News about any and all events in which poetry films/videos are prominently featured, whether or not they include an open competition. Please let us know about any we might miss. And don’t forget to check out our page of links to poetry film festivals. All festivals, events and calls for work are mentioned by MovingPoems 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.
June 27 in Berlin
Lyrikmarkt (Poesiefestival Berlin)
Darüber hinaus werden die besten historischen und internationalen Poesiefilme, unter anderem von Paul Bogaert, Kristian Pedersen, John Albert Jansen, Marie Silkeberg, Ghayath Almadhoun, Eleni Gioti, Hubert Sielecki, Man Ray, Paul Desnos und Gerhard Rühm zu sehen sein.
July 6-11 in London
Ross Sutherland’s “Standby For Tape Back-Up” at the Soho Theatre
After a hard-drive crash and a near death experience, Ross Sutherland found himself house-bound with only one thing for company: an old videotape that once belonged to his granddad.
Over the months that followed, Ross memorised every second of the tape. Slowly, he learnt how to manipulate the images into telling the story of his life. The videotape allowed Ross to open a dialogue with his late grandfather, and eventually helped him confront the illness that had nearly ended his life.
The true story of one man’s journey into synchronicity and madness.
July 11 in Penzance, UK
PoetryFilm Penzance
“A screening of poetry films curated and presented by Zata Banks” at the Penzance Literary Festival in Cornwall.
July 16 in Reykjavik
PoetryFilm Reykjavik
“A screening of poetry films and live performances curated and presented by Zata Banks” at Mengi.
Last week I had the opportunity to visit Tampere, Finland. The Annikki Poetry Festival had invited me to give a workshop on videopoetry (as well as do a short live reading). The festival asked J.P. Sipilä to select a collection of videopoetry to showcase, and he suggested a workshop by Swoon.
Invitations like these are hard to decline and I want to say thanks to J.P. and to Simo Ollila for getting me there.
The objective beforehand was to create a few brand-new videopoems in one day. First I showed some examples of videopoetry and talked about the genre a bit—not too long, though. Doing it is the best way to learn in my opinion.
Experimenting is fun; I showed eight small, one-minute films (animation, film, archive, abstract…) in a loop, asking every participant to write one line (sentence, word, etc.) inspired by each minute of film. So everyone had an eight-line ‘poem’. I made them all pick out one of the minute-long films and let them read their lines aloud during that film. The others could observe, look and listen. It’s a fun exercise to create something ‘right there, right now’. Words suddenly fit a certain shot (though not written for that image). The participants get to experience the importance of timing, the power of coincidence, and, hopefully, the fun of playing with words and images.
After that, four groups were formed to work on projects of their own, making sure each group had someone familiar with film and/or video and someone willing to write. I kicked them out of the classroom with two tasks: go out, film, write, have fun… and come back with two minutes of film and a short poem/text to go with that.
Once they were back they started to combine and collect all the material. Choices were made about which visuals to use, while others started to write (inspired by those choices and the things they saw outside). Music and readings were recorded. Each project was scripted out for me to edit.
The room was buzzing. It’s a joy to experience that.
Time’s up!
At night in my hotel room, I edited three of the four videos, following the instructions and scripts the groups had provided me with. The last one was edited by the group at their school/home.
I must say I am very pleased with how it all worked out. Enjoy!
Read a longer account of the whole festival at my blog.
June 5 in Tampere, Finland
Video Poetry Workshop by Swoon (fully booked)
During the workshop day attendees will compose one finished video poem, which will be presented the next day during the video poetry showcase at the Annikki Poetry Festival.
June 6 in Tampere, Finland
Video Poetry Showcase @ Annikki Poetry Festival
Finnish videopoet J.P. Sipilä has curated a videopoetry showcase for the festival. He has selected ten interesting videopoems from artists around the world.
The video poems will be shown nonstop in the underground gallery from 11 am to 8 pm.
