~ News and Views ~
Call for Submissions: HaikuLife Haiku Film Festival
via press release
The HaikuLife Haiku Film Festival invites your participation for its seventh year of screening short and intermediate-length films featuring haiku and related genres. These films generally fit one of four categories: video haiga, free format (more than one poem, generally, or haibun), feature format (longer, and perhaps featuring story arc beyond the poems themselves), and HaikuLife format, our homegrown approach with a set of parameters followed close or loose (see the introductory film at the link above). We prefer .mp4 but can generally convert if necessary. Haiku may be in any language, with or without English subtitles or accompanying translations. We look forward to sharing your work with our worldwide audience.
Submissions to: jim.kacian@thehaikufoundation.org
Call for entries for the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival 2021
via a press release
The ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival in Berlin is inviting entries for its competition for the best international poetry films from the 18th of February. Eligible for entry are international short films produced from 1st of January 2020, which are based on poems and are no more than 20 minutes in duration. All languages are allowed. The competition winners will be awarded prize money. A programme committee will select films for the international competition and for all the other festival programmes from among the entries. At the festival, the winning films will be selected by a jury comprising international representatives from the worlds of poetry, film and media.
In addition, ZEBRA is inviting filmmakers to submit a film interpretation of this year’s festival poem “going to Pasárgada” by the poet Odile Kennel. Text and audio of the poem together with translations come from lyrikline.org, a leading online archive for poetry. The directors of the three best film interpretations will be chosen by the programme committee and invited to come to Berlin where they will have the opportunity to present their films at the festival and discuss them with the poet.
Link to the festival poem on lyrikline.org
(The festival poem may be used only for the purpose of film interpretation within the scope of this call for entries. For any other use at other festivals or on other platforms, etc. the film makers must obtain the rights from the rights holders.)
Entry deadline is the 1st of July 2021.
Conditions of participation and entry form haus-fuer-poesie.org
Thank you for using FilmFreeway for your submissions.
The 12th ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival runs from 25th to 28th of November 2021 in the Urania Berlin. 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. In 2020, 2,000 submissions from more than 100 countries were submitted for the international competition.
The ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival is hosted by the Haus für Poesie in cooperation with Urania Berlin. It is sponsored by funding from the Land Berlin / the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe and from the Federal Foreign Office, and gratefully acknowledges the kind support of the Goethe-Institut, Alfred Ritter GmbH & Co KG and interfilm Berlin.
Call for young filmmakers and poets: Poetry Screen
Here’s a cool-sounding new initiative from the UK’s Poetry Archive:
Poetry Screen is a project aiming to inspire and showcase the innovative work of young artists that combines poetry and film.
We are creating a space for conversations between visual and poetic languages; established and fresh voices; poets and film-makers – across time, backgrounds and borders.
It’s an invitation to play with the Poetry Archive’s rich collection of recorded poetry. You can do this by repurposing a selection of our classic poetry recordings or by writing your own work in response to any of the poems in its collection (including a wide selection of contemporary poems).
We’ll select up to five video poems to publish and will pay a royalty fee of £200/work. The showcased artists will be invited to pitch for one new commission, with a budget of £2000.
A project for film makers and poets
Poets/artists/film makers/musicians/students from all over the world – all are welcome. You can take part if you are 25 and under. If you are working as a team, at least one of you must be 25 or under.
Make a short video poem of up to 5 minutes length maximum (excluding credits). We’re looking for an imaginative approach which goes beyond the obvious. Your visuals can be abstract or narrative, include animation or graphics. You can mix music and sampled sound into the poetry.
Be inventive with your resources – we’re not expecting a big budget production. Video poems need to be publishable but not completely polished at this stage.
June 1 is the deadline to submit. Visit the webpage to register.
How to publish poetry videos in a literary magazine: 20 tips and best practices
Video content is so pervasive on the web, it’s a bit surprising that so few literary magazines include it, though the pandemic has begun to change that, with a growing desire to fill the vacuum created by the nearly universal suspension of live readings. Still, there’s a whole world of poetry in video form that they’re missing out on. I’m actually a bit annoyed that Moving Poems has become such a dominant site for poetry videos; why the hell don’t we have more competition? Perhaps because the culture of video sharing on the web is a challenge to the way literary magazines tend to do business, to say nothing of the technical challenges of submitting, editing, hosting, etc. Many online magazine editors aren’t techies, and may believe that sharing videos is more complicated than it really is. And what to do if your journal is mainly print or PDF?
