~ 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 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.
Call for work: REELpoetry/HoustonTX 2023
REELpoetry/HoustonTX 2023 is accepting submissions on FilmFreeway.
POETRY combined with film and video propels “REELpoetry/HoustonTX” 2023, an international, curated, hybrid poetry film festival taking place online and in person FEBRUARY 24-26, 2023 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 poetry film/ video festival is not themed. Everyone is invited to submit their best work, created in the past or the present, up to a maximum of 6 minutes. Prizes will be awarded in two categories: poetry film/ videos under 4 minutes and poetry film/ video 4 to 6 minutes. See Guidelines for additional details.
REELpoetry/HoustonTX is a project of Public Poetry (publicpoetry.net).
Public Poetry director Fran Sanders elaborated in an email:
In 2023, in addition to juried open submissions, programs by curators/presenters, trio talks on craft and a panel discussion, we will be significantly expanding our offerings for the deaf and hard of hearing, with ASL poets and poetry and English/ASL interpreters so it is accessible to everyone. We have an outstanding all-deaf committee doing the programming, including Peter Cook, Sabina England, Crom Saunders among others.
Given the way the world is, I don’t feel comfortable asking people to travel to Houston if they live any distance away, so the 2023 Festival will be largely online. However, there will be multiple opportunities for interaction on Zoom in real time each day of the festival. For local audiences here will be some in-person events that feature Houston and Texas makers. Everything will be streamed to accommodate international time zones.
Huge kudos to the organizers for taking accessibility so seriously, and best of luck to everyone who enters. Visit FilmFreeway for complete rules and guidelines.
Call for work: International Migration and Environmental Film Festival, Toronto, Canada
Still time to submit to the International Migration and Environmental Film Festival (IMEFF) – a not-for-profit cultural organization, that raises awareness about migration and environmental issues. They say that:
“IMEFF is dedicated to presenting the best of international film, documentary, photo and artwork that captures migration, trafficking, refugees, pollution, habitat loss, climate change, to educate, entertain, inform and encourage conversations, provokes debate about changes, innovation, sustainability and how to make the world a better place for every creature.”
The event takes place 10-16 October 2022 in Toronto, and last date for entries via FilmFreeway is on 31st August. There are a range of categories for entry in the festival, but includes a specific poetry category.
Call for work: World Poetry Slam Championship – Brussels, Belgium
A big poetry slam championship is announcing that they are looking for poetry films to showcase alongside the poetry slam which takes place in Brussels, Belgium from the 26th to the 29th of September 2022. It sounds as if they are exploring a variety of ways to screen films alongside the live event in Brussels.
“… we are going to collaborate with one of the most beautiful libraries in Brussels, Muntpunt, where we will have most of our side activities and a box for projections where people can enter and watch video poetry and spoken word video performances from around the world. We also collaborate with Cine Ritcs where we will screenplay the documentaries and some of the videos selected. Moreover, we will have various points in our venues with small screens where people will be able to stop and watch the videos selected. We are still looking for more spaces to project these videos.”
More details on their website https://www.worldpoetryslam.org/open-call-video-poetry
And on the FilmFreeway submission page https://filmfreeway.com/WorldPoetrySlamChampionship
Deadline is 10th August for films of 7 minutes or less, but really important to note is the requirement for subtitles for inclusivity:
“All films should be subtitled either in English, or Dutch or French or Spanish. The film can be in any language as long as there are subtitles in one of these languages. Even the videos in English should have subtitles, as this is an inclusive festival.”
Call for work: Nature and Culture, Denmark
Det Poetiske Fonotek – a festival in Copenhagen, Denmark, is open for entries:
“poems in every language, from every nation and in all poetic / performative styles, with the theme of CLIMATE CHANGE, environment, nature, and in connection to this how we envision the future.”
The organisers also operate an online archive:
“… the poetry videos submitted will be also added to the Poetic Phonotheque, an online archive that aims to document the poetry being created all around the world.”
More information on their website https://poeticphonotheque.com/ where you can also explore other films and listen to poetry. Entries to the festival can be made on FilmFreeway. Regular deadline 20 July, latest deadline 20 September. The event is planned for 21–30 October 2022.