June 6 in Boston
Martha McCollough videopoem screening at Away Mission Opening Reception, Atlantic Works Gallery
Martha McCollough ventures into new media (macro lens photography,) new subject (text as image,) and new scale. She will also be showing several video poems. McCollough is a videographer and writer who lives in Chelsea, Massachusetts. Her videopoems have been exhibited internationally, and have appeared in Triquarterly, Rattapallax, and El Aleph
June 8 in Rotterdam
Poetry on / as Film with IFFR @ 46th Poetry International Festival Rotterdam
On Monday, 8 June, Poetry International and the International Film Festival Rotterdam jointly present, for the first time, an evening film program at Cinerama. Poetry on / as Film includes the premieres of two exceptional poet-documentaries: John Albert Jansen brings the life of German-Romanian Nobel Prize winner Herta Müller to the screen, and Wim Brands and Peter Gielissen compose a poignant portrait of the Dutch poet Roni Wieg. Additionally, under the name Poetry Shorts, a selection of short films and animated poems will be screened, including work from the festival poets Tonnus Oosterhoff, Pierre Alferi and Yanko González.
I see that the festival also has a brief video trailer.
June 10, 17, 24 & July 1 in Buenos Aires
Seminario de Videopoesía. Un lenguaje entre la palabra, el sonido y la imagen en movimiento.
Four-week course taught by Javier Robledo. Registration closes June 8.
June 13 in London
Mahu in Video at the Hardy Tree Gallery.
The emerging medium of poetry film or cinepoetry, crossing poetic principles with video art has often been overtaken by limited, dualistic collaborations. This evening aims to screen the more complex understandings of this new potentiality, another weapon in the pocket of the contemporary poet – the moving image. Co-curated by Dave Spittle & Gareth Evans
– Films from Joshua Alexander, David Kelly-Mancaux, Simon Barraclough, Caroline Alice Lopez, Robert Herbert McClean & more
June 18-19 in Montpellier, France
PoeTransFi (Poetry/Translation/Film – Poésie/Traduction/Film) Conference
The aim of this conference, which could also be entitled “The film as poem, the poem as film: A spectrum of translations”, is to revisit the inter-relations between poetry and film, envisaged under the angle of translation, in a broad sense of the term. We would like to pay special attention to questions of rhythm and montage, starting from the work of film directors and film editors who wrote about the topic in recent years, particularly Andrei Tarkovsky and Walter Murch.
June 21 in London
PoetryFilm Solstice at The Groucho Club.
Submissions may still be welcome for this event. Here are the guidelines.
A late addition to the June calendar of videopoetry and poetry-film events. This is the press release by Simo Ollila, the festival producer:
Video Poetry Showcase @ Annikki Poetry Festival on June 6th 2015 in Tampere, Finland
The festival program of 12th annual Annikki Poetry Festival on June 6th 2015 in Tampere, Finland features a special program dedicated to video poetry. The Video Poetry Showcase’s curator, J.P. Sipilä, is responsible for picking the videos shown, which will include classic works of video poetry from the 1970s to today. The video poems will be shown non-stop in the underground gallery throughout the festival.
THE ARTISTS
The artists featured in the Video Poetry Showcase are Artürs Punte (Lithuania), Kristian Pedersen (Norway), Alice Lyons (USA/Ireland), Vessela Dantcheva (Bulgaria), Mariano Rentería Garnica & Raúl Calderón Gordillo (Mexico), Machine Libertine (Russia), Tom Konyves (Canada), Swoon (Netherlands), J.P. Sipilä (Finland) and Jana Irmert (Germany). Read more of the artists: www.annikinkatu.net/runofestivaali/video-poetry-showcase.htm
CURATOR J.P. SIPILÄ:
The Video Poetry Showcase’s curator J.P. Sipilä: “For me video poetry is a genre of poetry where the complete work creates a new overall poetic experience by applying and mixing the elements of film, sound and text. All these ten videopoems present an interesting mixture of the elements,” Sipilä says.
