~ festivals and other screening events ~
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.
New directories: poetry film festivals, and free-to-use audio and video
I’ve just posted two new pages of resources for videopoem and poetry-film makers.
The Poetry film festival list includes websites and, where available, Facebook pages for regularly occurring poetry film festivals. Left off the list, at least for now, are all the more general film festivals to which poetry films might be submitted.
Web resources for videopoem makers includes information on determining what’s free to use, as well as links to free and Creative Commons-licensed film and video, spoken word, sound and music collections. I also include a link to the software I use for downloading videos from the web, but I welcome other suggestions.
Please use the comments here or at the respective pages to alert me about other links I should include. I would also encourage people who regularly use Creative Commons-licensed material to follow the Golden Rule and apply a “copyleft” license to your own work, as well. (I don’t always remember to do this myself, but I should.)
Advance screening of Korean film Poetry in NYC Feb. 9
The following press release from Poets House just came over the transom, and I thought it might be of interest to those in the New York City area. —Dave
Poets House is delighted to present an advance screening of the new, award-winning Korean film Poetry with an introduction and discussion by film critic Michael Atkinson. A reception to follow.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011, 6pm
Poets House, 10 River Terrace, at Murray Street
This event is FREE FOR POETS HOUSE MEMBERS. To renew your Poets House membership, click here. $10 for the general public.
RSVP by Friday, February 4, 2011 to rsvp@poetshouse.org or by phone 212-431-7920, ext. 2832. (Email strongly preferred.)
Advance praise for the film Poetry
“An extraordinary vision of human empathy.” – Manohla Dargis, The New York Times
“A life-size movie about loss and self-discovery.” – Wesley Morris, The Boston Globe
Acclaimed Korean director Lee Chang-dong (“a major figure in world cinema” – The New York Times) follows his award-winning Secret Sunshine with the story of another woman raising a child on her own.
Mija (an extraordinary performance by veteran actress Yun Jung-hee) is a proper, sixty-ish woman struggling to provide for her adolescent grandson. Faced with the discovery of a heinous family crime, she finds strength and purpose upon enrolling in a poetry class — a creative process that allows her to understand and escape her own pain.
Best Screenplay winner at the Cannes International Film Festival and an official selection at the New York, Toronto and Telluride Film Festivals, Poetry is a masterful study of the subtle empowerment of an indefatigable woman.
Poetry opens in New York City on February 11. Click here for the film’s official page.
MICHAEL ATKINSON is a former film critic for The Village Voice and has written for The Believer, Spin, Details, LA Weekly, The Boston Phoenix, The Stranger, Interview, and more. He is also the author of five books, and he lectures on film history and screenwriting at C.W. Post/Long Island University and New York University.
2011 Visible Verse Festival Call for Entries and Official Guidelines
- Visible Verse seeks videopoems, with a 15 minutes maximum duration.
- Either official language of Canada is acceptable, though if the video is in French, an English-dubbed or-subtitled version is required for consideration. Videos may originate in any part of the world.
- Works will be judged by their innovation, cohesion and literary merit. The ideal videopoem is a wedding of word and image, the voice seen as well as heard.
- Please, do not send documentaries as they are outside the featured genre.
- Videopoem producers should provide a brief bio, full name, and contact information in a cover letter. There is no official application form nor entry fee.
Send, at your own risk, videopoems and poetry films/preview copies (which cannot be returned) in DVD NTSC format to: VISIBLE VERSE c/o Pacific Cinémathèque, 200-1131 Howe Street, Vancouver, BC, V6Z 2L7, Canada. Selected artists will be notified and receive a standard screening fee.
For more information contact host and curator Heather Haley at hshaley[at]emspace[dot]com or visit the website.
Heather Haley reports on Visible Verse festival
The organizer and instigator of Visible Verse blogs about this year’s special restropective of the first ten years of what has become the premiere videopoetry event in North America. A sample:
Friday night’s Vancouver Videopoem Festival 1999-2002 retrospective screening was the biggest challenge as we had to mediate the clunkiest and oldest formats: ¾ inch tape and beta. I rolled up my sleeves and got down to business around 9 AM. At 6, PC Art Director Steve Chow expressed shock that I was still there. “Real time, my man!” I said. “No way around it. And remind me never to do this ever again.” It was nerve wracking!
New Poetry in Film Festival debuts in Melbourne
Last Sunday I happened on the website of the Poetry in Film Festival — as it happened, the very day the festival was to be held. It sounds really neat. The unique thing about it was that all contestants were given the very same poem to interpret: “The Briefcase Phenomenon,” by Libby Hart. Films had to be between 4 minutes and 7 minutes in length, and could be in “any genre including drama, comedy, horror, sci-fi, documentary, music video, animation or experimental. Words from the poem can be used within the film but this is not a requirement.” (See the complete rules.) Judging by the brief descriptions, the finalists seem quite different from one another.
With sponsorship from the Australian Poetry Centre, ABC Radio National, and a major Australian movie theater chain, this hardly sounds like a fringe event. However, a Google news search turns up no coverage of it whatsoever. I hope it was a success.
