~ 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.

The “weeCinema” pop-up theater: a unique Kickstarter campaign and call for poetry-film submissions

Todd Boss and Motionpoems have come up with a proposal that’s hard not to fall in love with: a portable, miniature theater made from a shipping container, with a translucent screen at the back so that films will also be viewable from the outside (in reverse), turning the theater into a lightbox at night. It’s especially designed with continuously looping programs of short films in mind.

It could stand as an alternative to the big chain theater experience, where you’re just another member of the herd, moving through the box office. It could create an entirely different kind of intimacy among casual theatergoers who might just be happening by, in a park, on a campus, or on a pedestrian mall.

That’s from the weeCinema Kickstarter campaign, which aims to raise $20,000 by February 19 in order to buy the shipping container. The design (by award-winning weeHouse architect Geoff Warner) is in, and it sounds fantastic. I happened across the promotional video when they posted it to Vimeo six days ago, and was so taken by the idea I shared it on Facebook right away (where it garnered lots of likes).

I figured a crowd-funding campaign was on the way, but Motionpoems still managed to surprise me with one ingenious fundraising twist:

Pledge $10 or more

Entry fee. This fee enables you to answer our call for POETRY FILMS. Deadline Feb 25. Your film could be screened in the weeCinema during MSP Int’l Film Festival! Submission details: http://bit.ly/WeeCinema

(MSP = Minneapolis-St. Paul.) So there you have it: possibly the coolest Kickstarter ever. Give till it hurts.

Oslo Poetry Film 2015 schedule online

I’ve never been able to find much information in English about the annual poetry film festival in Oslo, which is coming up next weekend. In part, that’s because their website is kind of messed up (to use the polite term); I’m unable to scroll down and read the rest of the content in either Firefox or Chrome. Fortunately, I’ve just discovered that they also have a Facebook presence (not linked to from the visible part of the website). An event listing reproduces the schedule in full, which I’ll paste in below for the benefit of the Facebook-phobic. This looks like a terrific festival, with lots of useful talks to supplement the screenings. Wish I could attend.

Oslo Poetry Film 2015:
Festival for Digital and Visual Art
31.01 – 01.02.2015
KUNSTNERNES HUS, OSLO
–Free entrance–

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PROGRAM:

SATURDAY, 31.01.2015

13.00 – 13.45
The Counter Machine to the Machine of Language: How can poetic language be translated to cinema? Talk by Alice Lyons (USA/Irland).

14.00 – 14.30
Found in translation: Poetry between writing, sound and image. Niels Lyngsø (Denmark) reflects on poetry videos by Iben Mondrup, based on poems by himself. Screenings of tungenosser (2011, 03:43), rødmandblåmand (2011, 03:55), Besat af de tre tyranner (2013, 04:15), Slår flapperne ud (2013, 01:24).

14.30 – 15.00
The making of a music movie: Kajsa Gullberg (Sweden/Denmark) on her music video MIN KITTEL ER FOR KORT, 2014 (03:45) – a collaboration with poet Mette Moestrup and musician Miriam Karpantschof.

15.15 – 16.00
Highlighs from Zebra Poetry Film Festival 2014 – presented by director of ZEBRA Poetry Festival, Thomas Zandegiacomo Del Bel (Germany). Screenings of In the Circus of You, 2013, text by Nicelle Davis, video by Cheryl Gross (06:08), The Aegean or the Anus of Death, 2014, text by Jazra Khaleed, video by Eleni Gioti (07:21), Bacteria, 2014, text by Paul Bogaert, video by Paul Bogaert and Jan Peeters (06:18), Photon, 2014, text by Simon Barraclough, video by Jack Wake-Walker (04:52), The Thing With Feathers, 2014, text by Jinn Pogy, video by Rain Kencana, Jalaudin Trautman and Miguel Angelo Pate (04:00), and Walking Grainy, 2013, video by Francois Vogel (02:20).

