Poetry: Azeem

It’s National Poetry Month and here is my favorite poet of the month.   Azeem.  We see a lot of writing about cute poets with education credentials and then someone like this brilliant Azeem fellow comes along and says a few things into a camera and reminds everybody that poets can shoot word bullets. I watch this video and my heart starts pumping and I get fidgety and I want to leave my chair and get to know words as well as this guy knows them.  I noticed Azeem because he is one of the few subscribers to my YouTube film channel and so I checked him out.  I’m extremely impressed.  You want people to be interested in poetry?  Show them this guy and they’ll be interested in about 5 seconds flat.  I think what makes most poets uninteresting to the American reading public is that they all secretly have an image of a bookshelf in mind.  Bookshelves are fine if you are browsing for a book, but they are death for anyone who’s making something.  Azeem is also working with some hugely talented filmmakers who make fantastic imagery and do it with ease.  If he comes to Los Angeles, I want to know about it and go see him play.

Set a Blaze:

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Animation: The TV Show

Sugimoto Kousuke animated this to the music of Takayuki Manabe. It is one of those free-moving explosions of anime that revel in media, electricity, gadgets, techno, and odd angles.  It’s a riot of scenes that I can’t really fit together in any meaningful way, but it sure is a blast to watch.

Via Drawn

Thru-You: Funky Musical Video Mashup

Kutiman posts video mashups on YouTube that make brand new music.  He takes video clips that other people have uploaded and he cuts pieces out of the people playing their instruments and then edits them all together with just the right timing and layering to create a whole new musical mix.  This one’s a nice little funk number and the filmmaker/musician creates a lively atmosphere out of his found musical clips.