~ December 2022 ~
Moving Poems and Haiku North America welcome submissions for haibun film festival
Film submissions open January 1 for a screening of haibun poetry films at the biennial Haiku North America conference, to be held in Cincinnati, Ohio from June 28-July 2, 2023. Moving Poems is an official co-sponsor, and we’ll be the ones selecting the films. Winning films will be screened at the conference and published at Moving Poems.
What is haibun?
“Haibun” means “haiku prose” in Japanese. It’s a hybrid genre combining one or more haiku with lyrical prose, and it’s this juxtaposition, we believe, that makes it such a good fit with videopoetry or poetry film, where the artful juxtaposition of disparate parts is so central. Michael Dylan Welch, who organized the first English-language haibun contest in 1996, notes that “The key to the art of haibun is the graceful pairing of poem and prose, where the poem links to the prose yet shifts away from it, in much the same way that verses relate to each other in a renku [linked verse sequence] by linking and leaping.” (Click through to his website for examples and links.)
There aren’t a whole lot of good examples of haibun videos to point to yet, but that’s one of the things we’re hoping to change with this contest.
Rules and guidelines
Films/videos must use one of the ten provided haibun, which were selected by HNA from a separate, earlier contest that had 229 submissions. Visit this page https://movingpoems.com/2023-haibun-film-festival-texts-for-filmmakers/ and input the password: haibun. These are all unpublished poems whose authors have given permission for this contest only.*
Please include the haibun author’s name in the description to help us screen out spam submissions. The author’s name should also be included in on-screen credits.
Filmmakers may opt to use some rather than all of the text, if the author is OK with it. (We are happy to put them in touch with each other. Use the Contact form.) But the result should still look and sound like a haibun.
It’s entirely up to the filmmakers how to present the prose and poetry—as text on screen or voiceover, or some combination of the two. We also don’t want to discourage more experimental approaches, such as attempting to translate some of the prose portion of a haibun into wordless film poetry or narrative filmmaking, though that does of course come with a higher risk of rejection.
Films may be as long as seven minutes, but we encourage run times of 3-5 minutes.
Films must be submitted through FilmFreeway.
Submissions open January 1, 2023 and close March 15.
Selections will be announced on May 1.
*Password protection helps preserve the unpublished status of the texts, so that those not chosen for films may be submitted for publication elsewhere.
Spellbound by Emily Brontë
In Emily Brontë’s world, a young woman is under a spell of blind forces of compulsion acting to draw her towards an unnamed darkness from which she cannot escape.
This wonderfully atmospheric 16mm film by Patrick Müller seems perfect for the solstice. Here’s the director’s statement:
Shot on 16mm film during the pandemic lockdown in an unusual dark and freezing cold winter of 2021, I used an old Bolex camera from 1963 for my poetry film. Chemnitz-based musician Wellenvorm created an unique original music for it using only one instrument: an EMS Synthi A Portabella.
Its awards include Best Experimental Short at the 2022 Caligari – Festival Internacional de Cine de Terror, and Best Horror Short at the 14th Philadelphia Independent Film Festival in 2021. The voiceover is by Sarah Kempton. For more information, visit the film’s webpage.
Call for Work: Já Poetry Film Competition 2023
An international theater festival in Lisbon has added a poetry film competition, with award-winning UK filmpoet Janet Lees as judge. Here’s the call.
Venue: CASA FERNANDO PESSOA: Rua Coelho da Rocha, 16-18 Campo de Ourique, 1250-088 Lisboa, Portugal
This international Poetry Film happening at Casa Fernando Pessoa is part of JÁ FEST, organized 11 – 16 April 2023 by Já International Theatre.
It is open to emerging and experienced artists, first-time videographers, filmmakers and poets. JÁFEST is supported by the Europa Criativa Program so we welcome POETRY FILM submissions from emerging European artists. […]
The festival offers a platform for sharing visual narratives through two In-Competition sections:
THEME 1: SEPARATION & BELONGING
In our turbulent world Separation and Belonging raises the question of where and to whom we belong. To ourselves, perhaps? To nature, to memories, to family, to love, to dreams fulfilled and unfulfilled? Until we parted we did not know we could feel so strongly, we did not know that our good memories could shrivel and vanish, that we may no longer find comfort in them. Through separation we learn a lot about ourselves and our world, don’t we?