19.00 – 19.30
Reading standing up – Poetry, in the 21st century, should be read standing up with the same glancing disdain as advertising, billboards, logos and street signs. Talk by Derek Beaulieu (Canada).

19.30 – 20.00
Formal Possibilities for the Poetry of the Internet: Steve Roggenbuck (USA) on his favorites among image-based poetry, video-based poetry, and plain text as distributed in social networks. What kind of poetic exploration can we expect in the future?

20.30 – 21.00
Screenings: Ursula Andkjær Olsen (Denmark): Maske (2:50) Solcreme, 2015 (2:50). Kristian Pedersen (Norway): Pipene, 2013 (03:15), KUUK (Norway): HOR, 2014 (4:45).

21.00 – 21.30
SHAPESHIFTING POETRY: Different Ways to Communicate Poetry – Žygimantas Kudirka aka. MC Mesijus (Lithuania) presents his film Hands off the blue globe, 2013 (4:23).

22.00. – 23.00
Readings: Derek Beaulieu (Canada) Niels Lyngsø (Denmark), Marie Silkeberg (Sweden), Ursula Andkjær Olsen (Denmark), Steve Roggenbuck (USA) and Žygimantas Kudirka (Lithuania).

23.30 – 23.50
She´s a show – concert with Mette Moestrup (Denmark) and Miriam Karpachof (Denmark).

————————–

SUNDAY, 01.02.2015

13.00 – 13.45
Strategies for Building Poetry Audiences Online. Steve Roggenbuck (USA) provides practical, usable strategies for how we can build audiences for poetry projects on the Internet.

14.00 – 14.30
New media and distribution: Reaching out through new media. Experiences and hypotheses from the publisher’s point of view. Talk by Harald Ofstad Fougner (Norway).

14.30 – 14.50
Poesi på G is a innovatory free poetry app. One poem a day for a month, is read by famous artists, comedians, actors and sportsmen- and women. Presentation by Sara Paborn (Sweden), who created the app.

15.00 – 16.15
Presentations: Scott Rettberg (USA/Norway) on the project TOXI-CITY, 2014, Marie Silkeberg (Sweden) on two collaborations with fellow poet Ghayath Almadhoun, The Celebration, 2014 (8:53) and The City, 2010 (07:00), Terje Dragseth (Norway) on his and Rolf Asplunds video POEMA NAPOLI DEL 2, 2012 (05:04).

18.00 – 18.30
Screenings: Vidar Dahl/Jøran Wærdahl (Norway): Byttedagen, 2013 (4:15) and Erkjenning, 2011 (3:05), J. P. Sipilä (Finland): #002_out_of_the_forest (sleight of tree) (2:56), #004_a_tourist (sleight of tree) (2:50) and #006_lost (sleight of tree) (1:25).

18.30 – 19.00
It was mine – short film in production. Is there really such a thing as coincidence? Director Kajsa Næss and compositor Kristian Pedersen will screen scenes and explain their thoughts around the making of their work in progress, It Was Mine, based on a short story by Paul Auster.

19.15 – 19.45
Steve Roggenbuck (USA) presents make something beautiful before you are dead, 2012, (3:25) and other works.

19.45 – 20.15
Screening of Bella Blu 2012, (23:00) by Terje Dragseth (Norway).

http://oslopoesi.no/film

Zata Kitowski interviewed at A Younger Theatre and Write Out Loud

Two recent interviews with the founder and curator of the UK-based PoetryFilm project together serve as a good introduction to Zata Kitowski’s basic philosophy and priorities. In an interview with Frances Spurrier for Write Out Loud, “‘Separating and combining the senses’: the art of the poetry film,” she shows herself to have very broad tastes, while expressing a preference for what has become almost an orthodoxy in poetry-film, filmpoem and videopoetry circles:

How would you define the relation of the poem to the film and vice versa?