“In the last ten years video poetry has really become more and more known genre of poetry. I would say that it is blooming in all the corners of the world. And I am very happy to see that Annikki Poetry Festival asked me to make this selection for this year’s festival. Video poetry is still a small genre in Finland, but this just might be a beginning of something great…”
VIDEO POETRY WORKSHOP BY SWOON
As part of the festival a free video poetry workshop will be organized on Friday, June 5th. The workshop will be held by Swoon, a.k.a. Marc Neys from Belgium, who is one of the world’s most renowned video poets. During the workshop day attendees will compose one finished video poem, which will be presented the next day during the video poetry showcase at the Annikki Poetry Festival. Read more: www.annikinkatu.net/runofestivaali/video-poetry-workshop.htm
THE ANNIKKI INTERNATIONAL POETRY FESTIVAL
The Annikki Poetry Festival (est. 2003) has grown to be one of Finland’s foremost poetry events. The festival’s focus is still on poetry, although it has expanded to also include prose, music and the visual arts. Annikki Poetry Festival will be held in the courtyard of the wooden Annikki district in Tampere, Finland on June 6, 2015. The festival’s theme this year is Word Roots. This means that the many events of the festival will reflect on the beginnings and roots of poetry and all verbal art, with folklore being an important focal point. The program features Jamaican dub poetry pioneer Mutabaruka. Read more: www.annikinkatu.net/runofestivaali/english.htm
May 21 in Minneapolis
Motionpoems Season 6 World Premiere.
Two screenings: 6:00pm and 8:00pm with a half-hour panel discussion taking place after the 6 pm screening. Each screening will last less than 60 minutes and will be hosted by Motionpoems Artistic Director Todd Boss and MPR ‘movie maven’ Stephanie Curtis. Many featured poets and filmmakers will be on hand. It’ll be a night of great poetry brought to cinematic life!
May 24 in Edinburgh
Filmpoem Festival Fifteen at Hidden Door.
Filmpoem Festival 15 will be an open-ended series of events and screenings. After our successful Antwerp festival in 2014, we are working this year with The Poetry Society and a series of universities and poetry festivals, presenting Filmpoem’s established mix of poetryfilm, live film performance, poets, filmmakers, and discussions.
May 28 in Lublin, Poland
A screening of films from the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival as part of Festiwal Miasto Poezji (City of Poetry Festival).
June 13 in London
Mahu in Video at the Hardy Tree Gallery.
The emerging medium of poetry film or cinepoetry, crossing poetic principles with video art has often been overtaken by limited, dualistic collaborations. This evening aims to screen the more complex understandings of this new potentiality, another weapon in the pocket of the contemporary poet – the moving image. Co-curated by Dave Spittle & Gareth Evans
– Films from Joshua Alexander, David Kelly-Mancaux, Simon Barraclough, Caroline Alice Lopez, Robert Herbert McClean & more
June 21 in London
PoetryFilm Solstice at The Groucho Club.
Submissions are now being considered for this event, the post says. Here are the guidelines.
Please note that, contrary to what I had previously suggested here, the Laugharne Castle Poetry and Film Festival does NOT appear to be happening this year. (I had mis-read the website.)
As reported last week, this is coming up on Wednesday:
May 6 in Münster
Best of ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival 2014: AUSLESE. The third of three events presented by Filmwerkstatt Münster in the Palace Theatre, compiled and moderated by the ZEBRA program director Thomas Zandegiacomo Del Bel.
Aus den Einsendungen des ZEBRA 2014 präsentieren wir das breite Spektrum des deutschen und internationalen Poesiefilms. Krisen, Sehnsüchte, Angst, Lust und Liebe bilden eine gelungene Mischung.
I’ve also learned of two more screenings to be held on the following days:
May 7 in Weimar
ESP//Babelsprech//Poetryfilmkanal Poesie-Film-Performance
Poesie-Film-Performance
Filme: Meng Chang, Katharina Merten, Eva-Maria Arndt, Juliane Jaschnow
Lesung: Daniel Schmidt, Antje Kersten
Performance: Oravin, Zuzana Husárová, Amalia Roxana Filip
Moderation: Max Czollek & Aline Helmcke
May 8 in Leeds
Words In Motion – an evening of video poetry and performance
Leeds launch of Paisley Quilt and Pillion by Bristol film-maker Pru Fowler and Leeds poet Becky Cherriman. Introduced by Siobhan MacMahon with a special showing of her film Forgotten Memory. Features performances by poets Michelle Scally Clarke, Antony Dunn and Char March, and an open mic element.