Jury President Janet Lees: “Separation and Belonging is a nuanced theme which gives poets and filmmakers a myriad of ways to respond. Separation can remind us of and bring us back to what’s truly important. As for belonging, who, what and where do we belong to – and what, if anything, truly belongs to us? Is belonging always a positive thing, or can it be something that precipitates separation, as in belonging in the sense of ownership? I love this theme because it’s so broad, and gives people freedom within a framework. There is the focus, the ‘container’, of having a specific theme, and there is the freedom of having almost limitless ways to respond to it.”
Inspirations and poems can come from any time period, or it can be your own vers libre.
THEME 2: DISQUIET! said PESSOA, or DESASSOSSEGO COM FERNANDO PESSOA
We invite filmmakers inspired by Pessoa’s work to submit a poetry film base on one of his poems or quotations to the Disquiet! said Pessoa, or Desassossego com Fernando Pessoa section in the competition.
For more details and to submit, visit FilmFreeway.
La luna asoma (The moon appears) by Federico García Lorca
The winner of the 10th Ó Bhéal International Poetry-Film Competition in Ireland is La luna asoma (The moon appears). The piece is by Belgian film-maker, artist and animator Jelle Meys, from the poem by the great Spanish writer Federico García Lorca (1898-1936).
The pace of the film is slow and graceful and the animation simple and fluid, meeting well with the brevity and mystery of the poem. The film-maker talks more about his process in a brief interview with Jane Glennie as part of her overall review of the Ó Bhéal event.
Full credits:
Director and animator: Jelle Meys
Poem: Federico García Lorca
Voice: Joaquin Muñoz Benitez
Soundtrack: Nathan Alpaerts (guitar) feat. Maf! and G.L.A.S.B.A.K.
English translation editor: Christopher Maurer
Winning films from all 10 years of the Ó Bhéal competition can be seen in another post by Jane Glennie.
The Cosmic Sea of Video Poetry: A Top Ten List
The world of video poetry is a cosmic sea where seeds of poems grow in a vast fluid of cinematic possibilities. You can meet enthusiastic amateur art projects where an amazing poem is the real protagonist. You can experience works by professional directors or amazing narrators, an attractive deep voice to guide you into the mind of a world known poet or to see for first time images blossom from an unknown poem. You can be touched and even cry watching heroes of a poem come alive on the screen or be overwhelmed with awe watching a dance performance or animation inspired by poetry. The creative collaborations among directors, poets and musicians around the world establish a new art genre, video poetry, as a new way to experience poetry today.
I don’t know from where to start. From the beginning or from the end. From the past or from the present. I will choose to take a trip from future to past. I will base my top ten list in the outstanding and awarded films that captured our souls in the ten last years of the International Video Poetry Festival and I will end up with some glamsy memories from the international digital platform http://filmpoetry.org – both projects organized and curated by the Institute for Experimental Arts.
Let’s start!
THEY PROMISED US A FUTURE (Mexico)
Director & Poet: Laura R. Tolentino
An amazing experimental film poem. Laura R. Tolentino created a very strong performance video poem that brings together technology, psychedelic intimate visions and ceremonial community futuristic lifestyles. The video offers strong comments about the social and environmental issues of our era with unique, extraordinary way. Premiered and awarded at the 10th International Video Poetry Festival in Athens.
HEBEERIN (Russia)
Director & Poet: Inga Shepeleva
Hebeerin or The Bear Festival is an art project inspired by the world of spirits from the mythology of the Yakut people. It is a fragile celebration on the remains of a slain animal. An extraordinary atmosphere worships the forces of nature. Watching the film poem we understand that we are small, we are all children inside the palm of the universe.
Inga Shepeleva was born and raised in an academic town near Yakutsk, the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) in a family of scientists who have dedicated their lives to studying permafrost. In 2017, she produced her first cycle of videos based on her poetry work called Hebeerin, dedicated to Yakut mythology. The video art cycle received awards and nominations at Russian and European video poetry and experimental film festivals, such as the video poetry festival Fifth Leg (Saint-Petersburg), The International Video Poetry Festival (Athens) and International Experimental Film Festival Zebra (Berlin).
CHAMADA GERAL (Portugal)
Director: Manuel Vilarinho
Poet: Mário-Henrique Leiria (1923–1980)
Mário-Henrique Leiria was a Portuguese surrealist poet. Born in Lisbon, he studied at the Escola de Belas Artes. He and his fellow surrealists were involved in an absurdist plot to overthrow the dictatorship of Antonio Salazar. The performance in this video poem is very strong. It fits perfectly with the thematic of the poem.