The question implies that there is a separation between the poem and the film. Some poetry films are created from the outset as a cohesive poetry film so in this way there is no separation. If the artwork did begin with a poem at the start of the creative process, or with a film, then there are various integration approaches. Duplicating the visual, verbal and aural content is a popular obvious interpretation; however, in my opinion, contrasting different elements is more powerful, playing with the presence and or absence of words, images and sounds. The poetry film art form is a fertile and creative area to explore, and the project celebrates many different approaches, both separating the senses and combining the senses.

A feature article by Heather Kincaid in A Younger Theatre takes the long view, “Celebrating Creativity – Twelve Years of PoetryFilm.” I was especially interested in what Kitowski had to say about the audience for PoetryFilm events:

“We have a really diverse audience,” said Kitowksi. “People come from poetic and literary spheres, as well as from film and artistic circles. I think this diversity is partly influenced by where we hold events – so we might exhibit work at a cinema or film festival, in an art gallery, or at a literary festival. The response from audiences has been very positive both in the UK and abroad.”

Judging by the fact that her latest event, PoetryFilm Solstice at the ICA in London, sold out a day in advance, I’d say the response is very positive indeed. Even though my own approach at Moving Poems is to pull in fans of film and poetry with the lure of free web videos, I recognize that seeing films in a theater or art gallery is a wholly different—and generally much more immersive—experience, and having a knowledgeable guide to interpret each film really adds value as well. And as a poet, I love the idea of getting people to pay real money to go hear and see poetry. So here’s wishing PoetryFilm many more years of success.

ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival in Malaysia reviewed by George Szirtes

Though ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival‘s main event in Berlin only happens once every two years, they are regularly invited to screen selections of poetry films from their archives at festivals all over the world. I was pleased to see a review of one of these events by noted UK poet and translator George Szirtes, in his always interesting blog. He happened to have been in Malaysia for ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival in Penang and Kuala Lumpur, where, according to Goethe-Institut Malaysia on Facebook:

In conjunction [with] Georgetown Literary Festival in Penang and with collaboration of Obscura-Kala and Art Printing Works in Kuala Lumpur, Dr. Thomas Wohlfahrt, Director of the Literaturwerkstatt Berlin and founder of ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival Berlin screened a selection of films all over the world as a part to promote poetry films in Malaysia.

Szirtes’ review deserves mention and excerpting not just because of his own prominence, but because any coverage of poetry film screenings by bloggers or journalists is unfortunately still quite rare. I liked Szirtes’ swerve into audience analysis and self-reflection—just the sort of personal take one expects from a good blog post—and I was fascinated to see which film-poet he thought was the stand-out. See if you agree. Here’s some of what he wrote:

The film show is in the evening at APW a converted printing works complete with auditorium, bar and much else. Slowly the hall fills up and, eventually, overfills. The idea of poetry-film is not films that may be poetic but rather the interpretation of an actual poetic text, often through computer work. We see about a dozen short films including a relatively early but ingenious version of Austrian sound poet Ernst Jandl created on an Amiga computer, move on to a snappy rhythmic interpretation of a Peter Reading poem and many others involving drawing, reading, performance, stop-frame animation, abstraction, grotesque and mixtures of them all. The one that takes my breath away is by  one by Taiwanese poet, Ye Mimi, They Are There But I Am Not. Here is the link to it. Its timing, its restraint, its depth, its spare lyricism, the quality of its feeling and thought and its sheer simple precision seemed far beyond the rest to me. There was a fine comic-grotesque version of a poem by Ingeborg Bachman, an excellent rap performance by an exiled American Cambodian poet, versions of Billy Collins (his ‘Budapest’) and Mahmoud Darwish at the end reading one of his to simple figure images and arabic script in motion. Everything was pretty good and some excellent. The ones that dealt with issues might be most effective in moving emotions but their intentions are clear from the start. They set out to do something and do it. Sometimes they collapse into a kind  of bathos (I don’t blame them, their cause is great and drives them into grander forms of rhetoric) before recovering. There are extraneous reasons for admiring these and indeed people do admire them. John Giorno speaks a fine comic poem against family values. Everyone laughs and claps loudly in approval of the message before returning to their family values. Another  poem rhapsodises about freedom and jazz,  and all the good things one might rhapsodise about and everyone claps. Sure we clap. It’s easy.

