~ March 2021 ~

Call for entries: 2021 Film and Video Poetry Symposium

On 8 March, 2021 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - calls for work, conferences, contests, festivals and other screening events

screenshot of 2021 film and Video Poetry Symposium website

The L.A.-based Film and Video Poetry Society’s 4th annual symposium is open for submissions from “Poets, Writers, filmmakers, animators, video and digital artists, media and performance artists.”

The symposium celebrates and will screen a large scope of film and video projects developed primarily through the medium of poetry.  FVPS2021 will host a series of panels, guest speakers, workshops, and public dialogues regarding film and video poetry throughout the course of the symposium. In addition to the screenings programmers also curate a 30-day gallery exhibition.

There are no restrictions regarding total running time of films submitted. There are no restrictions regarding when the film was produced or if the film has premiered regionally or internationally. There are no restrictions on subject matter, theme, topic, or language of origin.

The Film and Video Poetry Symposium calls for poetry films, filmpoems, digital-poetry, poetry video, Cin(E)-Poetry, spoken word films, videopoema, visual poetry, choreopoems, poetrinca, media poetry, and all films and video that are driven by onscreen text.

The Film and Video Poetry Symposium also excepts and supports experimental film and video work that explores language and/or literature whether it be oral, written, visual, or symbolic. This includes non-narrative work and the avant-guard. We strongly consider work that challenges traditional and current visual communication methods while continuing to function as a mode for exploring narrative forms and personal expression.

The Film and Video Poetry Symposium also calls for essay film, works of epistolary cinema, animation, choreopoems, performance art film and video, episodic content, oratorical works, documentary, video art, media art and installation, works created through immersive technologies, and episodic programming. Please see categories below for more details.

The deadline is September 4 and the submission fee is $20 per film, video, or media project. Click through for descriptions of each category and additional vital details, as well as the submission form and payment button.

You Still Have Something of The Ghost About You by JinJin Xu

On 8 March, 2021 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Author-made videopoems, Videopoems
Poet: | Nationality: | Filmmaker:

For International Women’s Day, here’s a cento videopoem by JinJin Xu 徐今今, a poet and filmmaker from Shanghai. Here’s the Vimeo description:

The cento-film “You Still Have Something of the Ghost About You” was shot in the hauntingly empty casinos during the COVID-19 pandemic in Macau, China after I left mandatory government quarantine and realized I’d stumbled into the underworld. The polyvocal collage slips the viewer into an otherworldly, post-COVID globalized hypnosis: interweaving strangely prescient texts from Chinese and Western epics such as Dream of the Red Chamber, Journey to the West, Beastiary, Dante’s Inferno, and contemporary texts such as John Cage’s X, and Gu Cheng’s Ying’er, to journey into the afterlife of forgetfulness.

As a former comparative literature major, I love this blend! And I’m always excited to see up-and-coming poets integrating filmmaking into their practice. Xu’s bio notes that after getting her BA at Amherst College, she “traveled for a year as a Thomas J. Watson Fellow recording docu-poems with women dislocated across nine countries.” She’s currently in the MFA program at NYU, and her chapbook There Is Still Singing in the Afterlife just came out in November, after winning the inaugural Own Voices Chapbook Prize from Radix Media. Be sure to follow her on Vimeo.

Arrival at Elsewhere (extract) by Karen Dennison, Carl Griffin et. al.

On 7 March, 2021 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Book trailers, Videopoems
Poet: , , , , , , , , | Nationality: | Filmmaker:

A filmpoem by Karen Dennison, who also supplied the voiceover. The text was written by Jemma Borg, Annie Butler, Kerry Darbishire, Catherine Fletcher, Bashabi Fraser, Carl Griffin, Philip Gross, Chrys Salt, and Alina Stefanescu. Here’s the YouTube description:

Arrival at Elsewhere is a book length long poem response to the pandemic, curated by one poet, Carl Griffin, but written by 97. This is an extract from the book. It’s published by Against the Grain poetry press and available to buy at https://againstthegrainpoetrypress.wordpress.com/arrival-at-elsewhere/

From the description at that link:

Poets from across the world speak in one voice in response to 2020’s life-changing pandemic. Not a definitive voice, nor an authoritative one. But a contrasting, contradicting, confused voice, set both in the UK and everywhere else, represented by one narrator who, just like the rest of us, is made up of a hundred different people. A narrator cohesive only in his/her/their contemplation of Elsewhere.