THE LIFE WE LIVE IS NOT LIFE ITSELF (Australia / Greece)
Director: Ian Gibbins
Poetry: Tasos Sagris
Music: Whodoes
A production of the Institute for Experimental Arts, this video is a collaboration of the Greek spoken word / multi media duet Tasos Sagris & Whodoes with the Australian experimental director Ian Gibbins. Tasos Sagris’s poem, with its haunting soundtrack by Whodoes, offers us an extended exploration of lives lived in parallel worlds, at cross-purposes, in and out of love, around the world. The video, awarded and presented in more than 45 festivals around the world, invite us to observe deep inside us for a real reason to live today. But what is the reality? What is mere illusion? Can there be more to life than simply living?
WHITMAN ILLUSTRATED: Song of Myself (USA)
Director: Allen Crawford
Poetry: Walt Witman
Illustrator Allen Crawford has turned Whitman’s poem Song of Myself into a sprawling, 256-page work of art. The densely-handwritten text and illustrations intermingle in a way that’s both surprising and wholly in tune with the spirit of the poem—exuberant, rough, and wild. “Whitman Illuminated: Song of Myself” is a sensational reading experience, an artifact in its own right, and a masterful tribute to the Good Gray Poet.
IF I GO OUT WALKING WITH MY DEAD FRIENDS (Germany / Greece)
Directors: Aleksandra Corovic and Alkistis Kafetzi
Poet: Ritta Boumi-Pappa
The poem If I go out walking with my dead friends belongs to the book A Thousand Murdered Girls which was published in 1964 by the communist poet Ritta Boumi-Pappa . The book consists of 65 poems, each named after a woman who was sentenced to death for participating in the Greek Resistance against the Nazis. The film, produced by the Institute for Experimental Arts, is a humble memorial for the female heroines mentioned in Papa’s verses but also for today’s freedom fighters. It rings the bell in the consciences of people, pointing out the risk of suppression of freedom within a decaying social system. The past and the present are connected through a visualized dramaturgy of associative patterns. The human body becomes a canvas on which mankind paints its struggles and battles. Its reality is caught in confrontation between projected values and societal demands. How do society’s proceedings reflect on the individual experience?
iRONY (Australia)
Director: Radheya Jegatheva
An Oscar qualified and AACTA nominated filmmaker based in Perth, Australia and born in Johor, Malaysia to parents of South Korean, Japanese, Indian and Malaysian ancestry, the poet and filmmaker Radheya Jegatheva inspects a wide range of elements through a critical lens and bring awareness to terrible issues such as cyberbullying and teen suicide. The animated video poem causes discussion or at least contemplation about these issues in a creative way, and make people reconsider the overconsumption of social media or the ways in which it can be harmful.
MULTISPECIES OFFLINE (UK)
Director: mmmmmfilms
mmmmmfilms is a collaboration between Adrian Fisher, Luna Montenegro and Gines Olivares. Since 2003 they have been making art films that show in festivals, biennials and galleries in Europe and Latin America. The Multispecies Offline is an intelligent video poetry that combines performance and spoken word and cinematic video poetry. Exploring different modalities of social media, theatre, film noir, photography and overlay ‘multispecies offline’ is a film that considers our relations with the human and the non-human.
THE HUMAN CHILD (Ukraine)
Director: Lika Nadir
Our life balances between internal freedom and belonging to others. The inner measure of truth never lies, like the human body. Try to live your life so as to penetrate through it the truth for those who will come to this world after you. Lika Nadir was born in the Crimea. At the age of 14, she began writing: short scripts and stories. An art historian by training. In 2019 she got accepted to the Moscow School of New Cinema (workshop of Dmitry Mamulia). In her works Lika raises social themes, and also seeks the aesthetics of naturalness and realistic existence of actors. Notable works: video for La Priest, collaboration with L’Officiel Russia.
I DON’T OWN ANXIETY (Australia)
Filmmaker: Marie Craven
Poetry: Kelli Russell Agodon
A film poem that is outstanding in content and form, in lyrics and photography, in atmosphere and meaning. The poem is strong and the voice over grabs your attention from the first moment.
Call for work: Cadence Video Poetry Festival 2023
The sixth Cadence Video Poetry Festival in Seattle (USA), will take place in person and online in April and May 2023. It is presented by Northwest Film Forum and programmed in collaboration with Seattle author Chelsea Werner-Jatzke and artist Rana San.
