~ News and Views ~

Call for work: ZEBRA 2022

The ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival is inviting entries for the 2022 International Poetry Film Competition. Entries open on 1st May.

The event is long-running and very big in the world of poetry film. The organisers describe this year’s event:

“The 13th ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival runs from 3rd to 6th of November 2022 in the Kino in der KulturBrauerei and in the Haus für Poesie. It is the largest international platform for poetry film worldwide. Since 2002 it offers poets, film and festival makers from all over the world a platform for creative exchange, brainstorming and meeting with a broad audience. With a competition, film programmes, poetry readings, retrospectives, exhibitions, performances, workshops, colloquia, lectures and a children’s programme, it presents in various sections the diversity of the genre of poetry film.”

For full details about the call out, please see: https://www.haus-fuer-poesie.org/en/zebra-poetry-film-festival/zebra-poetry-film-festival-2022/call-entries/
Or look out for them on FilmFreeway

FESTIVAL POEM

As well as the international competition open to all poetry, the event also has a ‘festival poem’ – this year THE HAIRCUT by Georg Leß. Filmmakers are invited to make an interpretation of this film for the festival. The three best film adaptations’ directors will be invited to Berlin, where they will be able to present their films and speak with the poet.
Travel and accommodation in Berlin for the three selected directors will be paid for by the Festival.

Call for work: La Poesia che si vede Poetry Film Festival

Italian festival La Punta Della Lingua (or in English ‘Tip of the Tongue’) announces their 2022 poetry film competition as part of their ‘total poetry festival’ …


The organisers say:

“La Poesia che si vede is an international competition for poetry films based in Ancona, Italy. It is the product of the collaboration between two important festivals: La Punta della Lingua International Poetry Festival and Corto Dorico Film Festival. The first edition of La Poesia che si vede was held in July 2021. Its second edition will take place in June 2022.

The competition’s mission is the challenge of researching, promoting and supporting new gazes, poetics, visions. From the kinetic text to the sound text, from the visual text to the cin(e)poetry up to the filmed performance, the videopoetry for La Poesia che si vedo is total poetry, without discrimination of genre or format.”

The FilmFreeway page for the competition is: https://filmfreeway.com/LaPoesiaCheSiVede where you will also find further details and rules for entry. Deadline for submissions: 18th of May 2022.

More information about the wider festival is at: https://www.lapuntadellalingua.it/

Cadence 2022 continues: online until 1 May

Cadence Video Poetry Festival 2022 in person was this weekend in Seattle, USA (21–24 April) but there is still time to enjoy the online element of this hybrid festival.

There are five intriguing programs of films available:

As the wind is breathing • It is strange and kinda symbolic • Its flashes are flashes of fire – What is hidden needs to be seen • When I’m not asking for permission

… which showcase between 6 and 13 films each. Tickets are available for the whole online event, but also for individual programs.

More about the whole festival is on the main site: https://nwfilmforum.org/festivals/cadence-video-poetry-festival/

Or if you want to skip straight to the online screenings: https://watch.eventive.org/cadence2022

Video, Poetry and Translation

From Greek to English… We also have a version in Greek and Spanish.

I’ve always loved language and languages. I did Latin, French and German at school and I could easily have ended up studying linguistics in a slightly different universe. For me, poetry and experimental writing are fundamental ways to explore the limits of language: to try to describe what cannot be put into words, to find out what happens when language is stripped down to its essentials (whatever they are…), to discover how the visual, oral and aural aspects of language interact.

Combining video with poetry and experimental writing has been a revelation in this context. In a video, text can be dynamic, as it changes and morphs in multiple dimensions. Voices can be added, distorted, re-timed, presented in counter-point to each other and to on-screen text; they can even be made to articulate the literally unspeakable via increasingly sophisticated text-to-speech algorithms. And then there are all the possible interactions between the text of the video and its audio-visual content.

Over the last few years, I’ve been increasingly interested in how we deal with translation in poetry videos. I have had many videos screened in non-English speaking festivals and installations where there is usually a requirement for subtitles in either English or the native language. But sometimes, there is an absolute requirement for subtitles in the native language. I also have collaborated with non-English speaking poets which has required me become familiar with at least some aspects their native tongue. And I have even created a genuine bi-lingual video poem.

