Poetry & War Project - Initial Ideas

Another project we were invited to work on this semester is an arts project called "Poetry & War" - marking the centenary of WW1 and the work of Italian war poet Giuseppe Ungaretti. The project is about different artists' (modern poets, illustrators and animators) response to Ungaretti's poems. So our task is to create an animation that is inspired by the poems. We are free to come up with our own narrative and be inspired by any of the poems in any way.

So, I found many of the poems to be interesting and inspiring. Ungaretti wrote the poems during WW1 when he was a soldier on the Italian Front. Most of his poems are about soldiers and their experiences; survival, grief, and the horrors of war. But Ungaretti's poems can also be very hopeful and life-affirming. I first wanted my film to share this mood of both grief and hope, and to be informed by the historical context (as I don't know very much about the Italian war front in WW1). Ungaretti would have fought in the Italian Alps, in trenches in the mountains, and in bitter cold winters - the Italian front was known as "The White War". This conjured up a particular image for me of a pale, cold and desolate mountain-scape.

 Camel Scouts on Patrol, by Sydney Carline (1918)

Photos from: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-one/10562017/Melting-glaciers-in-northern-Italy-reveal-corpses-of-WW1-soldiers.html

I was inspired by a number of the Ungaretti poems; in particular "Soldiers", "Brothers", "I am a Creature", and "Detachment". They are about the 'fragility' and the horrific shared experience of soldiers in war. In "Soldiers", Ungaretti likens the men to leaves in Autumn.

My initial ideas involved two different soldiers - an Italian and a Scottish soldier - who, although experience different areas of the war, ultimately suffer a shared experience. A dark red-brown Autumn leaf could be a motif to symbolise their shared fragility and mortality. As I already mentioned, I was particularly drawn to the image of the desolate Alpine landscape and the force of nature in contrast with the forces of war. I wondered how the Alps, being a popular tourist destination now, would have been looked upon by a soldier during WW1?
Upon studying the poems again, I found a few with more particular links to nature:

Drowsiness

These mountain slopes
have settled down to sleep
in the darkness of the valleys 


I am aware of nothing
but a clicking
of crickets 

Keeping time
with my uneasiness 

Also the poem "Rivers"- about  a soldier bathing in the Isonzo river:

like a relic
I lay at rest 

The flowing Isonzo
polished me
like one of its pebbles

Upon laying in the river, the soldier recognises himself as a "tender fibre...of the universe". This idea of the soldiers contemplation on his place in the world, as a living creature part of a living world, I find particularly inspiring. Later on in the poem, the river is also used as a symbol for the many rivers within the soldiers own life, writing;

I have retraced
the seasons
of my life


Overall, l I think I have found "Detachment" the most influential on my idea, and sums up a lot of the ideas I wanted to approach in my animation.

Detachment

Here is a man
like any other


Here is a soul
deserted
like an unreflecting mirror


I must wake up
and gather myself
and possess


The rare gift of having been born
so quietly having been born


Which when its time is past
just as imperceptibly passes away 




The story so far - the animation could portray a journey through the Alps:
This journey is undertaken by two characters, one being an Italian soldier and the other a modern climber who may have also been a soldier. One climber will definitely be the Italian WW1 soldier. The modern climber could be Scottish (as the more different the characters experiences are then the more impact it may have when you show the similarities in their existence, and the overall project is a Scottish-Italian collaboration). This character could also be Italian however, and possibly a descendant of the WW1 soldier.
The two characters both struggle mentally and physically on their journey. The climb will be animated as one journey - the shots flowing back and forth in time - the animation hopefully creating a flow as if the movement is only being acted by one character instead of two.

I would also like colour and the landscape to play a big part in the animation. I want the mountains to be an ominous character - pale and cold in colour, but increasingly jagged and sharp as the climbers ascend.  The sky too will increasingly redden as they climb. But when both eventually reach the top, and look out over the landscape, the colours change again - this time to the colours of a beautiful sunrise. This is the point when the characters (who have almost given up) must "wake up" and "possess" the "rare gift of having been born" before it is gone. The idea of a sunrise is also summed up in the poem "Morning":

I am illuminated
with immensity

This is where I have got so far with the story and visuals! Next step is to come up with a finished storyboard and animatic. At the moment I am thinking this may make a nice paint animation - although this depends on how long a paint animation might take and how much time I will have to make it. We are looking at having a finished film for February next year (same as zoo project roughly). The animation will then be shown at readings and exhibitions later in the year.

At the moment I am quite happy with the idea! I think my response to the poems so far has been a particular interest in nature - the mountains and harsh, winter landscape of the Alps - and the experiences of soldiers who must battle with so many things, yet can recognise the beauty of living and carry on.