poem film' can only ever be a personal interpretation of the poem. The reader retains the right to use the image or images that their own mind attaches to the poem.

To some extent once you read a poem you then own your own version of it anyway. I have been to poetry recitals (one memorable occasion was by the Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy) where I have listened to the poet read their own work - and be adamant that they were reading it wrongly; that the rhythm was slightly wrong, or that the emphasis had been slightly misplaced at a certain point.

Who was that 'mask' man?

Here Comes The Sun from alex mckenzie on Vimeo.

Having talked about this year's Cowslip Sunday play with its writer, David Longford, I discovered that he was having the Sun and the Moon created as props - and that the actors would then carry these across the stage, at certain points in the play, to evoke the passing of time.

It occurred to me that filming the creation of these props (particularly the Sun, which would be based on the 'Sun' graphic I created for the leaflets and posters - see below) might be a nice 'detail' segment of the film I am making about the event. The intention of this filmed extract would be to suggest that the Sun was an object that needed to be created anew for the forthcoming Spring.

So yesterday afternoon the artist Stephen Jon was kind enough to let me spend a few hours talking with him - and filming him at work on the prop - in his house and studio in Sherwood, Nottingham. You should be able to see a very short extract of the footage I took at the top of this post.

Stephen Jon's studio - March 14 2012. Photograph by Alex McKenzie

Stephen's main area of practice is the creation of masks - for theatre and street performance - as well as running 'mask-making' workshops. Here is how, on his website, he describes his interest in masks:

As an artist I seek for ways by which to address contradictions and paradox. “The Mask” has given me a form with which I can play with the paradoxical nature of human experience. “The Mask” is an object of concealment which will also reveal. 

“The Mask” acts as a doorway into the world where the imagination is free to wander among mythic beings that transform and transport the mask player to where the unexpected can and will occur. I use “The Mask” as a utilitarian object, not as a piece of decoration. This tool of theatre might draw upon the sister arts of poetry, movement, sound and music to support some kind of ritual or drama.

http://www.maskaviz.com/page2.htm

My intention now is to return to see Stephen next week - and film his work on the Sun as it progresses.

Everything turns away

Photograph by Thomas Hoepker

On my last post I uploaded a short film I'd shot, showing the clouds of steam created by Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station, billowing away in the background - like the explosion of a bomb. This was filmed from a great distance and from the tranquility of a rural landscape. I like this contrast, this incongruity.

It reminded me, admittedly at quite a tangent, of the controversial '911' photograph (by Thomas Hoepker) I saw a year or so ago - see above. This photograph seems to show a group of young people oblivious (or perhaps just ambivalent) about the tragic historic event occurring behind them.

Not the least of the people offended by the image were some of the people in it. Though at first sight their relaxed attitude seems shocking, one said: "that they were in shock and did not know what to think about what happened." Another declared: “it was genetically impossible not to be affected by this event.”

http://www.foxcrawl.com/2011/09/12/video-most-controversial-photo-of-911-attacks-5-people-indifferent-to-flaming-wtc/

I don't have any reason to suppose that they were experiencing anything other than shock. The photograph simply catches an extraordinary instant when that doesn't appear to be the case. But to expect them to be constantly weeping and wailing at the sight seems a little unreasonable.

Anyway when I saw the photograph it brought to mind, for me, W. H. Auden's poem 'Musee des Beaux Arts'. The title refers to the Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels, which Auden apparently visited in 1938 and where he viewed the painting 'The Fall of Icarus' by Pieter Brueghel. Here is the poem:

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood 

Its human position; how it takes place 

While someone else is eating or opening a window
or just walking dully along; 

How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting 

For the miraculous birth, there always must be 

Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating 

On a pond at the edge of the wood: 

They never forgot 

That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course 

Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot 

Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse 

Scratches its innocent behind on a tree. 

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away 

Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may 

Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, 

But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone 

As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green 

Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen 

Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, 

had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

Copyright © 1976 by Edward Mendelson, William Meredith and Monroe K. Spears, 

Executors of the Estate of W. H. Auden.