The Vienna-based Art Visuals & Poetry Film Festival has opened submissions to their 2015 competition — but only to residents of Austria, Germany and Switzerland, or filmmakers with citizenship in those countries. A more international “special prize” can’t be given this year for budgetary reasons, they say; focusing on the three German-speaking countries (rather than just Austria) for the main competition is therefore a compromise. (Or so I gather from Google’s not terribly adequate machine translation.) A grand prize winner will be awarded 400 Euros, and announcements of other prizes will be forthcoming.
The festival is also moving to a new venue this year: METRO Kinokulturhaus, “one of the most beautiful cinemas in Vienna.” An exact date has yet to be announced.
Submissions are through an online form, and the deadline is September 15.
This is everything I have a date and link for at present. (Upcoming events for PoetryFilm also include a “PoetryFilm event at The Groucho Club, London (UK)” sometime in May.)
All month (through June 7) in Taichung, Taiwan
TYPEMOTION: Type as Image in Motion exhibition.
All month (through July 5) in Montreal
Carrefour Vidéo-poétique video installation.
May 6 in Münster
Best of ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival 2014: AUSLESE. The third of three events presented by Filmwerkstatt Münster in the Palace Theatre, compiled and moderated by the ZEBRA program director Thomas Zandegiacomo Del Bel.
Aus den Einsendungen des ZEBRA 2014 präsentieren wir das breite Spektrum des deutschen und internationalen Poesiefilms. Krisen, Sehnsüchte, Angst, Lust und Liebe bilden eine gelungene Mischung.
May 21 in Minneapolis
Motionpoems Season 6 World Premiere.
For season 6, we’ve partnered with VIDA: Women in Literary Arts to produce a season by incredible female poets and a diverse array of amazing independent filmmakers from around the world.
We’ll premiere them for the first time on the big screen at the Walker Art Center Cinema in Minneapolis on May 21, and you’re invited.
Two screenings: 6:00pm and 8:00pm with a half-hour panel discussion taking place after the 6 pm screening. Each screening will last less than 60 minutes and will be hosted by Motionpoems Artistic Director Todd Boss. Many featured poets and filmmakers will be on hand. It’ll be a night of great poetry brought to cinematic life!
For more information (including a list of all 20 films), see the Motionpoems news page.
May 24 in Edinburgh
Filmpoem Festival Fifteen at Hidden Door.
Filmpoem Festival 15 will be an open-ended series of events and screenings. After our successful Antwerp festival in 2014, we are working this year with The Poetry Society and a series of universities and poetry festivals, presenting Filmpoem’s established mix of poetryfilm, live film performance, poets, filmmakers, and discussions.
Two calls for work previously announced here are closing in early May, while a third stays open until July 1, allowing a little more time for procrastinators (in whose company I proudly include myself). Those submission deadlines:
In the much longer term, submissions to Carbon Culture‘s $1000 poetry film prize are open until January 1. But there’s been a little more information about it since I originally posted their call:
Zata Kitowski, director of PoetryFilm, will pick the grand prize winner and finalists. The winning entry will receive $1,000.00. The top five entries will receive high-profile placements across a number of networks, note in a one page ad alongside honorable mentions in our newsstand print and device editions. All entries are considered for sponsored entry to our list of film festivals and poetry film festivals.
And speaking of Zata Banks (née Kitowski), it’s worth pointing out that submissions to PoetryFilm never close — there’s no deadline whatsoever. Which does put us procrastinators in a bit of a bind.
Hidden Door is “a not for profit arts festival that takes place in abandoned or hidden places in Edinburgh,” and this year “will be transforming another venue and providing a unique mix of visual art, music, theatre, dance and cinema,” including a programme of poetry films from Filmpoem, from Friday May 22nd through Saturday May 30th. If you’d like to help support them, they’re looking for sponsors, and they’re also trying to raise £8500 through a crowdfunding campaign.