So I thought I’d be helpful and post some suggestions based on my nearly two decades of online publishing (including the pioneering online literary magazine qarrtsiluni). This is a work in progress, so if you have any additions or push-back, please let me know in the comments.
1. Consider adjusting rules on submission to allow previously published or screened films/videos, because otherwise you will get very few submissions. Any video that’s been uploaded to YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, etc. and made public has been published.
2. Submission by web link (public or private) is easiest for everyone.
3. At least 75% of the good poetry films out there have been made by someone other than the poet, and that person is likely to be much more motivated to send it out. Especially since the text may have already appeared elsewhere as a page-poem, so the poet has moved on. Therefore journals need to reach out to poetry filmmakers, by for example posting a call-out on FilmFreeway as well as Duotrope or Submittable. There are also Facebook groups that editors could join where poetry film/video makers hang out, such as Poetry Film Live, Agitate:21C, and Pool. And I’m always happy to share calls for work here.
4. Encourage readers to share and embed the work anywhere rather than expecting that everyone will come to your site to watch it. If you include a link to the website or issue archive at the end of the video, this makes every share a free advertisement for the journal.
5. Do not try to host videos yourself unless you have nearly infinite resources and very good tech support. Streaming videos so that they scale down or up depending on the user’s device and internet speed is not easy, and it uses a lot of server CPU. WordPress.com video hosting and Vimeo video hosting are two very affordable alternatives that aren’t all junked-up with ads. But YouTube is fine, too. And there are others.
6. While it’s OK to share videos from the author’s or filmmaker’s account on Vimeo or YouTube, consider uploading all videos to your own accounts(s) instead. This gives you more control over presentation and guarantees long-term archiving. On Vimeo you can create a showcase for each issue, or on YouTube a playlist. Also, it’s all too common for user-uploaded content to eventually disappear — accounts get deleted or videos get taken down for any number of reasons. Moving Poems takes this risk because we’re fundamentally still a blog, and therefore accept a certain degree of ephemerality. But part of the responsibility of publishing a proper journal, I think, is to preserve an archive. The Internet Archive may index every page on your site, but if the video content disappears, there’s nothing they can do about that.
7. Don’t worry about redundancy. The same video might be uploaded to Vimeo multiple times by various people involved in making it. You might decide to upload everything you post to your journal to several major, competing video hosting services, to take advantage of social and search functions unique to each. It’s all good, as long as you don’t get trapped into thinking that there should be one, canonical location. That said, every video hosting location you control, be it YouTube, Vimeo, Twitter, or Facebook, should include in the accompanying description a link to the journal location.
8. A Vimeo Plus account ($75/year) gives you the ability to put a working link (e.g. to your website) at the end of the video, as well as to remove Vimeo branding and cross-publish to YouTube and Twitter. Another reliable, non ad-ridden alternative is the aforementioned Internet Archive’s own video hosting service.
9. Consider not hosting video on Facebook and Instagram. Their APIs are more restrictive, they assert more rights over content, and Facebook’s lying about the importance of video content helped bankrupt some great newspapers. In short, Facebook sucks. Its corporate priorities in many ways directly conflict with your own, since it aims to replace the open web on which we all depend with its own, privatized alternative. Ultimately it may not be worth the trouble to upload videos to Facebook, in particular, given the way new content will only be shown to fans of a page if the page owner pays for the privilege — kind of an extortion racket. You’ll get more engagement simply by encouraging poets and filmmakers to share their posts on whatever social media platforms they’re active in, which could well include ones in which a literary journal would have little presence otherwise, such as Reddit or Twitch.
10. Give each video in a magazine its own post or page. You want a link that people can share. There’s nothing more frustrating than trying to direct someone to a video on a page with a bunch of other videos on it. To say nothing of how such pages slow down your website. (Starting in May, Google search results will be penalizing pages that load too slowly.) Set up the video or multimedia section of the journal as a category of posts rather than a single page that is continually edited. For one thing, that means that those of us weirdos who still use feed readers will be alerted when you post new video content.
11. EMBED! Don’t make readers click through to somewhere else, for crying out loud. (If your website is built with WordPress, embedding is as simple as including a Vimeo or YouTube link on a line by itself.)
