Poetry is Child's Play

A Child's Garden of Poetry

April 2011 •English

Poems by some of the greatest writers of all time are brought to life through lyrical animation and readings by some of today’s most respected performers.

Hedgehog's Home

January 2017 •Croatian

In a lush and lively forest lives a hedgehog. He is at once admired, respected and envied by the other animals. However, Hedgehog’s unwavering devotion to his home annoys and mystifies a quartet of insatiable beasts: a cunning fox, an angry wolf, a gluttonous bear and a muddy boar. Together, the haughty brutes march off towards Hedgehog’s home to see just what is so precious about this “castle, shiny and huge.” What they find amazes them and sparks a tense and prickly standoff.

Lines

February 2021 •English

Six poems written by six young prisoners animated to tell their stories, thoughts, fears and hopes.

The Young Lady and the Cellist

June 1965 •French

A cellist attempts to rescue a woman swept out to sea, only to find he must battle a series of overly possesive sea creatures.

Window Horses

March 2017 •English

Rosie Ming, a young Canadian poet, is invited to perform at a Poetry Festival in Shiraz, Iran, but she’d rather be in Paris. She lives at home with her over-protective Chinese grandparents and has never been anywhere by herself. Once in Iran, she finds herself in the company of poets and Persians, all who tell her stories that force her to confront her past; the Iranian father she assumed abandoned her and the nature of Poetry itself. It’s about building bridges between cultural and generational divides. It’s about being curious. Staying open. And finding your own voice through the magic of poetry. Rosie goes on an unwitting journey of forgiveness, reconciliation, and perhaps above all, understanding, through learning about her father’s past, her own cultural identity, and her responsibility to it.

My Name Is Nathan

July 2012 •English

A little boy troubled by a paper bird - Quote : "I am alone in my gondola, I am trapped in the sky, My name's Nathan, I don't like the real"

相思（上）

December 2016 •Chinese

How the Moon Conquered Pop

January 2019 •German

Musicians inspired by the Moon. Since the Apollo landings, the Moon has entered popular consciousness like never before. A journey through pop music's lunar obsession.

Em direção à Ítaca

Invalid date •Portuguese

Happy

November 2016 •English

An animated poem about the fleeting nature of happiness.

Un spectacle interrompu

January 2012 •French

M'es en abyme

Invalid date •English

A collage of images and voices of women poets that succeeds brilliantly, both as a tribute to the women whose words are borrowed and as an original videopoem.

Afterimages

August 2023 •English

A film-poem created for Counterclock Journal's 2023 Patchwork: Film x Poetry fellowship, featuring an original poem by Mackenzie Duan and animation by Evan Bode.

Marcel, your mother is calling you

January 1961 •French

Two Faces

January 1968 •English

Loose impressionistic brushstrokes sketch a series of portraits of two faces, one male and one female, while the verse on the soundtrack tells the tale of both one and a thousand relationships.

The Art of Drowning

June 2009 •English

Ponders the possibilities of what awaits us at the end of our life.

The Spring Night

May 1976 •Russian

A spring night is a poetic film which is based on the motives of the poem by V. Lugovsky. The film is devoted to the theme of fidelity to the battle traditions of revolutionary past, to the theme of human happiness the sense of it in the battle for high ideals.

Synapses

April 1981 •English

Réne Manzor's debut short, a surreal story about a tramp trying to build a road through the desert.

Hop Along Hang On

September 2021 •English

Rose the rabbit seeks her way home in this poetic story of reclamation, recovery, and reconciliation.

La vita nuova

June 2008 •French