New “motionpoems” to be unveiled October 8 in Minneapolis
“Motionpoems” is the term preferred by filmmaker Angella Kassube and poet Todd Boss at motionpoems.com for what the rest of us variously call videopoems, film poems, cinepoetry, etc. Kassube and Boss are responsible for a number of quite lovely films illustrating not only Boss’s own poems, but a growing number of others’ as well. They’re helping to raise the bar for mainstream poetry animation in the U.S.
Click through to their website for a description of the upcoming screening event (which I can’t copy-and-paste from or directly link to because it’s a Flash-based site). The list of films to be screened looks tantalizing — poems by Jane Hirshfield, Terese Svoboda, Alicia Ostriker, Thomas Lux, and Robert Bly are among those featured. I hope we can expect to see them at motionpoems.com and on YouTube after their Minneapolis debut.
(Update) Angella Kassube provided some additional detail about the event in an email. She wrote:
The really groovy thing about our screening is it is actually a great discussion about poetry and interpreting poetry. Everyone talks about how their piece came together, the audience is engaged and they ask great questions and have great comments. It’s an incredible evening—we expect about 150 people to be there.
“It is a lot of work,” she added about the motionpoems project in general, “but Todd and I just keep going.” I hope anyone in the upper Midwest who can make this screening will turn out and support them.
Congratulations to Alastair Cook for having two of his videopoems selected for the 5th ZEBRA Poetry film Festival in Berlin, which will be held October 14-17. Both films have been featured at Moving Poems: “Emily Melting” (a poem by Gerard Rudolf) and “Scene” (a poem by Morgan Downie).
SEE THE VOICE: Visible Verse Call for Entries
Heather Haley sent along this press release:
SEE THE VOICE – Visible Verse 10th Anniversary Celebration & Festival Call for Entries and Official Guidelines
Please send in your videopoem by Sept. 1, 2010.
- Visible Verse seeks videopoems, with a 15 minutes maximum duration.
- Either official language of Canada is acceptable, though if the video is in French, an English-dubbed or -subtitled version is required for consideration. Videos may originate in any part of the world.
- Works will be judged by their innovation, cohesion and literary merit. The ideal videopoem is a wedding of word and image, the voice seen as well as heard.
- Please, do not send documentaries as they are outside the featured genre.
- Videopoem producers should provide a brief bio, full name, and contact information in a cover letter. There is no official application form nor entry fee.
Send, at your own risk, videopoems and poetry films/preview copies (which cannot be returned) in DVD NTSC format to: VISIBLE VERSE c/o Pacific Cinémathèque, 200-1131 Howe Street, Vancouver, BC, V6Z 2L7, Canada. Selected artists will be notified and receive a standard screening fee.
For more information, see below, or contact Heather Haley at: hshaley@emspace.com
In 1999 the Vancouver Videopoem Festival, the first of its kind in Canada, began as an effort of the Edgewise ElectroLit Centre, a non-profit literary arts organization dedicated to expanding the reach of poetry through new media with programs such as Telepoetics Vancouver and the Edgewise Café electronic magazine. The VVF became critically regarded owing to its progressive regard for spoken word in cinema, presenting poets both in performance and on the big screen. The audience could explore the merits and distinctions of poetry rendered in these two forms, stage and screen, sparking new dialogue as to the essential nature of poetry. The festival then built upon that foundation, with widened explorations into poetry cinema across national frontiers. They presented significant new works from Europe and the Americas, and continued to offer Canadian audiences a remarkably broad selection of new videopoems from their own country.
Pacific Cinémathèque has been the VVF’s partner since 2000 and throughout the dissolution of the Edgewise. Founder Heather Haley continues to provide a sustaining venue for the presentation of new and artistically significant videopoetry as host and curator of SEE THE VOICE: Visible Verse. And owing to Vancouver’s strength in the film and television production industries, Haley has been able to cultivate critical interest between filmmakers and poets, with positive consequences for both.
To celebrate entering their second decade of showcasing videopoetry, Haley and the Pacific Cinémathèque are presenting two screenings this year as well as poetry performances, a panel discussion and an awards gala, Friday Nov. 19 and Saturday Nov. 20.
Festivals with Videopoetry
Biannual festival Zebra in Germany http://www.literaturwerkstatt.org/
VideoBardo In Argentina http://www.videopoesia.com/
(I am having a difficult time finding annual or biannual festivals. Seems most are one-offs and it’s not always easy to find the year on the webpage. A lot of information out there is terribly outdated.)
Short poetry film up for award at Cannes
First – wonderful job getting this forum up and running Dave! I hope to be a regular contributor.
Second – A wonderful, funny short poetry film is up for an award at Cannes. Poetry by Luke Wright, a young gun in the UK poetry scene and narrated by David Soul, of Miami Vice fame, it tells the story of ex-stuntman, Larry LeTan. Check it out on YouTube : Crash! Bang! Wallow?
If you like it, vote ‘Like’ – the prize is based on votes! It would be wonderful for poetry to win at Cannes!!