12. While embedded videos can usually be expanded by clicking on the lower right, regardless of the video host, not everyone knows how to do that, so it really helps to display videos at as great a width as possible on the laptop and desktop versions of your site, and make sure it goes full-width on the tablet and mobile versions. Resist the temptation to install a plugin that uses Javascript to pop out the video automatically when a user clicks on it. This would obscure any accompanying text, which if it includes the transcript is vital for accessibility.
13. Editing videos to add uniform branding at the beginning or end may be more trouble than it’s worth, and also obscures the true copyright situation in almost all cases. I tend to think that video/film branding should be organic and in keeping with over a century of film tradition. Incorporating the journal’s name into the video strongly implies that you helped produce it in some way — which is certainly an option (see below). Otherwise, hosting it from your own account provides all the branding that you realistically need.
14. Should you care if a video has already appeared elsewhere, in online or real-world festivals, or even in other journals? Remember that journals’ most valuable role in an age of content overload is curation, not uniqueness. Readers don’t have any expectation with other sorts of magazines that they will never reprint anything. A new music video may appear in dozens of competing magazines.
15. Accessibility: If you’re uploading videos to your own Vimeo or YouTube channel, think about adding closed captions. Also or instead, include the text of the poem alongside the video, both in the video description on the hosting platform you use, and in the post/page for the video in your journal.
16. If the poem previously appeared as text in another journal, be sure to link to it there — that’s just basic web etiquette.
17. Print or PDF journals can also include videopoetry! Include one or more stills, ideally in color, a short description of the film, a full transcript, a shortened URL, and a QR code linking directly to the video so that anyone with a mobile phone in their pocket can watch it right away. There are a number of free online services that will generate a QR code for any link.
18. Build relationships with existing poetry film producers (Motionpoems, Elephant’s Footprint, poetrycinema, the Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation, etc.), most of whom would probably be thrilled if you posted their videos on a regular basis.
19. If you have the resources, consider working with filmmakers to produce your own videos. This is certainly the best way to assert your primacy as a publisher, while still allowing the content you produce to be shared or embedded anywhere. Even a typically cash-strapped journal might be able to pull off something like this by forging an alliance with one or more teachers at film schools, where students could be supplied with texts from poets willing to let their work be put to transformative use.
20. Make sure a still from the video appears as the featured image for the post when it’s shared on social media or in email. (We use a WordPress plugin that does that automatically, as well as the Open Graph Protocol plugin.)
New Covid restrictions force ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival online
The world’s most prestigious poetry film festival has been forced to scrap plans for a live festival. The Berlin-based ZEBRA festival had persisted in planning a full live programme for November 19-22, assuming no doubt that Germany’s robust pandemic response would continue to permit such a gathering. But alas, German cinemas have been ordered to shut down starting today. So four days ago, the ZEBRA twitter account announced that they were going online, and promised more information soon. At the time of posting, no further information has been forthcoming.
Moving a large, complex festival to the web is of course not a trivial undertaking. I must say, I’ve been enormously impressed with how the folks at Weimar have handled it, after having to abandon plans for a live festival on their very first year. The online Poetry Film Festival of Thuringia has an outstanding user interface with great visual design elements, and from a technical standpoint they’re using tools available to anyone with even a fairly minimal budget. The screenings use password-protected, embedded Vimeo showcases, and the live talks and discussions are handled with Zoom + YouTube Live. Payment is collected through Eventbrite. It’s all run through a basic, self-hosted WordPress installation using the free Underscores theme generator.
I’m sure ZEBRA has an outstanding technical and design team and doesn’t need any advice, but I think Thuringia is a model for festivals planning anything before at least the middle of next summer. And I’m rather hoping that even after the pandemic is over, traditional, meat-space festivals will continue to have an equally strong cyberspace component. It’s a bit of extra hassle, sure, but it does render any festival truly international, allowing many more people to attend (and more tickets to be sold). And with climate change destroying the planet, we all need to stop jetting around the world unless we absolutely have to.
Upcoming poetry film and videopoetry festivals
For festivals, this is a best-of-times, worst-of-times situation. Pandemic restrictions mean fewer options for live events, but going online has the potential to build big new audiences from around the world. Here are some press releases that have recently come our way from the International Poetry Film Festival of Thuringia, the Midwest Video Poetry Festival, and ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival. I’ll also paste in some info about the Winter Warmer online festival from Cork.