The organisers say:
“Over the last five years the festival has screened 272 video poems from 38 countries in 24 languages, and hosted annual youth and adult workshops, touring programs, and artist talks. All selected works at Cadence receive an honorarium, which NWFF began offering artists in 2021 to support the generation and exhibition of their work.
This year’s festival continues as a hybrid program, offering international audiences access to showcases, workshops, and artist talks both in-person and online. Cadence approaches video poetry as a literary genre presented as visual media, cultivating new meaning from the combination of text and moving image. The 2023 call for submissions and Artist-in-Residence applications are now open.”
Submissions are open until 1st March 2023 via FilmFreeway in five categories of video poetry:
- Adaptations/Ekphrasis: Videos created to bring new meaning and dimension to pre-existing poetry. Any poems used for this purpose must be in the public domain or else used with written consent of the author.
- Collaboration: Video poems created in collaboration between a video artist and writer.
- Video by Poets: Poets creating video from, or as, their writing.
- Poetry by Video Artists: Video artists using text visually or through audio intrinsic to the poetic meaning.
- Wild Card: Video work that’s poetically informed or poetry that’s visually informed that doesn’t neatly fit into one of the other categories.
Prodigal Daughters by Vasiliki Katsarou
A film by New Jersey-based poet Vasiliki Katsarou, using text from William Gass’s translation of Rilke’s novel The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge and images by Andrew David King. There wasn’t any description on Vimeo, so I contacted Katsarou to ask if she might have an artist’s statement. Here’s what she shared:
Prodigal Daughters is a collage video poem I made with Andrew David King. I’m a poet, teaching artist and publisher who holds an MFA in filmmaking, and who made a 35mm film back in the 20th century. My collaborator Andrew, whose footage this is, is a journalist, poet and book artist based in San Francisco. Our mission was to make two (one minute) cellphone films combining image and text. Prodigal Daughters was put together in serendipitous fashion, when I came across a striking passage (that I read in voiceover) from William Gass’ introduction to Rilke’s classic novel The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. Gass is writing about Rilke, who’s writing about young women standing in awe before hanging tapestries in a medieval museum. For me, something about this film poem seems to vault generations and art forms. It answers a question I had about how a film poem can exist independently of my own poetry and celluloid film work. It has the potential to serve as a dream instance, where meaning lies not solely in visual image nor words, but in their spontaneous combustion.
Prodigal Daughters was made during a workshop led by experimental filmmaker Lynne Sachs for the Flowchart Foundation. For more on my current work at Solitude Hill Press, please see solitudehill.com.
Review: 10th Ó Bhéal Poetry Film Competition & Winner
Lockdown and pandemic experiences have thoroughly honed and expanded Ó Bhéal’s experience of presenting events online (helped by their growing collection of technical kit that they have been fortunate to acquire over the last few years). The 10th International Poetry-Film Competition, and the wider Winter Warmer Festival it is now part of, was fully hybrid with all events running in-person at the beautiful Nano Nagle Place in Cork (Ireland), and simultaneously live-streamed. All events are available to watch indefinitely online.
The competition selected 30 films shown in two screenings. I left each screening with excitement, and a variety of films and filmmakers that I wanted to watch again or know more about. These are some of my personal highlights:
Selkie (Director Marry Waterson) had an unusual approach to image repetition. Rockin’ Bus Driver (Directors Mary Tighe and Cormac Culkeen) had a very satisfying, meaty voice in the soundtrack and a simple but effective graphic treatment of the visual material, while Borne by James E. Kenward had an incredible delivery of the voice – the pace and the pairing with the music were brilliant. The success of this partnership is perhaps explained by a YouTube of the recording session where you can watch James performing the text alongside the pianist. A brilliant way to create the soundtrack if feasible for a project. I particularly liked the lettering in There’s a Certain Slant of light (Director Susan McCann) – text cut from leaves and cast by shadows, and the words accompanied by just music. And as a final contrast to the varied treatments of sound in the selected films, there was Janet Lees’ powerful but silent film Descent.
The effort involved in putting together a festival can never be underestimated, and Paul Casey and Colm Scully have done a brilliant job of making the selections as well as organising the event and keeping everything running smoothly and technically well throughout the day. My only desire as an in-person attendee is to be able to have more awareness of who in the room were filmmakers (name badges, stickers, or something more imaginative perhaps?) and little bit more time specifically programmed in to be able to meet and chat to them. Filmmakers were introduced and invited to stand at the end of the screening, but it is difficult to register everyone’s face (especially in a semi-dark room) and I think attendees do need the reward of interaction to make the in-person experience special. I noticed that the finalists of the All-Ireland Poetry Slam later in the day had the opportunity for a group photograph, and I think this would be an appreciated chance for the film competition too, for those that were there on the day.