We like to be told we are free spirits laughing at convention. It help us to go on with our conventions. We have businesses to run, deals to clinch, jobs to go to, articles to write. I don’t think this is precisely hypocrisy but a kind of social behaviour, like people who want to be thought interesting at parties and declare, ‘I am mad, me, quite mad!’ You can bet your bottom dollar they are saner than you are.

But I love Ye Mimi’s film and I love her poem. The two together are a bringing out of the poem not by illustrating it or referring to it, but by realising it at quite another level. I shall be looking out for her work.

Read the whole post. And watch Ye Mimi’s films on Moving Poems here.

News roundup: Read Our Lips Filmpoem Competition, Rabbit Heart DVD, animated poetry film screening in Leipzig

Spoken-word poets from the north of England are invited to submit films to the Read Our Lips Filmpoem Competition 2015.

Read Our Lips is a unique digital project that aims to give poets and spoken word artists the skills to make their own filmpoems, from storyboarding through to editing.

We believe that a filmpoem is not a recording of a performance to camera, but is instead a layering of visual elements on to a spoken poem in such a way as to create a new, coherent work of art. We are looking for films that do more than simply illustrate the featured poem in a literal way, but which seek to surprise, enhance or subvert by their choice of additional imagery.

Click through to the Facebook event listing for the competition terms and conditions. The deadline is February 23, 2015. Prizes total £225. (I especially liked this bit: “All poems will be screened online during March 2015 for entry into the viewer’s choice prize category.”)

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Rabbit Heart Poetry Film Festival 2014 DVDHere’s a cool thing: just in time for the holidays, a Rabbit Heart Poetry Film Festival 2014 DVD from Doublebunny Press.

All the best video from the 2014 Rabbit Heart Poetry Film Festival collected in one place, including category reels, and the Best of What Not to Submit Monday.
Films by:
Yves Bommenel, Greg Brisendine, John Mortara, Sarah Guimond, Aisha Naseem & Chris Markman, Josh Lefkowitz and Chris Follmer, David Richardson, Timothy David Orme, Meriel Lland, Megan Falley and Rachel Rae Gausp, Malt Schlitzman, Cheryl Maddalena, Sou MacMillan, Jenith Charpentier, Laura EJ Moran, Scott Woods, Michael Medeiros, Cassidy Parker Knight & Jeff Knight, and Allan & the Nieces

To sample some of the films included on the DVD, see their YouTube page.

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Here’s an upcoming screening that sounds kind of intriguing: Leipzig-Präsentation von LAB/P – poetry in motion.

Wir präsentieren 9 Animationsfilme, die in der interdisziplinären Zusammenarbeit von AutorInnen und FilmemacherInnen aus der Region entstanden sind. Die Werke ermöglichen einen spannenden Einblick in zeitgenössische Lyrik und Animationsästhetik und geben Gelegenheit, neue künstlerische Positionen zu entdecken.

Which Google Translate renders as:

We present 9 animated films that have arisen in the interdisciplinary collaboration between authors and filmmakers from the region. The works provide a fascinating insight into contemporary poetry and animation aesthetics and given the opportunity to discover new artistic positions.