English and French as equal partners…

So how do we deal with multi-lingualism? How should the translations work? There is a large literature on the nature of translation, as well as the underlying neuroscience of bi- and multi-lingualism. But I have been strongly influenced by a couple of books in particular, both of which have been written by authors who have translated some of the most influential experimental poetry and writing :

Poetry videos offer a unique slant on translation that is not available for written text: videos give us the option to hear the original language, and, indeed, read the original written text itself as well as a translation. And we still have access to all the same audio-visual material and its interactions with the text. One corollary of this is that the translated text does not necessarily have to be as “poetic” as the original. It may not even need to be a complete translation, if the sound of the original and its accompanying imagery allow.

It is very common for translated poetry videos to have subtitles added in a similar way to any other video or film. However, conventional subtitles can clash with the visual aesthetic of the video. Nearly all my poetry videos have at least some of the text embedded in them, as part of the overall visual design. When adding translated text, I try to use the same fonts, layouts and designs as the original, so that the look of the video is not changed and the translation is seen as a natural component of the work. Another option is to use closed captions for a translated version. It does not look very elegant, but it allows the user to turn the translation on or off. A further advantage is that the text exists as a separate underlying time-stamped file (eg .srt format) that can be translated by a third party as required.

English and Spanish translation share a common design…

So now to the big question: how do we actually get the translation? Ideally, you are sufficiently knowledgeable in the appropriate languages to do it yourself. I can do that well enough for German or French, and I have made a genuine bilingual English-French video based on a poem of mine, Signature, originally published in the French journal Recours Au Poème. But although I have become familiar with some aspects of other languages, most notably Spanish, Italian, Greek and Swedish, I cannot translate from English into them. Instead, I rely on machine translation, good dictionaries and, when necessary, advice from a native speaker.

Machine translation…

My preferred machine translation system is DeepL which, when tested on languages I do know, performs better than Google Translate across the board, especially when the language becomes more idiomatic or figurative. The suggested translations can be checked and fine tuned in several ways. One is to simply back-translate the phrase to see if you get the same thing. Using a different system for the back-translation (such as Google Translate) can also be useful. Another good strategy is to replace some of the words in the original with synonyms or near-equivalents and compare how they get translated. If the translation offers options, I often look them up in the native language dictionary or thesaurus (eg Wiktionary) that shows how they understand the meaning of the word and how it should be used. And I always keep a grammar book at hand for the language in question to find out how it is structured and how things like tenses, cases, pronouns, adjectives, etc, actually function. These resources have been critical for most of my translations.

Sometimes, the translation simply will not work. An implied meaning in one language perhaps cannot be made in another, often because of the way the grammar rules operate. As is well known to translators, there are idioms and turns of phrase that do not cross languages or cultures. Experimental writing or visual poetry that relies on the intrinsic structure of words and their grammatical variations may be impossible to translate in any literal manner. What do we do then? We simply watch the video, listen to the ebbs and flows of words that even a native speaker may not understand, and revel in the uncertainty of it all.

Click here to see all Ian’s videos with translations.

This essay first appeared on Ian’s blog, which anyone with a serious interest in videopoetry ought to follow. —Dave B.

Call for work: Living With Buildings festival

Living With Buildings logo

From FilmFreeway:

A festival of films exploring how people interacts with buildings and urban spaces in the public realm. We aim to screen short films/poetry film that investigates how we experience the build environment.

[LIVING WITH BUILDINGS is brought to you by the Disappear Here poetry film project]

We’re looking for work up to 5 mins in length, anything between the poetry-film, experimental, short-documentary strands of film-making. The project is rooted in the UK city of Coventry, famed for its ringroad, modernist architecture and reinvention as a city rising from the ashes and ruins of arial bombing in World War Two – we are happy to consider work from citizens all around the world.

The psychopathology of underpass and overground.

Floating towers holding up the sky.

Living With Buildings.

Finding our way(s) through the subterranean culture and dead roads with no ending.
Exploring internal tensions between regeneration and gentrification.

Remaking and remodelling urban spaces as forces of commerce or gentle revolution take hold and fight for ownership.

Where does the citizen fit into these processes; and how do we interpret or express their experiences of the ground shifting beneath their feet.

Find out more about the Disappear Here project – http://www.disappear-here.org

VENUE
LTB SHOWROOMS (above the Litten Tree pub) – COVENTRY – CV1 1EX – 1 Warwick Road

Please submit one film only – max five minutes in length – we will consider longer documentary work – but please enquire first.

Films must meet the subject theme – this is open to interpretation but expect film-makers to read the submission information for guidance.

The project selection decisions are final.

The deadline is 6 April. £5 to submit, or £4.50 if you’re a student. Here’s the link.

