“Varanasi – Where Time Stops” is a Cinematic Poem Short Film In India Directed By Nitin Das.
Filmed, Edited and Directed by: Nitin Das
Music by: Chris Zabriskie (“The Temperature of the Air on the Bow of the Kaleetan”)
Narrated by: Jasleen Bhalla
“Varanasi is one of India’s oldest cities. It’s a city where time appears to stand still. A place considered as the spiritual capital of India. Watch this 2 minute film to catch the essence of life and death in Varanasi.”
“When Life and Death Meet” by Nitin Das
When Life and Death meet, they seldom greet
Life is surprised Death has arrived
While Death complains, Life is late and made him wait
Time stands still, to watch the show He reminds them, what they already know
The illusion my friends, is in my flow For some I move fast, for some I go slow
Like the river runs to meet the sea, You two are meant to be, since eternity
In that moment, they see the light A gentle embrace, ends their fight
Life and Death like lovers become one and Time proceeds to turn.
When minds are at war with hearts, And light is at war with dark, This is where glory dwells, Where warriors whisper hymns, Of blood lost in vain, Where time twists and bends, And echoes all our names, Here is where those diamonds dwell, Polished in dust. From swamps to stars, we dreamed far, They called it far-fetched, we called it ours. We called them lessons, they called them scars, They call it blessings, this work was hard, That is where we dwell. The past worn as capes, memory as armor, The karma we bring, Sings truth to the soul, Like kings mingling with pawns, or soup in my bowl. We came from golden slums, and makeshift drums,
but our music made the spaceships come, Navigate our thoughts and sever our tongues, unbound by men, forever we run…
Colorist: Carlos Flores Espinoza
Sound Designer: Bobb Barito
Music Supervisor: Henry van Roden
DOP: Todd Martin
A Cinematic Poem Short Film from David “Joseph” McCannon, an international filmmaker and photographer, originally from Atlanta, Ga. Jeremy Irons narrates an excerpt from “The Wasteland” written by poet T.S. Eliot.
Filmed and Edited by: David Joseph
Narrated by: Jeremy Irons
Music By: Mogwai & God Speed You Black Emperor
Filmed on Location @ Oakland Cemetery, Atlanta, GA.
‘Here’ is a visual adaptation the Philip Larkin poem of the same name. The poem portrays a journey through a rural landscape, a large town and out to the coast. While the region and town are unnamed in the poem, Larkin himself stated that the poem in a celebration of East Yorkshire and the city of Hull.
Directed by: Dave Lee
Produced by: Classlane Media
Music Scored by: Louise Bennet
Narrated by: Sir Tom Courtenay
Featuring a contemplative read from Hull-born, multi BAFTA winning, twice Oscar nominated actor Sir Tom Courtenay, the film revisits the landscape and characters that inspired Larkin almost half a century before.
Here by Philip Larkin
“Swerving east, from rich industrial shadows
And traffic all night north; swerving through fields
Too thin and thistled to be called meadows,
And now and then a harsh-named halt, that shields
Workmen at dawn; swerving to solitude
Of skies and scarecrows, haystacks, hares and pheasants,
And the widening river’s slow presence,
The piled gold clouds, the shining gull-marked mud,
Gathers to the surprise of a large town:
Here domes and statues, spires and cranes cluster
Beside grain-scattered streets, barge-crowded water,
And residents from raw estates, brought down
The dead straight miles by stealing flat-faced trolleys,
Push through plate-glass swing doors to their desires –
Cheap suits, red kitchen-ware, sharp shoes, iced lollies,
Electric mixers, toasters, washers, driers –
A cut-price crowd, urban yet simple, dwelling
Where only salesmen and relations come
Within a terminate and fishy-smelling
Pastoral of ships up streets, the slave museum,
Tattoo-shops, consulates, grim head-scarfed wives;
And out beyond its mortgaged half-built edges
Fast-shadowed wheat-fields, running high as hedges,
Isolate villages, where removed lives
Loneliness clarifies. Here silence stands
Like heat. Here leaves unnoticed thicken,
Hidden weeds flower, neglected waters quicken,
Luminously-peopled air ascends;
And past the poppies bluish neutral distance
Ends the land suddenly beyond a beach
Of shapes and shingle. Here is unfenced existence:
Facing the sun, untalkative, out of reach.”