Here are the details:

Donnerstag, 11. Dezember 2014
Kleiner Empfang ab 19:30 Uhr, Vorführungsbeginn 20:00 Uhr
UT Connewitz, Wolfgang-Heinze-Straße 12, 04277 Leipzig, www.utconnewitz.de

Programm:
KANTEN DEINER AUGEN (Melissa Harms & Yevgeniy Breyger)
ROSTOCK, GRAND CAFÉ (Susann Arnold & Moritz Gause)
DAS BILD IN DEM BILD IN DEM BILD IN DEM BILD (Catalina G. Veléz & Marlen Pelny)
ECHO (Damaris Zielke & Peter Thiers)
AUSGEBRANNTES HAUS (Eva-Maria Arndt & Antje Kersten)
OHNE TITEL (Meng Chang & Daniel Schmidt)
VIVA VIOLENCE (Johanna Maxl & Katharina Merten)
DIE ANGST DES WOLFS VOR DEM WOLF (Juliane Jaschnow & Stefan Petermann)
KASPAR HAUSERIN (Nelly Chernetskaya & Katia S. Ditzler)

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Thanks for all three of these news items to the fabulous Thomas Zandegiacomo Del Bel, who seems to know about everything related to poetry film going on anywhere on the world, and posts it all to the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival group page on Facebook.

Athens International Film Poetry Festival set for Nov. 28; tickets on sale for PoetryFilm Solstice

chaos-and-order

We have updates on two poetry film festivals this week. The International Film Poetry Festival in Athens, which had previously been advertised as coming some time in December, is in fact going to take place next Friday, November 28, according to its website:

The yearly International Film Poetry Festival will be held for third time in Greece on Friday 28/11/2014 2014 in Athens. Approximately 1000 people attended the festival last year.

There will be two different zones of the festival. The first zone will include video poems, visual poems, short film poems and cinematic poetry by artists from all over the world (America, Asia, Europe, Africa). The second zone will include cross-platform collaborations of sound producers and music groups with poets and visual artists in live improvisations.

The International Film Poetry Festival 2014 attempts to create an open public space for the creative expression of all tendencies and streams of contemporary visual poetry.

It is very important to notice that this festival is a part of the counter-culture activities of Void Network and + the Institute [for Experimental Arts] and will be non-sponsored, free entrance, non commercial and non profit event. The festival will cover the costs (2000 posters, 15.000 flyers, high quality technical equipment e.t.c.) from the incomes of the bar of the festival.

Etc.

For those of you who prefer a bit of advanced planning in your lives, tickets are on sale for PoetryFilm’s last event of 2014 at the ICA Cinema in London:

PoetryFilm Solstice

21 Dec 2014
3:00 pm | Cinema 1 | £7.00 to £11.00

Book Tickets

“Founded by artist Zata Kitowski over a decade ago, the PoetryFilm art project continues to play with the avant-garde” – aqnb, 2014

PoetryFilm celebrates experimental poetryfilms, art films, text films, sound films, silent films, poet-filmmaker collaborations, auteur films, films based on poems, poems based on films, and other avant-garde text/image/sound screening and performance material.

The PoetryFilm project has resulted in over 60 events at cinemas, galleries, literary festivals and academic institutions featuring films, poetry readings, live performances and talks. PoetryFilm Solstice will feature a programme of short poetryfilms and live performances curated by Zata Kitowski – the full programme will be posted here shortly.

PoetryFilm is supported by Arts Council England.

Call for submissions + new documentary on Motionpoems’ “Arrivals and Departures” installation

If, like me, you’ve been wondering just how Motionpoems managed the logistical hurdles of projecting films onto the front of a train station, what it looked like, and how it was received by the general public, this great little “micro-documentary” gives a pretty good indication.

If you’re a U.S.-based poet and would like the chance to be considered for next year’s version of Arrivals and Departures, the deadline is fast approaching: November 30! I got this reminder in my email inbox yesterday from the CRWROPPS-B list:

SUBMIT TO ARRIVALS & DEPARTURES YEAR 2!

See your poem turned into a film and projected onto the 1,000-foot neoclassical facade of Saint Paul’s Union Depot in Motionpoems’ latest annual public art installation. Poems accepted on the theme of “Arrivals and Departures” through Nov 30. Broad interpretations of the theme encouraged. Poems accepted from all non-Minnesota U.S. residents (Minnesota poets will be invited to submit again in Year 4).

