Posts By Dave Bonta
5AM by Lissa Kiernan
A new film by Marc Neys AKA Swoon using a text and reading by American poet Lissa Kiernan, his second collaboration with her (see Witness from 2013). Marc used footage by Finn Karstens and Graham Uhelski.
Introducing the Film and Video Poetry Society
Over the past two years, a mysterious, L.A.-based group called the Film and Video Poetry Society have built up a tremendous following for their Facebook page, on which they regularly share a wide variety of poetry films and videopoems from around the web. I liked the results so much, I included the link among the short selection of recommended sites at the bottom of the front page of Moving Poems — the first and so far only time I’ve done that for a page on the ubiquitous but web-destroying colossus that is Facebook.
Well, as of August 1 I no longer have to do that, because at long last they’ve debuted their own web platform… and it’s a doozy. Features include a live, TV-like channel of poetry videos, a finishing fund and production assistance program for poetry filmmakers, poetry translation assistance, and even a plan for print publications. Perhaps of most interest to readers of Moving Poems, they are welcoming submissions of film and video projects up to 32 minutes long for a big annual symposium to be held on April 27th – 28th, 2018 in Los Angeles. It would probably be easiest if I just pasted in the text of their About page:
OUR MISSION
The Film and Video Poetry Society (FVPS) mission is to encourage film and video poets to further their ongoing explorations by providing a platform for these artists to activate, collaborate, discuss, and maintain creative work developed through the convergence of these art forms.
FVPS PROGRAMS AND INITIATIVES
Finishing Fund
The first of our initiatives is The FVPS Finishing Fund and Assistance Program. This production award will assist film and video poetry projects that have started the creative process and seek additional assistance or funds to complete the final stages of production.Poetry Beam
We established an experimental distribution, archival, and publishing format for film and video poetry. Poetry Beam is focused on audience development, live streaming, digital curation, film and video exhibition, immersive technologies, and new methods of media licensing.Events
The Film and Video Poetry Society is dedicated to providing a platform for oral and written literature. We are doing this by coordinating international events such as poetry slams, readings, virtual panels, writing rooms, and pop-up poetry book-shops.Annual Symposium
FVPS is also organizing an annual symposium where we will host film screenings, workshops, and panels for a two day period each spring.Publishing
FVPS is currently adapting two poetry films into chapbooks and has published A Guide to Film and Video Poetry festivals!Translations
Finally, FVPS supports language diversity. Our efforts to assist poets and filmmakers to access wider audiences and festival markets include subtitling and closed captioning assistance for films of any language.
FVPS is developing a closed captioning app to offer video editors low cost multilingual translation on an academic level.The Film and Video Poetry Society embraces a demanding dream. We strive to balance our new world’s increased desire for visual content with our old world love for literacy, printed matter, and the poetic word.
We are deeply grateful for the poets and filmmakers who contacted us over the past year. The contributions of your work and the many ideas you have shared inspired our team to launch this platform.
Thank you for reading our mission statement and we encourage you to explore this website.
Click through to join their mailing list and check out the site.
A small disclosure: I have been in contact with someone (not sure who) from the FVPS a couple of times, and provided a critique of the site before it went public. They assure me they will reveal their identities soon, when they unveil a masthead. I am as always happy to welcome new websites and initiatives to the international poetry film/video fold, and I’ll be watching FVPS with particular interest given their evident good taste in poetry videos, their proven ability to generate social media buzz, and their physical location near the world’s most powerful center of cinematic production. I think their primary focus on filmmakers and artists makes great practical sense, because in my experience there’s much more openness to poetry film and videopoetry in those kinds of circles than (sadly) among poets.
Call for work: 6th CYCLOP International Poetry Film Contest
On August 1, it was announced that the 6th CYCLOP Poetry Film Festival will be held on November 25-26, 2017 in Kyiv (Kiev), Ukraine. Filmmakers have until Sept. 30 to submit work. Visit their website for the rules and regulations, which I’ll also paste in below:
- Films of up to 10 minutes duration that are no more than two years old (January 2015) may be entered.
- There are no limitation about subject and language restrictions. All films that are not in English must have English subtitles. Each application must also contain the text of the verse in English.
- Video can be performed in any techniques using any necessary equipment (video, animation, flash etc).
- Each video should be placed on the Youtube channel in free access.
- By sending your film, you confirm that the film may be shown at the CYCLOP Poetry Film Festival. The artist must have all property and screening rights.
- Each artist can’t send more than two videos.
- All videos must be sent with the following characteristics:
File format: .MOV or .AVI.
Standard: PAL. Codec: H264.
Resolution: HD — 1920 x 1080 or 1280 x 720 (16:9) / SD — 640 x 480 (4:3) or 640 x 360 (16:9)
Click through for the entry form, names of the jury members, timeline for scoring and other information.
Call for work: new Oregon-based poetry film festival Cinema Poetica
Poetry film festivals are pretty thin on the ground in North America right now, so I was excited to hear about a new one set for October 28 in Ashland, Oregon as part of the Ashland Literary Arts Festival and sponsored by a newish journal called The Timberline Review. Like most film festivals, Cinema Poetica is set up as a contest, and submissions are via FilmFreeway, but the guidelines make it clear that they’re open to decidedly DIY, low-budget, poet-produced videos. It’s not entirely clear whether more professionally made poetry films are welcome, but they don’t appear to be excluded by the rules and terms per se. Instead, I think the “challenge” is intended to encourage adventurous poets with crap equipment to give it a go. But it might be worth querying the editors before submitting more polished work.
