~ calls for work ~
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.
Call for work: Art Visual & Poetry, 14-17 November 2023, Vienna
A call for work is now open for this biennial Austrian festival, with live screenings in Vienna in November. The main poetry film competition is for German-speaking countries, Austria, Germany and Switzerland. Supporting this are two supporting awards: the Poetry Performance Film award for international shorts of up to 7 minutes of performance films from poetry slam, visual arts, dance and drama; and the Special Award which is for films based on the festival poem La Luna by Manfred Chobot.
More information about all the competitions is on the website: https://www.poetryfilm-vienna.com/en/opencall-2023
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.
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.
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.
Call for poetry films: Spelt Magazine
Spelt, a UK-based literary magazine focused on rural life and the natural world, is open for submissions through 25 November for their winter issue. Here are the guidelines.
- Include a cover letter in the body of your email. This should tell us a bit about you (and the poet/filmmaker if different), where your poetry films have been seen and why you think Spelt is a good fit for your work. Also include the title of your poetry film/s and the length in minutes and seconds.
- Include in the body of your email YouTube or Vimeo link/s for up to two poetry films. (Include passwords if necessary.)
- Your poetry film/s should not exceed 5 minutes.
- If your poetry film is selected, we will require it to be captioned.
- Please ensure you have copyright/permissions for all materials used.
- Send your submission to speltmagazine@gmail.com
- Please put POETRY FILM in the subject line of your email.
Poetry film editor Helen Dewbery also has a page of tips for beginning filmmaker-poets.
Call for work: Living with Buildings IV
Living With Buildings is a quarterly festival of films that explore themes of people, poetry and place to understand how we live within the built environment of cities and urban spaces.
Submissions for the fourth edition are now open for films of up to 5 minutes, until the deadline on 6th November.
https://filmfreeway.com/LivingWithBuildings-IV
The event will take place in Coventry, UK on 23rd November 2022. Living With Buildings is presented by the Disappear Here poetry film project – and is rooted in Coventry, a city famed for its ringroad and modernist architecture, and its reinvention as a city rising from the ashes and ruins of arial bombing in World War Two.
The event is happy to consider work originating from all around the world.
Call for work: REELpoetry 2023, Houston USA
REELpoetry/HoustonTX 2023 is an international, curated, hybrid poetry film festival taking place online and in person from 24-26 February 2023. The event has been running for five years. The organisers say:
“We explore this genre with poets, videograpers and filmmakers working solo or collaboratively, on a cell phone or in a studio, with new or remixed or previously created work. We’re inviting open submissions, and also featuring screenings from invited guest curators, deaf poetry, films about poets or a particular poem, as well as Q&A with poets, videographers and filmmakers, networking, live readings, panel discussions, and more.”
This year’s festival is not themed, and submissions are invited up to a maximum of six minutes. Prizes will be awarded in two categories: poetry film/videos under four minutes, and poetry film/video four to six minutes long.
REELpoetry/HoustonTX is a project of Public Poetry publicpoetry.net
Submissions via FilmFreeway: https://filmfreeway.com/REELpoetry2023
Call for work: MARXE festival internacional de videopoesía 2022
This is the second edition of this festival. The first took place in Vigo, Spain and this year it will take place in Famalicão, Portugal, within the BINNAR festival program, on 10 November 2022 and Vigo on the 19th. Entries are invited in any language, but any submitted films must have subtitles in Galician. Maximum length of films is 5 minutes.
More information on the festival website http://marxe.org/
Call for work: Weimar Poetry Film Award 2023
Early bird entries are open for this well-organised and respected festival in Weimar, Germany. Poetry films of up to 10 minutes are welcome and entrants can submit up to 3 films that have been produced since 2020. The competition forms part of the International Poetry Film Festival of Thuringia. The 2023 event takes place 19-20 May 2023. Early bird entries until 31st December, final deadline 31st January 2023.
Festival website: https://poetryfilmtage.de/
Ó Bhéal 10th Poetry Film Competition Deadline Looms
If you intended to send something in for Ó Bhéal’s 10th Poetry Film Competition, you have until the 31st of August. Here are the entire guidelines:
Submissions will be open from 1st May – 31st August 2022. Entries made outside of these dates cannot be considered. You may submit as many films as you like – each must interpret or convey a poem (present in its entirety, audibly and/or visually) and have been completed after the 1st of May 2020.
Entries may not exceed 10 minutes in duration. Non-English or non-Irish language films will require English subtitles.
Judges for 2022 are Colm Scully and Paul Casey.
The shortlist will be announced during October 2022 and one overall winner will receive the Ó Bhéal award for best poetry-film. Shortlisted films will be screened (and the winner announced) at the 10th Winter Warmer poetry festival (25th-27th Nov 2022).
Entry is free to anyone, and should be made via email to poetryfilm [at] obheal.ie – including the following info in an attached word document:
- Name and duration of Film
- Month & Year completed
- 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.**
** If you are sending a vimeo or youtube link, etc, please ensure that the download button is enabled. All films not shortlisted by the judges are permanently deleted directly after the adjudication process.
Call for work: online multimedia prize for Slippery Elm Literary Journal
Slippery Elm is a publication of the University of Findlay, Ohio, USA – a journal that is …
“committed to promoting the best fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, and visual art being created today.”
Their fifth annual multimedia contest is open – the Deanna Tulley Multimedia Contest, and they are looking for “your hypertexts, your nonlinear narratives, your videopoems, your illustrated stories!” The deadline is 30th September and entries must be sent via Submittable. Find out more on their website: https://slipperyelm.findlay.edu/multimedia-contest-guidelines/
All entries should be original and previously unpublished in an online multimedia literary context. More specifically, if a piece has been shared around a bit or seen moderate traffic on your own personal social media or webpage, that’s ok, but Slippery Elm want work to be generally new to the world and their readers. Substantially altered multimedia works that have previously appeared in print or conventional text-only formats are welcome.Call for work: Native and/or Indigenous storytellers
Rocky Mountain Public Media and KSUT Tribal Radio are launching a new collaborative storytelling project called Native Lens. All filmmakers must identify as Native and/or Indigenous and they are looking for “stories of love, grief, laughter, tradition, art, inspiration, inequity, how life has changed because of COVID-19, or something else entirely”.
Entry is free, films of up to 5 minutes will be considered and there is time to make something completely new because the first deadline is in February 2023. Read more at https://www.rmpbs.org/nativelens/submissions/
Or at https://filmfreeway.com/NativeLen
Films will be shared through the organisers public media platforms.