Atticus Review Submissions

Atticus Review has published videopoetry in their Mixed Media section for over 10 years. The journal is currently calling for submissions of work for publication…

Atticus Review seeks all types of mixed media works for publication: videopoetry, short/experimental films, electronic/digital/interactive literature, visual artwork, animation, comics, audio soundscapes, sonic compositions, etc. If you like to push literary boundaries with alternative approaches, send us your best. We do accept previously published/screened work.

We potentially accept work with any theme, but upcoming themed issues are: The Internet (August 15th, 2022), Language (December 15th, 2022).

To submit, send an email with the subject “Mixed Media Submission” to mixedmedia@atticusreview.org. For video, audio, and interactive literature we prefer that you send links on Vimeo or YouTube or Soundcloud (or wherever the work is posted online) rather than send us files directly.

Reconnections: free online screening of poetry films at Lyra Bristol Poetry Festival

Pleased to see this:

Reconnections banner

Date: Saturday 17th April 2021
Price: Free
Time: 12:00 – 1:00pm

A screening of poetry films on the theme of Reconnection, curated by Liberated Words. Reconnection to landscape, the body, our history, family and heritage, during and before the pandemic. Artists featured include Kat Lyons, Edalia Day, Rebecca Tantony, Alice Humphreys, Liv Torc, Yvonne Reddick, Helmie Stil, Helen Johnson, Sarah Tremlett, Sarah Wimbush, Isobel Turner, Edson Burton, Michael Jenkins, Pierluigi Muscolino and Francesco Garbo. Followed by a discussion and Q&A with Sarah Tremlett and Lucy English of Liberated Words.

In registering for the event, I found that I had to use a UK postcode — your mileage may vary. Get your free ticket here.

Submissions open through May 31 for Weimar Poetry Film Award 2021

6th Weimar Poetry Film Award banner

It looks as if I might’ve neglected to post the original call-out for the 6th Weimar Poetry Film Award. It’s here, but I’ll paste it in below as well:

Through the Weimar Poetry Film Award the Literary Society of Thuringia and the Weimar Animation Club are looking for innovative poetry films. Filmmakers from any nation and of any age are welcome to participate with up to three short films of up to 10:00 mins, which explore the relation between film and written poetry in an innovative, straightforward way. Films that are produced before 2018 will not be considered.

The competition »Weimar Poetry Film Award« is financed by Kulturstiftung des Freistaats Thüringen and the City of Weimar. The competition is part of the »International Poetry Film Festival of Thuringia«.

From all submitted films selected for the festival competition three Jury members will choose the winner of the main awards (Best Animation, 1200 €; Best Video, 1200 €). Moreover, an audience award of 250 € will be awarded.

Dates & Deadlines

  • November 1, 2020 – Opening Date
  • December 31, 2020 – Earlybird
  • May 31, 2021 – Regular Deadline
  • July 16, 2021 – Notification Date
  • September 25, 2021 – Award Ceremony

 

Form for submissions [pdf] by e-mail to info [at] poetryfilm.de

Cadence: Video Poetry Festival 2021 debuts online on April 16

Cadence Video Poetry Festival

Tickets to the fourth annual Cadence: Video Poetry Festival are now available and the festival starts on Friday, April 16 and runs through Sunday, April 25. All tickets are sliding scale and all screenings will be available throughout the 10-day festival.

Cadence: Video Poetry Festival, presented by Northwest Film Forum, programmed in collaboration with Seattle author Chelsea Werner-Jatzke and artist Rana San, is a series of screenings, workshops, and discussions on the genre of video poetry, during National Poetry Month.

Cadence approaches video poetry as a literary genre presented as visual media that makes new meaning from the combination of text and moving image. Featuring screenings, an artist residency, generative workshops for youth and adults, and juried awards, the festival fosters critical and creative growth around the medium of video poetry.

“One thing that really impressed us about the submissions pool,” Chelsea and Rana told me in an email, “was how many of the video poems were made in the last year—it’s so impressive and encouraging to see artists creating amid the complicated tumult of our time.”

Festival Highlights

The Uncanny Intermingling showcase will feature a collaborative video poem by participants in the festival workshop, Animated Poetry with Neely Goniodsky, set to Anastacia-Reneé’s poetry currently featured in the exhibition, Anastacia-Reneé: (Don’t Be Absurd) Alice in Parts through April 25 at the Frye Art Museum.