The Fall of Icarus by Pieter Brueghel

On the website where I found a copy of 'Musee des Beaux Arts' there is the following quote from W.H. Auden:

"In so far as poetry, or any of the arts, can be said to have an ulterior purpose, it is, by telling the truth, to disenchant and disintoxicate."

http://poetrypages.lemon8.nl/life/musee/museebeauxarts.htm

Raw Power

Raw Power from alex mckenzie on Vimeo.

This is a short and very rough experimental piece of film - showing Ratcliffe-on-Soar Power Station from about 12 miles away (seen across some fields in Lambley, Nottinghamshire).

I filmed this on Friday February 3rd 2012 - at about 7.30am. A few days earlier I had noticed this cloud being created at the power station - visible only on bright, extremely cold mornings. I thought it was worth trying to film.

In the end I was disappointed with the footage I took. I only let the camera run for 6 minutes - and it didn't look very well focussed. Whilst I didn't think I could use this footage in my film - I still wanted to play around with it. In the end I speeded the film up, cutting its duration down to 10 seconds (from the original 6 minutes) - to emphasise the billowing clouds. To sidestep the quality issue I applied a 'sharpen' filter - which I think gives the footage an unusual quality. I have then looped the footage four times - just to make it last a little longer.

I felt that this surge of power - seen visually - as Nottinghamshire wakes up and pops the kettle on (and 'Good Morning Britain' or whatever dreadful breakfast TV show is currently doing the rounds) seen remotely, from the peace and calm of a countryside field, provided an interesting contrast.

I have left the audio run at the same fast speed - but I actually think that it might work better in real time, hearing the chattering birdsong whilst the distant power station seems to exist in a completely different, speeded-up world.

I now need to wait until next winter to try to capture the scene again.

Lambley Jack and the Golden Stockings

Cowslip Sunday 2012 - first 'play' rehearsal March 11 from alex mckenzie on Vimeo.

Yesterday was the first rehearsal for this year's Cowslip Sunday play – 'Lambley Jack and the Golden Stockings'. This rehearsal took place in Lambley Parish Church – because the Village Hall was otherwise engaged.

I filmed the occasion – and have perhaps one and half hours of film to work with. It may be that none of this footage ends up in the final film – though I think it likely that a few minutes will find their way in.

Although the film I'm making isn't about the play, I think that the play will provide a nice focal point for the film. This footage allows us to meet our players more informally. In the chronology of the film I envisage that the viewer will have already seen the actors on stage at the performance on May 6th – the film will then cut away to January 1st and the days and weeks that follow – leading up to Spring. 

This footage should give a little insight into the preparation that went into the events of Cowslip Sunday.

Here I have simply strung together three pieces of footage (edited from longer extracts) just to give a glimpse of the content I'm working with. 

Room Inside from Broadway Nottingham on Vimeo.


I wanted to embed the short film that I recently made (that I've posted on Vimeo) and I've just found out how to do that - see previous post.


On an earlier post on this blog (about the 'Speak Up Film Fund'):


http://poetryseen-in-lambley.blogspot.com/2012/03/speak-up.html


I mentioned a local film-maker who I had contacted with a view to collaborating with on my Cowslip Sunday film project. That film-maker was Roger Knott-Fayle. Here is a link to his own website:


http://www.arkayeff.com/


Roger combines his film-making with working as a hypnotherapist:


http://www.hypnottik.com/


I haven't had an opportunity to experience Roger's hypnotherapy - but something tells me (subconsciously) that, in his efforts to hypnotise people and get them to change whatever aspect of their behaviour they are looking to change, Roger will succeed.


Anyway meeting Roger was one of those serendipitous occasions for me - because it turned out he had been involved in creating a film (in collaboration with Broadway Cinema) celebrating National Poetry Day last year.


I'm not sure by what route I came across that film but I actually watched it online last year (on National Poetry Day - October 6th) and I remember really liking it - and that for me it confirmed my conviction that poetry had a place in the arts outside of its traditional domain of inside the pages of a book.


You should be able to view the film above - and for your information Roger Knott-Fayle is the first person you see in the film.

A kind of statement from alex mckenzie on Vimeo.