Director: Arev Manoukian
Production Company: Spy Films
Cinematographer: Bojan Bazelli
Music: Clint Mansell (Black Swan, Requiem For A Dream)
Original poem, ‘That’s What I Heard You Say’, written and read by Leonard Cohen.
Don’t matter if the road is long Don’t matter if it’s steep Don’t matter if the page is gone It’s written that we’ll meet. I loved you when you opened like a lily to the heat and I love you when it closes a thousand kisses deep.
I know you had to lie to me I know you had to cheat You learned it on your father’s knee and at your mother’s feet. But did you have to fight your way across the burning street where all our vital interests lay a thousand kisses deep…
Arte Poética …a journey into the poetry of Jorge Luis Borges.
Directed and Edited By: Neels Castillon
Filmed By: Kévin Michel
Music by Yann Rouquet – soundcloud.com/yannscott
“Arte Poética” ~ A Poem by Jorge Luis Borges
To look at the river made of time and water
And remember that time is another river,
To know that we are lost like the river
And that faces dissolve like water.
To be aware that waking dreams it is not asleep
While it is another dream, and that the death
That our flesh goes in fear of is that death
Which comes every night and is called sleep.
To see in the day or in the year a symbol
Of the days of man and of his years,
To transmute the outrage of the years
Into a music, a murmur of voices, and a symbol,
To see in death sleep, and in the sunset
A sad gold—such is poetry,
Which is immortal and poor. Poetry
returns like the dawn and the sunset.
At times in the evenings a face
Looks at us out of the depths of a mirror;
Art should be like that mirror
Which reveals to us our own face.
They say that Ulysses, sated with marvels,
Wept tears of love at the sight of his Ithaca,
Green and humble. Art is that Ithaca
Of green eternity, not of marvels.
It is also like the river with no end
That flows and remains and is the mirror of one same
Inconstant Heraclitus, who is the same
And is another, like the river with no end.
“BBC Two Trailer – There’s Always More To See”. Featuring a Cento Poem created by Poet Alison Chisholm.
Filmed and Produced By: BBC
The BBC Two cento is comprised of lines written by the following poets: John Keats, Arthur O’ Shaughnessy, James Elroy Flecker, Walter Savage Landor, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Alfred Lord Tennyson and Alison Chisholm.
Over the years, like most forms of poetry, centos have evolved through different rules and patterns, but the principle of producing a new poem from lines of published poetry persists.
The name cento comes from the Latin word for patchwork. So the poem is a collage, or a hotchpotch of lines and phrases from other pieces. It’s a glorious new invention celebrating the enduring beauty of language and power of poetry.
“Much have I travelled in the realms of gold, And many goodly states and kingdoms seen, But still I long to learn tales, marvellous tales, Of ships and stars and isles where good men rest, How others fought to forge my world. What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? What wild ecstasy? How far the unknown transcends the what we know. We are the music-makers, And we are the dreamers of dreams, Step forward, To feel the blood run through the veins and tingle Where busy thought and blind sensation mingle. Come, my friends, ‘tis not too late, For we are the movers and shakers Of the world for ever, it seems; To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield.”
Alison Chisholm is an award-winning poet who has had over 600 poems published in magazines and anthologies, eight collections published and poems broadcast by BBC Radio Network Northwest and Channel 4.
“The Road Not Taken” is a Cinematic Poem Short Film Commercial Featuring Poet Robert Frost for Ford in New Zealand Directed by Mark Molloy.
Directed By: Mark Molloy
Agency: JWT, Auckland
Executive Creative Director: Angus Hennah
Production Company: Exit Films, Melbourne
Director: Mark Molloy
Producer: Wilf Sweetland
DP: Greig Fraser
Post-Production: Fin Design, Sydney
Music written & produced by: Andrew Callaghan
The voiceover in this ad is a reading of Robert Frost’s poem of the same name, while the pictures tell the story of a man and all the possible lives he could lead. An emotive piano soundtrack for this ad that reaches through the gamut of emotions felt in life – tenderness, despair, quietude, determination, and everything in between.