International Poetry Film Festival of Thuringia starts ticket sales
Three weeks of watching about 150 poetry films, plus workshops, lectures, interviews, live streams, and an international award ceremony—all this awaits poetry film fans and online visitors of the new festival
This year, the Weimar Poetry Film Prize, which has been awarded since 2016, will be presented for the first time as part of its own festival. Initially meant to take place in May/June, the International Poetry Film Festival of Thuringia will begin online from October 22-25, due to a pandemic. While this may be a pity for die-hard festival-goers, it offers the new festival the opportunity to present itself to a worldwide short film scene at its premiere.
The festival begins on October 22 with a special focus on Africa, which can be watched via live stream. This emphasis is intended to contribute to improving the visibility and perception of African poetry film. The countries Mozambique and South Africa will be featured especially.
There are also exciting special programs to watch: The “Women in Resistance” program illustrates how much video poetry is part of global poetic activism. A retrospective is dedicated to the Canadian video pioneer Tom Konyves and his films. Furthermore, international and German-language short films and the Weimar Winners of the years 2016-2019 will be screened. Under the title “The Art of Videohaiku”, the festival invites participants to create poetry films in small format themselves and to interpret the haiku audiovisually. The Dutch filmmaker Helmie Stil introduces her video poetry in a lecture she gave at the Bauhaus University during the summer semester. The latest Thuringian poetry film productions will also be shown.
On Saturday, October 24, the 5th Weimar Poetry Film Prize will be awarded at the Lichthaus cinema. The international jury consists of photographer and lecturer Kathrin Tillmanns, literary scholar and author Jan-Volker Röhnert and filmmaker Helmie Stil. The award ceremony will be broadcast from 6-9 pm (CET). This year the audience can vote for their favorite online. The Official Selection will be published on October 1st.
The four main festival days will end on Sunday, October 25, with a matinee at the MonAmi cinema. The film KENT OZANI, which accompanies the poet José A. Oliver during his stay in Istanbul, will be screened. José A. Oliver will be in attendance and take part in a discussion.
The festival website www.poetryfilmtage.de is now online! Ticket sales have started! Get your ticket here.
The code to the protected festival area on the website costs 10 Euros and is valid for three weeks from October 22nd until November 12th. The live streams can be found on the festival website and will stay accessible afterward.
ONLINE: Midwest Video Poetry Festival
via Isthmus
The first ever Midwest Video Poetry Festival (MVPF) will take place in Madison, Wisconsin on November 19 & 20.
Celebrating the amazing breadth of expression when one of humanity’s oldest art forms is interpreted through the lens of one of its newest, the MVPF features the best of this cutting-edge art form from around the Midwest and around the world. Presented by Madison’s Arts + Literature Laboratory, screenings will take place from 7-8:30pm each day via live-stream at https://www.youtube.com/c/ArtLitLab/videos
The submissions range from 30 seconds to under 10 minutes long. They have all been created within the last three years, many of them within the last few months, promising a fresh, contemporary point of view. “Poetry is not dead,” says Festival founder and executive director Rita Mae Reese. “It is one of the most enduring forms of expression, doing now what it always has, making meaning of the events and circumstances of our lives, accompanying us through turmoil, expressing our joy and holding our grief. It is now, especially, during times of upheaval and strife, that poets’ voices are most needed; these are the voices that will carry us through.”
“It feels so important to do this now,” agrees Genia Daniels, who has been overseeing the curation team and selection process. “Fielding over 1,600 submissions from artists, poets, and filmmakers in 91 countries around the world has given us an amazing field to work with. It’s a phenomenal array of voices, genres, styles and expressions. We are so excited to share this with people in Madison and beyond.”
The MVPF is a production of the Madison Arts and Literature Laboratory, a community-driven contemporary non-profit arts organization that supports the visual, literary, musical and performing arts, presents over 200 free or low-cost events per year, and offers year-round arts education for all ages. ALL nurtures innovation and the artistic growth of contemporary visual, literary, and performing artists; connects artists, resources and community; and fuels a passion for arts and literature.
The Midwest Video Poetry Fest is made possible in part by a grant from Dane Arts with additional funds from the Endres Mfg. Company Foundation, The Evjue Foundations Inc., charitable arm of The Capital Times, the W. Jerome Frautschi Foundation, and the Pleasant T. Rowland Foundation.