MORE ABOUT THE CONTEST:
Entrants are urged to consider the theme of “Arrivals and Departures” in broad terms. Although this project celebrates the newly revitalized Depot, the Depot isn’t the project’s subject. It’s just the canvas upon which the poems will be experienced. Entrants should consider not what the Depot is, but what it represents, as a source of diversity, culture, commerce, influence, inspiration, and exploration. Also consider the Depot as an early manifestation of newer depots in modern life, which may include the International Space Station, for example, or other ways in which mankind is ‘departing’ or ‘arriving’ culturally, intellectually, spiritually, etc. Poems about trains are less encouraged. Poems published within the last five years will be considered in addition to previously unpublished poems.

WHERE TO SUBMIT:
Submissions can only be made online via Submittable at https://motionpoems.submittable.com/submit/34138. Submit one poem only; multiple submissions will disqualify you. The poem should be no more than 500 words. Translations are not eligible, but poems published within the last five years are eligible. Use the “bio” and “cover letter” fields to tell us who you are, how you learned about this project, and why you would like to be part of it.

DEADLINE:
Entry deadline is November 30, 2014. No entries will be accepted after the deadline.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT:
All finalist poems will be presented to filmmakers, but only a handful will be developed into films. That handful of poems will be selected by participating filmmakers based on individual preference, as part of an open call to filmmakers in partnership with Independent Filmmaker Project New York. Motionpoems does not guarantee the number of films to be made. Remember: Not all finalist poems will be made into films.

MORE INFORMATION:
To read the complete guidelines and submit: https://motionpoems.submittable.com/submit/34138

To read the Official Terms of Entry: http://www.motionpoems.com/a-and-d-2-terms/

For more about Arrivals and Departures Year 1: http://www.motionpoems.com/arrivals-departures-at-st-pauls-union-depot/

To learn more about Motionpoems and watch 5 seasons of motionpoems: http://www.motionpoems.com

In other Motionpoems news, there’s an interesting note on their About page regarding their next regular season of films: “Season 6 is a special collaboration with VIDA: WOMEN IN THE ARTS, designed to balance the Motionpoems ecosystem with more poetry by women.” I’ll be looking forward to that. VIDA is a good organization.

4th CYCLOP Videopoetry Festival program online

CYCLOP banner

We received the following press release from CYCLOP organizer Polina Horodyska:

21 to 23 November, 2014, in Kyiv the 4th CYCLOP Videopoetry Festival will be held. The program features video-visual poetry related lectures, workshops, round tables, discussions, presentations of international contests and festivals, as well as a demonstration of the best examples of Ukrainian and world poetry films, competitive program, awarding ceremony and other interesting intermediary projects.

This year lectures are devoted to the birth of the concept, experience of poetry film creation, visual component of literary projects, and videopoetry in cinematic discourse. At Saturday’s showing, you can watch the best examples of new Ukrainian videopoetry. On Sunday, we will show the unique festival video of international contests. You will also have an opportunity to watch the 1st ‘Videopoetry Laboratory’ findings and take part in their discussion, and to visit an incredible poetic-musical-visual «rozdilovi» performance prepared for the fest by «ArtPole» creative agency…

The International Poetry Film Festival’s selection will be shown on November 23, Sunday, at 12:00 – 16:30.

The program for the international screening, organized by cooperating film festival, is very international indeed. I was impressed by how many different festivals they’re working with: VideoBardo in Argentina; AVaspo in Vilnius; Liberated Words in Bristol; KHM Cologne & Kunststiftung NRW in Berlin; Rabbit Heart in Worcestor, Massachusetts; Ó Bhéal in Cork; and ZEBRA in Berlin. Click through for the complete list of films and filmmakers.

Type Motion exhibition opens in Liverpool

“FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology) is the UK’s leading media arts centre, based in Liverpool,” according to their website. A new exhibition should be of particular interest to fans of videopoetry and poetry film.

