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Weimar Poetryfilmtage 2024
This year in person 31 May/1 June, with the online playlists available until 15 June 2024, the festival in Weimar always has a thoughtful and thorough programme of poetry film. It is all very well documented on their website and in a downloadable pdf programme: https://poetryfilmtage.de/
In this year’s prize award the organisers say they received “479 films from 51 different countries … the program commission nominated 12 films for the competition”. But do take a look at what else is on the programme beyond the competition selection.
Poetry Film at UK’s Lyra Bristol Poetry Festival
The Lyra Bristol Poetry Festival is due to begin on 12th April. Do check out our full programme as we have so much going on!
We have two poetry film events which I would love you to be able to see.
If you can’t be in Bristol many of our events, including the Zebra screening, will be live-streamed. Our ‘festival digital pass’ is only £15 and you will be able to view the events online.
The first poetry film event is Cancer Alley, the poetry film immersive hologram which is going to be screened at The Watershed 18-21st April from 10-5pm.
Cancer Alley is an immersive poetry film hologram which features environmental destruction in ‘Cancer Alley’, Louisiana, the heart of the Global petrochemical industry. The project draws attention to the need for multinational companies to take more responsibility for their impact on the environment and the growing public awareness of how people’s lives are affected by extreme pollution. Cancer Alley is free, and is available to view at the Watershed 17-21st April on a continuous loop.
Cancer Alley has been created by poet Lucy English, US filmmakers Pamela Falkenberg and Jack Cochran, and Bristol based company Holotronica.
The second is the curation of films by the Zebra Poetry Film Festival on Saturday 20th April at The Watershed 3-4pm. Haus für Poesie presents a selection of the best films from the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival. The programme shows short films on the subject of “Poetry and Technology”. On the one hand, the poetry films are technically extremely sophisticated or deal with topics such as artificial intelligence, algorithms and social media. The films are based on poems by Jörg Piringer, Raed Wahesh and Yehuda Amichai, among others.
Presented by Thomas Zandgiacomo Del Bel, who will join us for a special in-person Q&A all the way from Berlin.
I look forward to seeing you at the festival in person or virtually! Here’s the link.
Where to watch poetry films in April
April is Poetry Month in the U.S. and Canada, so it’s no surprise that a couple of major poetry film festivals are held then. First up: Houston’s REELPoetry Festival.
Online April 1-5, 2024
In Person April 6-7, 2024
922 Holman St, Houston, TX 77002
REELpoetry/HoustonTX 2024 is an international poetry film Festival. This week long event showcases 100+ screenings under 6 minutes from 20 different countries. Connect with international curators and presenters in real time online, and in-person on the weekend; watch world premieres from Houston creatives; experience ASL poetry and performances; join use for two fabulous after parties.
Then toward the end of the month, it’s Seattle’s Cadence Video Poetry Festival.
Verse meets visuals in motion at Northwest Film Forum (NWFF) in April 2024. Cadence Video Poetry Festival, presented by Northwest Film Forum, programmed in collaboration with Seattle author Chelsea Werner-Jatzke and intermedia artist Rana San, is a series of screenings, workshops, and discussions on the genre of video poetry, taking place annually during National Poetry Month. This year’s festival takes place in-person April 19–21 and online April 19–28. Cadence approaches video poetry as a literary genre presented as visual media, cultivating new meaning from the combination of text and moving image.
In its seventh year, Cadence Video Poetry Festival remains the only festival dedicated to the form in the Pacific Northwest. The festival program includes four themed screenings with works selected from an open call for submissions, including video poetry by the 2024 screening team and jurors.
“This year, we did away with the submission categories the festival has had in place for the last six years. Moving away from submissions organized by how they were made (collaboration, video by poets, etc) places further emphasis on what is being made in the video poetry genre,” says co-director Chelsea Werner-Jatzke. “For the first time, a screening team of prior Cadence Artists-in-Residence helped program the festival, broadening the diversity of perspectives considering the video poetry that is screened as part of Cadence.”
“The 2024 festival includes video poems from 20 countries in 11 languages with a strong Pacific Northwest contingent, a quarter of the works representing artists based in Washington, British Columbia, and Montana,” notes co-director Rana San. “In conjunction with the online and onsite festival screenings and workshops, there will be gatherings for artists and audiences to connect in-person and virtually. We’re also collaborating with Frye Art Museum again to host a special satellite screening and artist discussion in May following the fest.”