Natachi Mez, NWFF’s 2020 Cadence Artist-in-Residence, completed her residency virtually in 2021 and the resulting video poem will be featured in (and provides the titular line of) the This Is How I Excavate showcase.

Award winners have been selected by guest judges: Nico Vassilakis (Adaptations/Ekphrasis), Caryn Cline (Collaboration), Catherine Bresner (Video by Poets), and Roland Dahwen (Poetry by Video Artists), and Moss Literary Journal (Northwest Artist Award). Submissions in the Wild Card category are judged by Festival Co-Directors Chelsea Werner-Jatzke and Rana San.

Festival Program

Included in Festival Passes:

Call for entries: 2021 Film and Video Poetry Symposium

screenshot of 2021 film and Video Poetry Symposium website

The L.A.-based Film and Video Poetry Society’s 4th annual symposium is open for submissions from “Poets, Writers, filmmakers, animators, video and digital artists, media and performance artists.”

The symposium celebrates and will screen a large scope of film and video projects developed primarily through the medium of poetry.  FVPS2021 will host a series of panels, guest speakers, workshops, and public dialogues regarding film and video poetry throughout the course of the symposium. In addition to the screenings programmers also curate a 30-day gallery exhibition.

There are no restrictions regarding total running time of films submitted. There are no restrictions regarding when the film was produced or if the film has premiered regionally or internationally. There are no restrictions on subject matter, theme, topic, or language of origin.

The Film and Video Poetry Symposium calls for poetry films, filmpoems, digital-poetry, poetry video, Cin(E)-Poetry, spoken word films, videopoema, visual poetry, choreopoems, poetrinca, media poetry, and all films and video that are driven by onscreen text.

The Film and Video Poetry Symposium also excepts and supports experimental film and video work that explores language and/or literature whether it be oral, written, visual, or symbolic. This includes non-narrative work and the avant-guard. We strongly consider work that challenges traditional and current visual communication methods while continuing to function as a mode for exploring narrative forms and personal expression.

The Film and Video Poetry Symposium also calls for essay film, works of epistolary cinema, animation, choreopoems, performance art film and video, episodic content, oratorical works, documentary, video art, media art and installation, works created through immersive technologies, and episodic programming. Please see categories below for more details.

The deadline is September 4 and the submission fee is $20 per film, video, or media project. Click through for descriptions of each category and additional vital details, as well as the submission form and payment button.

REELpoetry/HoustonTX 2021 begins February 24

I’ve been remiss in so much lately, but especially in reporting on the various online poetry film festivals here. In part, this is because my own internet connection isn’t really up to the challenge of taking in such things. But if you’re fortunate to live somewhere with better WiFi, you don’t want to miss the REELpoetry festival, 24-28 February. Check out the full and varied program (and note that all times are in GMT -6). In addition to screenings of the competition films, there’s an interview with Sarah Tremlett, author of a forthcoming book on the poetics of poetry film; a selection of films from Scotland’s StAnza International Poetry Festival; two fabulous multi-filmmaker projects, Chaucer Cameron’s Wild Whispers and Lucy English’s Book of Hours; and more. As their official description notes, “REELpoetry is a dynamic 5 day curated international festival featuring collaborations among filmmakers, poets, musicians and artists to create poemfilms and videopoetry […] screening short pieces from 26 countries and 68 creatives including 9 from Houston. Networking opportunities in real time each day, interactive workshops, talks, Q&A.” Check it out.

Call for Papers and Presentations: MIX 2021

Via their website:

Are you interested in the future of content publishing? Are you a writer, artist, technologist or researcher engaged in finding new ways to tell stories to new audiences? Are you keen to hear from people working across books, digital, sound, video, AR, VR, and games? MIX 2021 offers an opportunity to join us as we think about the future of content creation and publishing.

MIX is a four-day virtual conference that explores the intersection of writing and technology, bringing together people from around the world to make, think and talk. We are looking for writers, artists, practitioners, researchers and creative technologists to share their projects, research and practice through papers or presentations.

After the success of the last five MIX conferences, held across our Bath Spa University campuses, the conference returns in a fully virtual form with an increased focus on making alongside two of our other favourite activities, thinking and talking. We will be hosting two days of making on Saturday 3rd July and Sunday 4th July followed by two days of papers, presentations and discussions on Monday 5th July and Tues 6th July. This includes poetry film screenings on the theme of Amplified Voices curated by Adrian B Earle from Think/Write/Fly and Sarah Tremlett from Liberated Words.

Read the rest.