Off On Poetic Ramblings – ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival with the country focus on Canada and Québec
From 19 to 22 November the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival is presenting in the Kino in der KulturBrauerei and the Haus für Poesie the international competition for the Best Poetry Film as well as a programme of films and poetry with the country focus on Canada and Québec.
Around 2,000 films have been submitted this year from more than 100 countries. From these, the Programme Committee, whose members are Heinz Hermanns (interfilm Berlin), Cia Rinne (poet), Heiko Strunk (lyrikline.org), Eloisa Suárez (Goethe-Institut) and Thomas Zandegiacomo Del Bel (ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival), has nominated 34 films for the Competition. A jury of experts in the fields of film, poetry and media will then announce the winning films at an awards ceremony on 22 November. The Best Poetry Film for Children will be awarded the ZEBRINO Audience Prize.
As well as the Competition, there will be 20 accompanying programmes of films featuring 250 animations, feature films, experimental films and documentaries providing an insight into the diversity of the poetry film scene. Besides Canada and Québec, thematic focus areas include Human Rights and Eco Poetry. What is more, ZEBRA will show the best film versions of this year’s festival poem, “LETHE”, by Botswanan Spoken Word artist TJ Dema. To round off the programme, there will be readings by poets from Germany, Canada and Québec as well as a programme of workshops and films for children and young people.
Programme and advance ticket sales online from mid-October at haus-fuer-poesie.org
The ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival has been running since 2002. At the time it was the first international platform for short films based on poems – poetry films – and is still the biggest of its kind. It offers poets, film makers and festival organisers from all over the world a platform for creative exchange, getting ideas and meeting a wide audience. Featuring a Competition, programmes of films, readings by poets, retrospectives, workshops, colloquia and programme for children, it presents in various different sections the diverse genre of the poetry film.
THU 19 Nov – SUN 22 Nov 2020
ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival
Kino in der KulturBrauerei Schönhauser Allee 36, 10435 Berlin
Haus für Poesie Knaackstraße 97, 10435 Berlin
Ó Bhéal International Poetry-Film competition winners at Winter Warmer festival
via the Ó Bhéal blog
A multilingual poetry festival held in Cork City each November since 2013, Ó Bhéal is proud to present its annual Winter Warmer weekend.
One of the highlights of Cork’s literary calendar, this unique event hosts 23+ renowned poets and performers from Ireland and 7-8 other countries.
The event also features films from the Ó Bhéal International Poetry-Film competition along with poetry collaborations with dance, theatre or other art forms, poetry accompanied by music and a closed-mic set for local poets.
In 2018 the festival expanded to four days thanks to our ECIC (European Community of Inclusive Cultures) partnership with festivals from four European countries: Festival dos Eidos (Galicia, Spain), Festival Literário da Madeira (Portugal), Salerno Letteratura Festival (Italy) and LitFest.eu Festival de Voulmentin (France). The 2019 festival took place over three days.
Ó Bhéal’s 8th Winter Warmer (and 1st online) festival presents 36 poets live from fifteen countries, from Thurs 26th – Sun 29th November. The festival will feature poetry workshops, music from Tionscadal na nAmhrán Ealaíne Gaeilge (the Irish Language Art Song Project) devised by Dáirine Ní Mheadhra and John Hess, the shortlist screening and prize-giving for Ó Bhéal’s International Poetry-Film Competition, a Many Tongues of Cork session and a closed-mic set for new voices – poets who have featured regularly in Ó Bhéal’s online open-mic sessions during 2020.
We are thrilled to announce that this year’s stellar line-up includes Imtiaz Dharker, Jacob Polley, Sinéad Morrissey, Tongo Eisen-Martin, Nuar Alsadir, Robert Sullivan, Dunya Mikhail, David Wheatley, Mary Jean Chan, Ranjit Hoskote, Julie Morrissy, Musawenkosi Khanyile, Natalya O’Flaherty, Susan Musgrave and William Wall.