This November, FACT is pleased to present the UK premiere of Type Motion, an exhibition featuring over 200 outstanding examples of text and typography being used alongside the moving image. The exhibition celebrates the creative possibilities of opening up uses of text far beyond print, and seeks to showcase not only the importance of writing, but how bringing it to life with movement is an artform in itself.

Kinetic text has emerged as an important sub-genre of poetry animation in recent years, spawning some of the most popular poetry videos on the Anglophone web. This exhibition sounds as if it might really help contextualize that. It’s on from November 13 through February 8, 2015.

UPDATE (Nov. 14): See Grafik magazine for a short selection of poetry films from the exhibition. I like their thumbnail history:

The avant-garde filmmakers of the early twentieth century were interested in liberating the then-new medium from those other media that were already considered art prior to their incorporation into film — theatre and literature, language and writing. Today, however, the conceptual integration and the creative visualisation of what had once been (ideologically) rejected as ‘un-filmic’ has become a growing trend. Artists now strive to interpret literary works in animated poetry-clips, transform literary idioms into filmic language and draw attention to the form of writing to visualise the content it conveys.

(Hat-tip: ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival group on Facebook)

Call for submissions: Text(e) Image Beat exhibition at Galerie Sans Nom

(The following press release is from Annie France Noël, co-director of the GSN.)

GSN logoThe Galerie Sans Nom (GSN) in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada, is organizing a screening of videopoetry with the curators Daniel Dugas and Valerie LeBlanc. The exhibition will be presented from March 20 – May 1, 2015.

The work should be screen-based poems where the text, image and sound intermingle. The maximum duration of the work cannot exceed 5 minutes and must have been realized after January 2013. The works must be in either French or English. If the language in the video poem is other than French or English, the artist is required to submit a version that is subtitled in French or English. All video poems must be received by the December 15 deadline through a file hosting service (Dropbox) or through Vimeo. A short artist bio and synopsis of the video poem must accompany each submission.

No entry fee, CARFAC rates will be paid.

Deadline: December 15th, 2014

Submissions must include:

  • Director’s name
  • Address
  • Email
  • Duration
  • Year
  • Format
  • Link (Vimeo / Dropbox)
  • Previous screenings
  • Synopsis
  • Bio
  • Artist portrait (JPEG, 300 DPI)
  • Still image of video (JPEG, 300 DPI)

Submit as a WORD .doc attachment to: videopoesieGSN@gmail.com

Erica Goss on ZEBRA 2014

Poet Erica Goss’s Third Form column in Connotation Press this month is devoted to her impressions of the 7th ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival, and includes a short interview with ZEBRA’s artistic director Thomas Zandegiacomo Del Bel as well as a list of “ten video poems from the festival that deserve attention.” The majority of these have yet to appear on Moving Poems, so do check it out.

News roundup: 6 poetry film festivals still upcoming in 2014; Poetryfilmkanal; ZEBRA’s new channels

The call for artists to participate in the International Film Poetry Festival in Athens is apparently still open. The exact date for the festival in December has not been set.

Other international poetry-film festivals coming up in November and December include:

A huge thanks to the new German-language website Poetryfilmkanal (Poetryfilmchannel) for helping me remember all these festivals. The site doesn’t officially launch until February, but it already includes some very useful features: the calendar, which I drew on for this post; a timeline of landmark films in poetry-film history, with links to YouTube; and a bibliography of selected books and journal articles. The Google translation of their About page makes the project sound very promising indeed.

And speaking of great resources, the ZEBRA folks have been going all-out this week to improve online exposure to films that have been screened at their festivals, creating a new ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival channel on Vimeo, as well as a Vimeo album and a YouTube playlist for just the films from the 2014 festival. These are as yet limited to films uploaded by the creators themselves, but in time I hope that ZEBRA will be able to upload their own copies of films they’ve screened, as well, providing not only a much more complete picture, but also a more stable, long-term archive of international poetry film.