What we are trying to do is incredibly ambitious – 60 visual arts installations, 20 theatre productions, a cinema programme and live music programme every night. It’s a chance for emerging and established artists to do something completely new, to push their creativity to the limits and welcome new audiences in the thousands to be inspired by the extraordinary world that we will create for these 9 days.
We need to raise around £80k in total purely from ticket & bar sales to the festival and our own fundraising efforts. This all goes towards regenerating the site (an incredible but currently derelict secret courtyard location in the Grassmarket!) and covering the essential costs of putting on the festival – such as generators and electricity, materials for the installations, equipment for music & theatre performances, projectors, toilets, licenses and everything else involved in putting a festival on in a new and disused venue like this.
California poet Nicelle Davis is on a mission to make poetry events more vital and more carnivalesque. Regular Moving Poems readers will recognize her as a collaborator on videopoems with Cheryl Gross and Anita Clearfield and an advocate for the genre generally. But her passion for finding fun and innovative ways to spread her love of poetry extends well beyond film. For several years now, she’s been doing community poetry-promotion events under the umbrella of the Living Poetry Project, and with the publication of her latest book, In the Circus of You, she felt inspired to launch her most ambitious project yet: a real, live poetry circus on February 28th at the People’s Park in Los Angeles, featuring a poetry merry-go-round, circus acts, kid crafts, and magic shows. It was, by all accounts, a huge success.
Now Nicelle’s looking ahead: “To fund a Summer of Circus!” Depending on the response to her crowd-funding campaign, the Poetry Circus could come to Colorado, Utah, Minneapolis, and San Diego — as well as making a return visit to Los Angeles in September. And “between these larger events I would like to host ‘sideshows’ which I call the GWHO Poetry Parties; the GWHO Poetry Parties are geeky burlesque-like shows that feature poetry focused on the freaky aspects of being human.” It all sounds pretty amazing, but what about poetry film? Nicelle responded in an email:
SURE! We can show films at the Poetry Circus… in fact I know just the Circus Theater for a poetry film festival. I love the idea of layering film with performance. Something like this or this explained like this.
The basic philosophy behind the Poetry Circus is very attractive indeed:
The Poetry Circus is part workshop, community outreach, performance, ride, dance, and creations. This community focused and driven event blurs the line between performer and audience to allow everyone the chance to run away and join the circus.
By presenting poetry in an alternative venue, the egalitarian characteristics of poetry are amplified. Poetry IS for everyone, regardless of where we come from or how we got there; we all process and understand the world through metaphor.
Read more (and consider making a donation).
Back on March 7, I posted a list of poetry-film screenings and festivals for the spring in which I lamented the apparent lack of events in April. Since then, I’ve learned about quite a few, thanks to web and Facebook postings from Zata Banks (nee Kitowski), Thomas Zandegiacomo Del Bel, and Helen Dewbery.
11 April in Swindon, UK
Poetry Film Workshop with Chaucer Cameron and Helen Dewbery. According to the Facebook event page, there were only eight places available as of March 22, so don’t delay if you’re interested in signing up.
The objective is for participants to create a poetry film.
Part One: Short introduction on the history of film poetry with examples.
Part Two: Exercises using sound, words and images.
Part Three: Creating a film poem using newly created poetry and images.
Equipment: participants bring their own laptop, camera/phone if they have them.
With permission, and if suitable, the films will be shown at this year’s Poetry Swindon Festival in the Central Library on National Poetry Day (1st October 2015)
17 April in Hawick, Scotland
TRANSMUTATIONS programme at Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival.
Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival and Zata Kitowski from PoetryFilm have co-curated this special screening, mixing films from our open submissions with classics of the genre. It features a diverse selection of film artworks, chosen for their alignment with poetry, with poetic structures, with poetic experiences, and with the visual, verbal and aural languages of poetry in various forms. The 45 minute screening will be followed by a 15 minute Q&A with some of the filmmakers, including Richard Bailey (USA) and Sean Martin (UK).