Meanwhile, in Weimar, Germany, though details so far remain scant, one is advised on the Poetryfilmtage Instagram account to
SAVE THE DATES – Lit.Collage x Poetryfilmtage 2024
This year we are setting with „Lit.Collage“ a special accent. The collage and poetry festival is combined with our film festival and is meant for those who enjoy experimenting with editing techniques and sharing them with others.
…so as you can see: this year we have a lot more action going on and you can join our festival from the 13th of April till the 1st of June. Make sure you’ll save the dates! 🤩
More details on the individual events will follow soon.
It’s great that people anywhere in the world with a good internet connection can virtually attend these festivals, but I am just as excited by another new trend: more and more general poetry festivals are including film and video in various innovative ways. In Madison, Wisconsin, for example, the Hawthorn Public Library will be screening “some of our favorite video poems featured in the first four years of the Midwest Video Poetry Fest,” and in Newtown, Pennsylvania, poet Vasiliki Katsarou will be screening her feature film Fruitlands 1843. So be sure to support your local poetry scene!
Poetry Film in Conversation: Janet Lees, Lee Campbell and Kathy Gee
This coming Thursday, 14th September at 19:30 BST/14:30 EDT, join Helen Dewbery on Zoom via Eventbrite for the latest installment of the series Poetry Film in Conversation from Poetry Film Live, with support from the Lyra Bristol Poetry Festival. This time she’ll be talking with three poets who make their own poetry films: Kathy Gee, Lee Campbell and Janet Lees, asking about their processes and raising the question “Why make a poetry film?”
Janet Lees is a lens-based artist and poet. Her films have been selected for many festivals and prizes, including the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival, the International Videopoetry Festival and the Aesthetica Art Prize. In 2021 she won the Ó Bhéal International Poetry-Film Competition, and in 2022 her work featured in the landmark exhibition Poets with a Video Camera: Poetry Film 1980 to 2020. Janet’s poetry and art photography have been widely published and exhibited.
Kathy Gee studied history and archaeology, worked as a museum curator, established and directed a regional government agency, ran an independent museum consultancy and retrained as a leadership coach. She is now a poet. Checkout (2019) and Book of Bones (2016) were both published by V. Press. She has been shortlisted in the Ó Bhéal International Poetry-Film Competition.
Dr Lee Campbell’s poetry films have been selected for many international film festivals since 2019. His film SEE ME: A Walk Through London’s Gay Soho 1994 and 2020 (2021) won Best Experimental Film at Ealing Film Festival, London 2022 and shortlisted for Out-Spoken Prize for Poetry 2023 at the Southbank Centre, London in 2023. Insta and Twitter @leejjcampbell
link
Poetry Film in Conversation: Jane Glennie, Rosie Garland and Maria Jastrzębska
The online Poetry Film in Conversation series, hosted by Helen Dewberry, returns on June 8 from 7:30-9:00 PM British Standard Time. Rosie Garland, Maria Jastrzębska and Moving Poems’ own Jane Glennie are her interlocutors, with plans to discuss research, re-imagining and collaboration: “What is the role of the poet? What is the role of the filmmaker? How can we adapt and develop poetry into film?”
Tickets are £6.13 through Eventbrite.
Jane Glennie and Rosie Garland will discuss their collaboration Because Goddess is Never Enough. The work is inspired by dancer Tilly Losch. Maria Jastrzębska will address writing for Snow Q, which re-imagines the Snow Queen story.
Vancouver’s City Poems contest: a model for local poetry-film competitions?
Fiona Tinwei Lam is the current City of Vancouver (Canada) Poet Laureate. She has had a very busy role co-ordinating the City Poems poetry project which aims to foster public engagement with local history and culture through poetry. I am very pleased to say that this project has a very significant poetry film component.
You can watch selections from the competitions while the project is open for the audience awards until 26th May 2023.
You can read more about the project in a short article Fiona wrote about the competition. I hope the project proves a good template for encouraging similar future projects in Canada and elsewhere in the world.
Cadence Video Poetry Festival 2023 – Seattle and online
The 6th Annual Cadence Video Poetry Festival will take place as a hybrid event with screenings in Seattle, and online. There are multiple events in the programme and you can choose between single event tickets or festival passes. The in-person events will be between 27-30 April, while the online programmes will be available for a week longer until 7th May.
There are five intriguing sounding programmes in the festival, including The Edge of Here, The Great Entanglement, and the fantastic title of A Tune to Contain All Your Revolt, as well as a satellite in-person film programme at the Frye Art Museum.
