Pablo Neruda’s Poem, “The Me Bird,” Becomes a Short, Beautifully Animated Film

From 18bis, a Brazil­ian design & motion graph­ics stu­dio, comes this: an ani­mat­ed inter­pre­ta­tion of “The Me Bird,” a poem by the Nobel Prize-win­ning poet Pablo Neru­da. Writes 18bis, “The inspi­ra­tion in the stra­ta sten­cil tech­nique helps con­cep­tu­al­ize the rep­e­ti­tion of lay­ers as the past of our move­ments and actions. The frames depict­ed as jail and the past as a bur­den serve as the back­ground for the sto­ry of a bal­le­ri­na on a jour­ney towards free­dom. A diver­si­fied artis­tic exper­i­men­ta­tion recre­ates the tem­pest that con­nects bird and dancer.” It’s all pret­ty won­der­ful.

Bonus mate­r­i­al: You can watch The Mak­ing of The Me Bird here. And find the orig­i­nal text of the Neru­da poem here. We have more poet­ry put to ani­ma­tion below.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2013.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Poems as Short Films: Langston Hugh­es, Pablo Neru­da and More

Watch an Ani­mat­ed Film of Emi­ly Dickinson’s Poem ‘I Start­ed Early–Took My Dog’

The Ani­ma­tion of Bil­ly Collins’ Poet­ry: Every­day Moments in Motion

Four Charles Bukows­ki Poems Ani­mat­ed

Neil Gaiman’s Dark Christ­mas Poem Ani­mat­ed