The winner of the competition was announced as La luna asoma (The moon appears), an animation by Jelle Meys of a poem by Federico García Lorca. I contacted Jelle to congratulate him on his win and ask him a few questions …
ME: The poem is read in Spanish, was subtitled in English, and you are Belgian. How fluent are you in Spanish? Were you aware of Federico García Lorca’s poem in a translation in your mother tongue, or in English? Which language version of the poem did you go to in your mind when you were thinking about the imagery for your animation?
JELLE: My mother tongue is Dutch, as I’m from the Flemish part of Belgium. When I decided to animate a poem, as a kind of practice, I hadn’t chosen a specific poem yet. So I just browsed through the poetry collections I own. One of those is an anthology of Federico García Lorca, with both the original poems in Spanish and their Dutch translations on the opposite pages. It was necessary to have the Dutch translation to ‘get the meaning’ (which is obviously relative with such metaphoric poetry), but I also wanted to stay true to the rhythm and the sounds of the original Spanish version. I can grasp quite a bit of Spanish, especially when written, because of my knowledge of French.
ME: In a YouTube video I saw, where you talk about your work (for another festival I think?), you mention that you are relatively new to animation but you have long been an illustrator … the sequence with the sea and the swimmers was just beautiful. Did you have a clear idea of how you wanted the movement of the bodies to happen before you began the animation?
JELLE: That YouTube talk was indeed for another festival, in Mumbai. Before getting into the animation, I drew a simple storyboard. So I did have some idea of what I wanted it to look like. But in the making of this film I learned a lot about animating, technically, which altered and influenced the final look. The swimmers sequence was a particularly tough one, because for that part I did have a clear vision in mind, and I didn’t want to compromise on it.
ME: What was your thought process on the colour palette that you chose?
JELLE: The colour palette was also very clear to me, pretty much right from the start. I’ve always loved the combination of brown and blue and considered it fitting for the somewhat melancholic tone of the poem. I also thought that a limited colour palette wouldn’t distract the viewer too much from the actual poem.
ME: The music is a perfect accompaniment. Was this pre-existing and if so, how difficult was it to find? Or was the music written or adapted for the film?
JELLE: My cousin, Michiel De Malsche, happens to be a composer and sound artist. He used samples and recordings from music workshops he had done in the past (hence why he didn’t ask for his name in the credits) and puzzled them together into a mesmerizing soundscape, which perfectly blends with that deep and warm voice of Joaquin Muñoz Benitez (a Spanish man living in Gent, Belgium).
***
Biography: Jelle Meys lives and works in Sint-Niklaas, Belgium. He studied Illustration and Graphic Design at School of Arts Ghent (2005-2009), where he also got his Teacher’s degree (2010). He currently teaches graphic design and illustration in high school, and works as a freelance illustrator, graphic designer and visual artist. He started taking film and animation classes in 2017, and has been infected with the animation bug ever since.
Blame the Fox by Jane Lovell
Devon-based poet Jane Lovell‘s poem won the 2022 Nature and Place Poetry Competition from Rialto, where the poem also appears in dead-tree media. Filmmaker Janet Lees remarked on Instagram that collaborating on the film with Lovell was “a genuinely unforgettable experience”. I can see why: the result is wondrous and moving, reminding me of everything I love about this hybrid genre.
The posh mums are boxing in the square by Wayne Holloway-Smith
The posh mums are boxing in the square is a marvelous piece from U.K. poet Wayne Holloway-Smith and Dutch film-maker Helmie Stil, both award-winning artists. The synopsis:
The film poem is about a mother re-imagined into life and given boxing gloves to fight off cancer.
Credits:
Producer Director and Editor: Helmie Stil
Writer: Wayne Holloway-Smith
Swimmers: Adele Carlson and Katie Fried
Underwater Camera: Philip Bartropp
Underwater camera assistent: Aaron Hindes
Camera: Edmund Saunders
Soundscape: Lennert Busch
The film was made in association with the Healthy Scepticism Project, The Poetry Society and Motionpoems.
Moving Poems has previously shared several other poetry film collaborations from Helmie Stil.
