All festivals, events and calls for work are mentioned by Moving Poems with our best efforts and in good faith. However, do check all details yourself as we cannot guarantee accuracy, and make your own judgements because we cannot verify the things that we share. Events may fail for a variety of genuine reasons, or may be a scam to elicit fees.
VISIBLE VERSE FESTIVAL Oct. 2013 DEADLINE: Aug. 1, 2013
Just a reminder that July 1 is a little over three weeks away. And given how quickly time tends to fly in the summer, anyone who intends to submit work for screening at the first Filmpoem Festival shouldn’t delay! Here are the guidelines [PDF]. Also, it’s not to late to make or change your vacation plans. The Filmpoem Festival will take place on August 2-4 at Dunbar Town House, Dunbar, Scotland.
(Three other poetry film festival deadlines are coming up at the end of July/beginning of August, and one on September 15, so chronic procrastinators can take heart. See the list of deadlines I posted here the other week.)
2013 may be an off-year for ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival, but that doesn’t stop them from promoting other people’s festivals on their Facebook page. A recent posting listed all the upcoming deadlines for submission — something we should do here more often, as well:
The first of these, you may recall, I have some connection to as one of the directors, and I will be attending the festival in August. More about that at a later date. For now, I just want to stress that filmmakers should read the guidelines carefully. Unlike many other festivals, we only consider submissions sent via post: on a DVD, CD or memory stick, and only in .mov or .m4v form. Alastair Cook says: “We’re receiving some great poetry-film from all corners of the world. And we are so pleased to be able to screen it! Now organising the events and workshops for the festival, so pleased to have such an amazing historic venue in such a beautiful town.”
For a more comprehensive list of regular and recent poetry film festivals, see the Moving Poems Links page.
Ó Bhéal (Irish for by word of mouth) is a weekly poetry event in Cork which, since 2010, has also been sponsoring an annual screening of poetry films and videopoems from around the world. This year they’re taking it to the next level, associating with the IndieCork festival of independent cinema in October and holding a poetry-film competition. View the complete guidelines at their website. Here’s the meat of it:
We are now open for submissions. Thirty films will be shortlisted and screened during the IndieCork festival. One winner will be selected by the Ó Bhéal jury.
Deadline for submissions is the 15th of September 2013.
Entry is free to anyone, and should be made via email to poetryfilm [at] obheal.ie – including the following in an attached word document:
- Name and duration of Film
- Name of director
- Country of origin
- Contact details
- Name of Poet
- Name of Poem
- Synopsis
- Filmmaker biography
- and a Link to download a high-resolution version of the film.
Films must interpret or be based on a poem, and have been completed no earlier than the 1st August 2011. They may not exceed 10 minutes in duration. Non-English language films will require subtitles.
A new videopoetry festival is planned for Bristol, UK in October. The deadline for submissions is June 30th.
Festival organisers Sarah Tremlett and Lucy English in conjunction with Colin Brown of Poetry Can welcome videopoems of 3 minutes or less to be screened at Liberated Words poetry film festival, as part of Bristol Poetry Festival, October 2013.
There are two separate categories for this year’s inaugural festival:
Four by Four
Videopoems of three minutes or less are invited as a response to a printed poem by four poets.
The poets and poems are:
Philip Gross: Heaps
Lucy English: from ‘Take Me to the City’
Jo Bell: The Shipwright’s Love Song
Johnny Fluffypunk: Bill Blake’s Birthday Cake for Adrian MitchellWinning entries of each poem will be screened as the highlight of the festival at the Arnolfini, Bristol.
Liberated Words II
We are also inviting videopoetry makers to submit 3 minutes of their most recent work broadly supporting the theme of ‘liberated words’.
The selected poetry films will be shown at a Liberated Words II screening at the Arnolfini Bristol.
See the announcement post for background and other information.
First, a reminder that at least FIVE festivals devoted to poetry films are currently open for submission: Trevigliopoesia Festival (deadline: March 1), The Body Electric Poetry Film Festival (deadline: March 21), Filmpoem Festival (deadline: May 1), DOCtorCLIP Roma Poetry Film Festival (deadline: May 15) and Visible Verse Festival (deadline: August 1).