20-24 April in Münster
Poetry Film – Seminar mit Daniel Huhn & Julian Isfort. It’s great to see these workshops cropping up. This one, sponsored by Filmwerkstatt Münster, sounds very intensive, a five-day-long seminar with basic filmmaking knowledge recommended for participants.
22 April in Münster
Best of ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival 2014: HEIMATKLÄNGE. The first of three events presented by Filmwerkstatt Münster in the Palace Theatre, each consisting of two, 45-minute screenings on a given theme, compiled and moderated by the ZEBRA program director Thomas Zandegiacomo Del Bel. (The others are on 29 April—see below—and May 6.) The description for the first one reads:
Der deutschsprachige Raum ist bekannt für seine mannigfaltige Dichtkunst. Konkrete, Digitale und Lautpoesie, Naturlyrik oder Lieder beweisen: Die Varianten sind schier unbegrenzt.
23 April – 5 July in Montreal
Carrefour Vidéo-poétique. A very cool-sounding video installation featuring videopoems from Québec and the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival.
The Goethe-Institut and Vidéographe are pleased to collaborate on Carrefour vidéo-poétique, a video installation presented in the windows of the Goethe-Institut from April 23 to July 5, every evening from sunset to midnight.
This presentation of video-poems aims to offer a fresh perspective and a new way of hearing contemporary poetry, in addition to innovating on how it’s disseminated: Video becomes a new means of spreading the word, thereby making poetry accessible to the general public.
24-26 April in Athens
PoetryFilm programme on body and gender identity at sound acts.
sound acts will be the first such event in Greece, introducing the athenian audience to work not frequently seen and hopefully opening a dialogue about gender and identity politics within sound production.
25-26 in Wenlock, UK.
PoetryFilm at the Wenlock Poetry Festival
For the Wenlock Poetry Festival, PoetryFilm is contributing a curated programme of ten short poetry films, which will be played on a loop at The Edge cinema venue. A real festival first!
29 April in Münster
Best of ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival 2014: TANZREIME.
Tanz und Musik schwingen im Dreiklang mit der Lyrik. Moderne Rhythmen interpretieren bekannte Gedichte, ausdrucksstarke Tänze und Performances vermitteln uns die geballte Kraft der Sprache.
UPDATE: Visible Verse will continue after all!
Vancouver’s long-running Visible Verse Festival, which justly described itself as “North America’s sustaining venue for the presentation of new and artistically significant videopoetry and film,” is coming to a close. Festival organizer Heather Haley first mentioned the likelihood of discontinuing it in an update to her personal Facebook page last fall, after the successful completion of the 2014 festival. She’s now made it official with a post to the Visible Verse Facebook group:
It is with great sadness that I must inform you, my fellow videopoem and poetry film aficionados, that the Visible Verse Festival is coming to a close. My circumstances have changed drastically in the past few years and I can no longer afford to donate my time, especially as the work load, along with the festival, continues to grow. I now have a *real job,* rather a crappy job but one has to pay the bills, so neither do I have time to seek funding or find a sponsor. I am very grateful to the Cinematheque’s volunteers and staff, especially Artistic Director Jim Sinclair. We had a great run! I will keep this group page up, please feel free to continue posting and sharing.
Originally known as the Vancouver Videopoem Festival, it had its first run in 1999, found a home at The Cinematheque the following year, and ran every year since, with Haley doing most of the work single-handedly. Historically speaking, along with VideoBardo in Buenos Aires (biannual since 1996), Visible Verse bridged the gap between the Poetry Film Festival/Cin(E)-Poetry Festival in San Francisco—the world’s first poetry film festival, which ran from 1975 to 1998—and ZEBRA, PoetryFilm, TARP, Sadho, and all the other poetry-film festivals and organizations that sprang up in the new millennium. Haley also helped set the tone for many of these later festivals with her eclectic and inclusive approach to programming, representing mainstream, avant-garde, and spoken-word communities in roughly equal measure. She was a major inspiration for Moving Poems, as well. Visible Verse will be missed, but here’s hoping that Haley continues to direct her own poetry films and collaborate with other filmmakers as time permits.