There are several other unique features of this contest, mostly reflecting the typical mindset of an American print literary magazine (e.g. the assumption that the poem is essentially textual, preceding the video, and the requirement that it be previously unpublished to be considered for publication) so I’ll take the liberty of reproducing their guidelines in full:
Cinema Poetica
The Timberline Review is excited to host Cinema Poetica, a film festival celebrating the cinema of poetry, an emerging short-film genre.
Make a one- to three-minute film featuring a poem you’ve written, or perhaps a poem you wish you’d written, as the dramatic narrative.
It’s poetry. Budget is limited. Technology is what you can shoot on your phone. There aren’t going to be any car chases, stunt doubles, FX, studio overdubs, 35 mm stock, or spaceships.
The Cinema Poetica Challenge
Strip it down to the poem. Strive to make your film not “polished,” but ever more raw, primitive, visceral, surprising, intuitive.
Start with the poem and let the poem be your guide. Shoot in real time. Shoot in real locations. Shoot in color. Incorporate location sound into your film. If you’re going to use music, make the music on camera. Use natural lighting. Use a handheld camera. Forget about special effects and optical filters.
Keep it low-tech and keep it real. Focus on the content of the poem.
For very basic access to editing tools, here’s a good – and free – editing app designed specifically for mobile devices — Adobe Premiere Clip.
Rules and Terms
Film must include a poem narrative and not just include the poem but be grounded in it. In other words, dramatize your poem.
All film submissions should be made through Film Freeway. Ready to submit?
Regular submission period runs August 1st through September 30th, 2017.
Maximum running time is 3 minutes.
Poems can be in any language, but if not in English, you must provide English subtitles.
No filmed readings, please.
If the underlying poem is not the submitter’s own original work, by submitting your film you acknowledge and warrant that you have obtained any and all necessary permissions from the author of the work, which must include the right to record and perform the poem you’ve used in your film.
Judging Criteria
All films will be evaluated by an independent group of filmmakers and poets. Films judged to best exemplify the Cinema Poetica challenge will be screened at the festival, receive additional recognition, and be considered for the Grand Prize* and Audience Favorite.
Prizes
Grand Prize winner receives a $250 cash prize and possible publication in The Timberline Review.*
Audience favorite receives a hand-drawn broadside of the poem.
Top ten finalists receive special mention and promotion on The Timberline Review website.
*To be considered for publication, poem must be previously unpublished in the English language.
The Festival
Films will be screened throughout the day, October 28, 2017, in the Hannon Library, on the Southern Oregon University campus in Ashland, Oregon, before an adoring public of indie publishers, authors, filmmakers, editors, and artists celebrating the independent spirit of film, literary, and visual arts. There is no admission fee. All are welcome to attend.
The Grand Prize winner, if present, may be invited to join a conversation about poetry and film with our judges and editors.
And Saturday evening at 6:00, it’s a party! Stay tuned for all the details.
The Gallery
Browse some examples of filmed poetry.
Questions
Get more information about the Ashland Literary Arts Festival, or contact editors@timberlinereview.com if you have any other questions.
The Fine Print
Cinema Poetica is a film contest, open to all, sponsored by The Timberline Review, a literary journal published by Willamette Writers, a 501(c)3 organization, based in Portland, Oregon.
Timberline Review editorial staff and members of the Willamette Writers Board of Directors and their immediate family members are not eligible for the Grand Prize.
All films remain the property of the submitter. The Timberline Review and Cinema Poetica retain the right to publicly display any film submitted to the Cinema Poetica film festival, for non-commercial purposes. The Timberline Review retains the right to publish, at its sole discretion, any underlying poem submitted to Cinema Poetica.
Special Thanks
Kim Stafford, Brian Padian, Cascadia Publishers, Mercuria Press, and our partners, Willamette Writers, Ashland Literary Arts Festival, and Film Freeway.
Dark Place by Lucy English
As her ambitious Book of Hours has unfolded, it’s been fascinating to watch Lucy English‘s poetry evolve and adapt to the online video medium and to the exigencies of particular film-making styles. Here’s how Stevie Ronnie, her collaborator for this film (along with composer Jim Ronnie), describes their process at Vimeo:
Lucy and I wanted to try something different as a way of kick starting the collaborative process for Dark Place. It started from a desire to work on something that was going to become part of Lucy’s Book of Hours poetry film project. Poetry films often begin with the words or footage or sound but we decided to start from a colour palette. I created a palette and sent it to Lucy and she wrote the poem from the colours. Lucy then sent me a couple of drafts of the poem and, after spending some time digesting Lucy’s words, I decided to respond to it visually. Using the colours that I found in Lucy’s poem I rendered the poem as a painting, where each mark on the canvas represents a letter in the poem. I then captured this process as a series of still images which have been strung together into the film. The soundtrack, performed by my father Jim Ronnie, was composed and added during the video editing phase as a response to the poem’s images and the words.
From 35,000 Feet / Praise Aviophobia by Geffrey Davis
The latest release from Motionpoems‘ Season 7 was directed by Chad Howitt, and is based on a poem by Geffrey Davis from his 2014 collection Revising the Storm. The cinematography is by James Laxton, who was also the Director of Photography for Moonlight, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture.
