Shadow Cave

direct link: Shadow Cave.  [The video is subtitled, so you can read along if you like, or have Google automatically translate the text into one of 25 languages. The option appears after you press play. If the cc in the play bar is red, the subtitle track is on; if black, it's not. Mouse click to toggle. Click on this image to see the steps to opening the subtitle/caption file:


How to discover what your splits are. What you've repressed in yourself. The shadow isn't necessarily 'Dorian Gray' -but can contain positive aspects that you've buried. In this video, the woman goes on a trance journey into the cave of her imagination where she discovers surprising selves. A Paleolithic artist, a woman-child, an angry reflection. The video is about integrating the shadow into the self during a shamanic dance.

Some comments on Shadow Cave:

"...your dancing is simply incredible. Poetic, visceral, physical and spiritual. I love it. Simply, I love it for the energy you are and the feelings it evokes in me. Makes me want to go out and dance to the moon." Kathryn Esplin

"After my first view "shape changing" seemed to stick in my mind. That is a pretty deep level of connecting/shifting." He calls it an "expressionistic masterpiece." william d.

"An interesting combo of creativity - the dance and choreography, the words and rhythms, the story and the feelings of motion rounding up the darkness becoming light ... in self-realisation." Bernard C.

"I love this video in more ways than I can say...

I love the leafy screen overlay-- that places the story squarely in the wilderness. I love the flashes of color that appear at key moments. I think the visual climax is probably when the dark shadow self emerges and sometimes follow the movements of the self but sometimes does the opposite. Excellent!

Lastly, I love that you've challenged the idea of Plato's cave, where one can see only external shadows. Internal shadows are much more important, and I'd like to think that Jung would also have seen his internal shadows within the cave." Ann Marcaida

"OMG, this is so beautiful, and I know someone in deep crisis right now...  who would benefit from viewing/listening to this... except [their] grasp of English isn't good. You know, you brought tears to my eyes with this one... It's so light, even with a light/sly sense of humor instilled here and there in the most appropriate of ways, yet I don't think I've experienced anything so deep and profoundly essential and so healing from you yet. It's as though you almost let all veils down, briefly and safely, and then bring it all together. Brings a whole new meaning to "mother and child reunion." And there's so much more. Love the symbolism of the snake... and the fat man. This is so well done, a real masterpiece, of describing a journey of integration." Bent Lorentzen

[I did mention that the subtitles can be translated by Google into other languages, maybe not perfect, but enough to get the gist.]

Also, I have been deeply moved by responses to this video by young women struggling with eating disorders, cutting, and other self-harming strategies to maintain an 'acceptable social self', or I would say, sanity in an insane world. And a young man dealing with alcohol addiction said it was kinda kooky but he understood it and understood that you can accept and live with all the parts of yourself.

                              

FRIDAY FILM AND VIDEO POEM: 'Ground' by Ginnetta Correli

direct link: Ground

Written & Narrated: Alastair Cook
Directed & Edited: Ginnetta Correli
Soundtrack: Pierrepoint’s Epitaph by Dirk Drieson

Ground has an impenetrable quality. The film imagery, poem and reading approach each other without quite meeting. In that circle of visual and verbal imagery and the emotion of the voice of the reader, we witness a flame dancing without knowing who lit it, who blows on it, or why it goes out, if it does.

Something profound happens. But what? Is the poem notes on death and what resurrects us through life? Or the dream of a life?

At the end, the man... but you must watch to see this.

I am reminded of Médem's Lucía y el sexo, where the island rests on a cacophony of unmappable caves that constitute its base and that are not attached to the seabed, but float, and where one of the characters disappears forever into.

As in dream, the images in Ground are vivid, strong, and reveal something important if elusive. The images of the poem and the film are are strewn in a landscape of inner symbolism. A motorcycle. An empty road. The shadow of a figure, perhaps the filmmaker filming the scene. A small white snake lying in the road. A man holding onto the lip of rock in a cave hole. A gloved hand picking up the poisonous snake and placing it carefully on the shoulder of the road. An abandoned hut where the outside seems inside, empty save for the crumpled paper of the poet, a bed of rocks and light.

This is a surreal filmpoem; it has a European art film feel to it. Like when watching an Almodóvar, forget logic, for a rational approach to understanding won't reveal anything. As you seek to embrace the meaning of the film, you find mindfulness here like a Zen koan.

You can't quite put it together. Rather, feel the deep angst the film produces. That's where the film is unfolding in your consciousness as a message, a predicament, a riddler of the paradoxes of life.

Or the immanence of death.

Ground is hauntingly beautiful, in a disturbing way. In the embracing mindfulness, a poetry of poison, death, loss, and beauty, all of which is natural, found in the natural world, amidst a surreality. We feel cross-currents, disambiguations, and yet the over-arching journey metaphor of Cook's minimalist poetry, and the bond of love he speaks of, yes, living is like this. Simply a superb film.

Do watch. The two minutes and 35 seconds will become a dream you are having.

_

Ginnetta Correli's blog: beatie's journal.

The poem is composed of haiku written by Alastair; his blog, written in my hand is well worth exploring too.

                              

PL: P(ink) L(ady)

direct link: PL: P(ink) L(ady)

PL: P(ink) L(ady)

once, the sakura tree
blossoming cloud 
of pink

blood,
like split cherries

a pulp of wounds

I, fleshy stone fruit
soft under his fists

brazen, the road
where I walk

brazen, my ripe cherry
nectar

-



A creative treatment on the theme of violence against women. The ending is meant to be positive - she's no longer hiding, is defiantly living from her source of nectar.

Shot with an iPhone4, and edited in FCE. The text had a lot of treatment, and took as long to create as the film itself. Normally I don't like text in videopoems, unless the text is a pictorial element in the composition.

The track, Chinese Sunrise, by bjarneo on SoundCloud: http://soundcloud.com/bjarneo/bjarne-o-chinese-sunrise