In addition, for those who missed the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival in Berlin last fall, there will be a reprise showing of some of the best films at the Kosmopolis International Literature Fest, March 14-16 in Barcelona. The blog post announcing this includes a good thumbnail history of ZEBRA and of poetry-film generally. Here’s a snippet:
In the early 20th century poets were as much inspired by the cinema as filmmakers by poetry. The first film adaptation of the poem ‘Twas the Night before Christmas’ (1822) by Clement Clark Moore was made in 1905 in the studios of Thomas Alva Edison. Another very early testimony to the influence of poetry on the great directors is the film The Unchanging Sea (1910) by D. W. Griffith after the poem of the same title by Charles Kingsley. Charles Sheeler and Paul Strand, with their futuristic adaptation of Walt Whitman’s city melancholia in their film Manhatta (1921), set standards which still apply today. L’invitation au voyage (F 1927) by Germaine Dulac is a timeless interpretation of Charles Baudelaire’s ‘Les Fleurs du Mal’ or Combat de Boxe (B 1927) by Charles Dekeukeleire after a poem by Paul Werrie. In L’Etoile de Mer (F 1928) by Man Ray lines from Robert Desnos’ 1928 poem »La place de l’etoile« are faded in on boards. And of course Un chien andalou (1929) by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí with its poetic system. These are only some examples of the early poetry adaptations.
The constantly rising number of entries demonstrates the growing worldwide popularity of the genre and the necessity of this festival. Of all the programmes organised by the Literaturwerkstatt Berlin, the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival is the most-booked, receiving invitations from throughout the world. It is regularly invited to take part in festivals from Buenos Aires to Taipei. In 2010–2012 alone it has been a guest in many countries including Algeria, Dubai, Morocco, Portugal, Spain, Lithuania, Malta, India, Australia, New Zealand, Italy, Colombia, Ireland, Norway and Ukraine.
It’s definitely an exciting time for directors and fans of videopoetry/filmpoetry. Needless to say, there are a myriad other film festivals held annually around the world, and many if not most may be open to submissions of at least some types of poetry films.
VISIBLE VERSE FESTIVAL Oct. 2013, Vancouver, BC
DEADLINE: Aug. 1, 2013
See the website for more, including a postmortem on Visible Verse 2012. To view more videopoems by various artists, visit Visible Verse on Facebook.
The Trevigliopoesia Festival has been held in Treviglio – Bergamo (near Milan, Italy) every year since 2008, and includes a competition called La Parola Imaginata. From their website:
TRP – Trevigliopoesia is VIDEOPOETRY: Video-Art, Video Documentary and Poetry Film.
The word as language but also a symbol that becomes an element as the expression of thoughts, images, visions of the poets and their lives. Combining inspirations and influences from the field of philosophy, music, theatre and literature the result of the artistic creation meet the public showing the perfect union between POEM and VIDEO.Under the patronage of the Office of Culture of the town of Treviglio, the arts association Nuvole in viaggio advertises the sixth edition of the video poetry competition LA PAROLA IMMAGINATA.
March 1 is the deadline for submissions. Download a PDF of the rules from their website. (And don’t forget that Italy’s other international poetry film festival, DOCtorClip in Rome, is also still open for submissions.)
Professional filmmaker and poet R.W. Perkins (whose award-winning videopoems may be viewed on Moving Poems) has announced the formation of a new poetry film festival in his hometown of Fort Collins, Colorado.
The Body Electric is set to be Colorado’s first ever poetry film festival. To be held at The Lyric Cinema Cafe in Fort Collins, the festival will be directed and curated by poet/filmmaker R.W. Perkins.
At The Body Electric we are looking for innovative and technically sound filmmaking coupled with a strong grasp of poetics. It is our hope to showcase a wide range of talented film-poets from around the world to best represent the budding art form of videopoetry.
The festival opening day has yet to be determined, likely in late April or early May, but submissions are now open to all. Please check back with us soon for an updated schedule.
Visit the website for submission guidelines. There’s also a Facebook page and Twitter feed. According to the latter, submissions are already flowing in.
Don’t miss two great opportunities to showcase videopoetry/filmpoetry, both from the frozen north. The Canadian Review of Literature in Performance, litlive.ca, is paying actual money for three winners of its inaugural videopoetry contest. Entries may originate from any part of the world, but must be received no later than July 1. Meanwhile, the Co-Kisser Poetry-Film Festival is in its second year of hosting
an annual Poetry-Film Festival at Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Co-Kisser is a local Minneapolis arts organization, but our festival showcases poetry-films from Minnesota and all over the world. The festival has open submissions and we’re looking for films that are inspired by poetry, based on poetry, and about poetry and poets. Live action, animation, short and feature films share an evening with live poetry readings, Q&A with filmmakers and poets, and live music.
Submissions are due by July 3. Here are the guidelines.
The deadline for Visible Verse Festival 2012 has been changed to Aug. 1. The festival will take place Saturday, Oct. 13 at Pacific Cinémathèque in Vancouver.
Please help spread the (visible) word!
VISIBLE VERSE FESTIVAL @ Pacific Cinémathèque in Vancouver, Canada
Call for Entries:
DEADLINE: Aug. 1, 2012
For more information contact Artistic Director Heather Haley at: hshaley@emspace.com