There are also three, live, collaborative workshops with a mixture of in-person, hybrid, and online events.
See the Northwest Film Forum website for more details and a full programme.
REELpoetry 2023: Ecopoetry Films & Subjectivity
Ecopoetry Films & Subjectivity is the title of a group discussion to be given by Ian Gibbins (Australia), Mary McDonald (Canada) and Sarah Tremlett (UK), as part of this year’s REELpoetry, a festival for videopoetry in Houston, USA.
These highly esteemed artists and thinkers will be discussing approaches to making poetry films in relation to the theme of ecopoetry and subjectivity. The full discussion will be streamed at REELpoetry on Sunday 26 February at 6:30-7:15pm (Houston time). The full festival program and more information is here.
The trailer:
New online series ‘Poetry Film in Conversation’ debuts February 9
Poetry Film Live and Lyra Bristol Poetry Festival are holding an online series of events, ‘Poetry Film in Conversation’. The events kick off on February 9th 19.30 (GMT) with Animation, Motion Graphics and Text on Screen. Diek Grobler, Suzie Hanna and Jane Glennie will each give a presentation (Suzie’s will be pre-recorded) followed by a panel discussion chaired by Lucy English, and finishing up with an audience Q&A.
Diek Grobler is an artist working in various media and disciplines. Since 2010 his creative and theoretical focus has been on animated poetry-film. His films have been widely exhibited on international animation festivals, and his work has been shortlisted twice for the Weimar Poetry-film Award. He was awarded a PhD in Art from the University of South Africa and is an independent researcher on Poetry-film and experimental forms of animation.
Jane Glennie is a filmmaker, typographer, and founder of Peculiarity Press. Her films have screened worldwide, featured on www.shondaland.com, and received awards at competitions in the UK, Germany, and USA. Her poetry film with Rosie Garland, funded by Arts Council England, has now been published as a ‘book of the film with extras’.
Suzie Hanna is Emerita Professor of Animation at Norwich University of the Arts. She was Chair of NAHEMI, the National Association for Higher Education in the Moving Image from 2016 – 2019, and remains an honorary member of the executive. As an animator who collaborates with other academics and artists, her research interests include animation, poetry, puppetry and sound design. She has made numerous short films all of which have been selected for international festival screenings, TV broadcast or exhibited in curated shows. She also creates improvised animated projections for live performances of music and poetry. Recent commissions include short films for BBC Ideas and Cambridge University Creative Encounters Programme. She contributes to journals, books and conferences, and has led several innovative projects including online international student collaborations and digital exhibitions of art and poetry on what was Europe’s largest public HiDef screen. She works as a production consultant and as an international academic examiner, and she was a member of the AHRC Peer Review College from 2009-2014.
To book tickets please go to Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/poetry-film-in-conversation-animation-motion-graphics-and-text-on-screen-tickets-516766210647
Festival: Reel Poetry 2023
The Reel Poetry Festival programme for 2023 is now online.
The organisers say:
REELpoetry/HoustonTX 2023 is a four day international, curated, hybrid poetry film/video festival taking place online and in person FEBRUARY 23-26, 2023. In addition to juried open submissions, we also feature programs by invited guest curators & presenters, ASL poetry and performances, craft triads, networking, panels and more.
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.
10th Winter Warmer festival, Ireland and online, 27th November – programme
Ó Bhéal’s 10th International Poetry-Film Competition is happening on Sunday 27th November 2022 at Nano Nagle Place in Cork, Ireland, and will also be live-streamed via their website, Vimeo, Facebook and YouTube as part of the 10th Ó Bhéal Winter Warmer festival.
There are 30 shortlisted films, divided between two screenings at 11.30am and 1pm (UTC). Films were chosen from 173 submissions, and the shortlist represents 17 countries: Australia, Belgium, Canada, England, Germany, Ireland, Isle of Man, Northern Ireland, Philippines, Portugal, South Africa, The Netherlands, Ukraine, UK, USA, Wales and Zimbabwe.
The selected films and the full programme can be previewed at https://www.obheal.ie/blog/competition-poetry-film/poetry-film-shortlist-2022/
This year’s judges Colm Scully and Paul Casey, will select one winner to receive the Ó Bhéal award for best poetry-film, designed by glass artist Michael Ray. The winner will be announced directly after the shortlist screenings at Ó Bhéal’s 2022 Winter Warmer festival.
