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In last year’s ANTH I, Marie Ilene interpreted Emily Dickinson’s poem “The heart asks pleasure first…” through the use of stop-motion claymation. This year, for ANTHOLOGY II, she’s taking on Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Travel” in another stop-motion piece, using paper and colored pencil. Scroll down to see her Dickinson piece from last year and to read her interview–and join us at 8 PM at the Creative Alliance on Thursday, August 2nd (free admission!).

Marie’s film from last year, “The Heart Asks…”:

||8: Who are you?

MI: I am a filmmaker in Los Angeles, CA.

||8: Where are you from originally (where were you born) and where do you live now?

MI: : I was born in Los Angeles but moved to North Carolina as a kid. I always knew I wanted to come back, so after graduating from film school in 2006, I moved back.

||8: How did you get started making films? What was your first piece?

MI: I started as an actor and quickly realized I wanted to direct all the other actors, so I started thinking I might want to be behind the camera. I am a musician and have always had a strong connection to music, so I got into filmmaking because I wanted to make music videos. My first real outside-of-school project I got paid for was a music video for Victory Records and an artist named Giles. We shot it at the only dance club in Winston-Salem, NC, and it wound up being the #1 video on the Victory records website for over a month.

||8: What are some of your influences? Alternatively–who are a few other people working right now, not limited to film, whose work you’re interested in?

MI: I get influenced in all sorts of way. I love to go to local small galleries that sell art for like $100–the work can be really unique and amazing. A big part of my work is influenced by the fact that I have to work with a limited budget. I see cool effects and techniques that I like, and then I try and find a way to achieve the same effects on a limited budget.

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Parallel Octave invites all interested parties to be part of the chorus (musicians, actors, poets, singers, all of the above) for our upcoming concert reading of TO DIE IN ATHENS, which will take place on Sunday, August 12th at the Homewood Museum. Much more info here.

Our first meeting: this Sunday, July 15, 7-9 PM, Mattin 105 on the JHU campus. Directions to Mattin 105 are at the end of this post.

The chorus from TO DIE IN ATHENS in Warsaw, this June.

This Sunday, we’ll talk/read through some of the choruses and music in a very general sense. It’s not necessary to come to all rehearsals to be part of the project–just be in touch with us at paralleloctaveATgmail.

A schedule of future ATHENS rehearsals follows:
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Poems in Spanish, Portuguese, German and Arabic, as well as English! Our most multilingual poem-recording session ever. Unmastered, tracks just thrown together–but still sounding awesome.

Poet Helen Dudley, painted by Vanessa Bell.

Rainer Maria Rilke’s “Fortschritt (Progress)”

Abu at-Tayyib Ahmad al-Mutanabbi’s “When you traced your name, you were fatherless…”

Helen Dudley’s “To One Unknown”

Gilka Machado’s “Poema de Amor” (last stanza only)

Gustavo Adolfo Becquer’s “Amor Eterno”

Ben Jonson’s “On Gut”

Charlotte Mew’s “Fin de Fête”

Who said it was bad luck to record poetry on Friday the 13th? Not the intrepid students of “Auteur 101,” who are barrelling down the barrels of yet more poetry this very Friday from 12 till 3 pm in JHU’s Mattin Center, room 105.

Poet Gilka Machado.

Join us, if you dare, for the following items of poemization. (Links below are to the students’ commentary on the poems.)
Rainer Maria Rilke’s “Fortschritt (Progress)”
Helen Dudley’s “To One Unknown”
Gilka Machado’s “Poema de Amor” (last stanza only)
Gustavo Adolfo Becquer’s “Amor Eterno”
Abu at-Tayyib Ahmad al-Mutanabbi’s “When you traced your name, you were fatherless…”
Ben Jonson’s “On Gut”
Charlotte Mew’s “Fin de Fête”

Rilke, Rilke, Rilke.

Directions to Mattin 105 below:
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We will meet this Friday, July 13 in Mattin 105 on the JHU campus, 12-3 PM, to record poems. Various poems suitable for stop-motion animation are being chosen by “Auteur 101” students AS WE SPEAK.

To Room 105: Enter campus at Charles and 33rd. The Mattin Center is the brick-and-blue-glass building right there at 33rd. Turn to the left once you step on campus. Mattin is broken up into four sections–Room 105 is on the left, closest to Charles Street.

In last year’s ANTH I, Alice interpreted E.A. Robinsons’s poem “Richard Cory” through the use of footage shot in airports and train stations in Italy and the United States. This year, for ANTHOLOGY II, she’s interpreting Emily Dickinson’s “There’s a certain slant of light…” We caught Alice in the midst of a whirlwind of international travel–she’s currently working on her ongoing project1979 piece in Europe– to ask her a few questions. Scroll down to see her Robinson piece from last year and to read her interview–and join us at 8 PM at the Creative Alliance on Thursday, August 2nd (free admission!).

Alice’s film from last year, “From Sole to Crown”:

||8: Who are you?

AVB: I am Alice Venessa Bever and because of a crazy opportunity I had presented to me in February 2011, I started to learn how to make short films, something that is now a budding (think: absolutely beginner) hobby that I love. When I am not doing that I am traveling with my site-specific pop-up theater extravaganza, project1979, that travels this crazy globe collecting stories about the 30-something generation. (http://www.facebook.com/project1979) I am a director, actor (sometimes), writer, and educator. I sing often and laugh loudly.

||8: Where are you from originally (where were you born) and where do you live now?

AVB: : I was born in California and live in…well, for the past few years I have spent most of my time in Jackson Hole, Wyoming or sometimes Chicago or Naples, Italy. Now my home is wherever I lay my head while traveling.

||8: How did you get started making films? What was your first piece?

AVB: I suppose I already answered that in the intro. My first piece was with Parallel Octave: From Sole to Crown. Since then I have been producing short films for project1979 and for a short web series for Dishing Magazine.

||8: What are some of your influences? Alternatively–who are a few other people working right now, not limited to film, whose work you’re interested in?

AVB: I am very influenced by poetry-Rilke, EE Cummings and Montale as of late-which makes the work with both Anthologies a nice fit. I get excited by music, Chopin, David Byrne and Radiohead. Most recently I have been inspired in the last three months by the young artists I have met making great work in spite of/despite incredible hurdles such as immigration, disease, poverty, heartbreak. I am in awe of those who are able to create in the midst of sincere challenge.

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These files haven’t been mastered yet, so there’s some peaking and a few volume problems, but if you want to get a quick-and-dirty MP3 sense of what we recorded yesterday, have a listen. Nine new sound files.

Vicente Huidrobro‘s “Canción Nueva“.

Gertrude Stein‘s “Stanzas in Meditation“.

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Parallel Octave is very happy to announce that we will present another reading of the medley of Greek choruses formerly known as UMRZEĆ W ATENACH, now known as TO DIE IN ATHENS, at the Homewood House Museum on the JHU campus, Sunday, August 12, at 5 PM.

The exterior of the historic house where the August 12th reading will take place.

This presentation will include original video art and installations by the students of the Film and Media Studies department’s Auteur 101: Short Film Laboratory class.

Performers in UMRZEĆ W ATENACH at Komuna//Warszawa on June 3rd, 2012: L to R, Sarah Willenbrink, Lola Arellano-Weddleton, Rachel Jendrzejewski, Ingrid Jendrzejewski and Angela Delichatsios.

More information here on the Athens page.

Here’s a business card flier that one of the Auteur 101 students designed for ANTH II. I like the half-dead cat/Lord Byron mascot very much, as well as the dead mice.

ANTHOLOGY II screens Thursday, August 2nd at 8 PM at the Creative Alliance. Free admission.