Festivals, Competitions, Journals: Open for Submissions
Source: Thomas William, Unsplash
CURRENTLY ACCEPTING POETRY FILM SUBMISSIONS:
Festival Fotogenia, Mexico
Entry fee: US$25
Submissions close: 20 September 2020
Versi di Luce, Italy
Entry fee: US$10
Submissions close: 30 September 2020
Deanna Tulley Multimedia Prize, USA
(from Slippery Elm Literary Journal, University of Findlay, Ohio)
Entry fee: US$10
Submissions close: 30 September 2020
Queensland Poetry Festival: Film & Poetry Challenge, Australia
(for Australian artists)
Entry fee: AUD$15
Submissions close: 10 October 2020
Mayflower 400 Poetry Film Competition, UK
Entry fee: free
Submissions close: 19 October 2020
Helios Sun Poetry Film Festival, Mexico
Entry fee: US$15
Submissions close: 31 October 2020
Athens International Poetry Film Festival, Greece
Entry fee US$6
Submissions close: 27 November 2020
REELPoetry Festival, USA
Entry fee: US$15
Submissions close: 15 December 2020
International Migration & Environmental Film Festival, Portugal
Entry fee: US$20.50
Submissions close: 31 January 2021
Caafa International Film Festival, Nigeria
(for African and African-descended artists)
Entry fee: US$10
Submissions close: 18 June 2021
Finn Harvor: Isolation Trip Remix
Finn Harvor was invited to write for Moving Poems about two publicly-released versions of his video Isolation Trip Remix, both of them collaborations with musician Ian Peninsolar (aka Peninsolar). Ian composed the music soundtrack, which includes found sound and dialogue that forms a kind of ‘found poem’ in itself. Finn directed the videos and created an additional layer of poetic text for the second version.
Isolation Trip Remix (original version)
Finn’s process notes:
This began as a sound and visual collage based on a late evening bike ride along the Han River early this summer. The coronavirus crisis was still in its early stage, and the mood throughout South Korea — as most of the world — was eerie.
I often do projects by building them up in layers; that is, by starting with shot footage and adding my own music, or not using music at all and simply creating a visual/aural collage. Because it takes a long time to get poetry published, this method of working allows me to get projects “out into the world” without worrying about the stigma of self-publishing my text (though occasionally I’ve done that also (and want to emphasize I think it’s a good idea when artists and writers occasionally do this)). Generally, the completed videopoem doesn’t become public for quite some time — often, years.
Ian Peninsolar had been suggesting we collaborate on a project. I messaged him and suggested this. He added a soundtrack, which included sampled audio of very unusual weather systems from several years ago. The voiceover adds quite a bit to the project, and meshes perfectly with Ian’s musical soundtrack. It has the stentorian seriousness of an authority, which is what we’re used to hearing during crises.
It seemed like a good metaphor for what the world is going through this year. Later, I added text of my own to make it a videopoem in the more conventional sense of the term.
Isolation Trip Remix (with added text)
Note: aside from his substantial body of work as a maker of videopoems, Finn is notable too for his critical writing. This can be found at the UK journal, Poetry Film Live.
Open Call: VideoBardo Videopoetry Festival
VideoBardo is a bridge to the videocassette era.
I’m not quite sure how I missed this till now (possibly because they’re based mainly on Facebook these days, and I don’t spend much time there), but Buenos Aires-based VideoBardo, currently the world’s longest-running videopoetry festival, is gearing up for 2020. You still have plenty of time to submit: the deadline is 30 August.
VideoBardo, founded in 1996, call artists to participate in the International Videopoetry Festival – VideoBardo 2020, which will be realizated throughout 2020 in different cities and venues around the world and at a CENTRAL WEEK in Buenos Aires, Argentina; on dates to be defined.
We understand as Videopoetry to those audiovisual works in that the poetic verbal language (word, letter, speech, writing, sign) has a leading role or a special transforming treatment. Therefore the three fields: Image in movement, Sound, and Verbal language are in a dialogue to create a fourth reality that is the Videopoetic Work. Then the verbal language in video poetry is experienced in its meanings by visual, sound, corporal and physical dimensions.
Note that Spanish subtitling is generally required for works in other languages. Click through for all the rules, and then submit here.
Poetry Film Live relaunches
Poetry film Live relaunched last Wednesday with new content and a slightly new focus. Published and edited by the poetry film-making duo Helen Dewbery and Chaucer Cameron, it has a new tagline, “A New Way with Poetry,” and is described as “a UK based webzine which publishes poetry film, performances, readings, essays and reviews. It is also the platform for Elephant’s Footprint online poetry film training.” A welcome message currently at the top of the home page goes into more detail:
Poetry Film Live has made some changes!
Following a brief furlough from the end of last year, Poetry Film Live has come back with a renewed focus on the work of poets and the type of poetry film that is a literary form. A form of poetry that is visual, not solely textual, that moves rather than stays put on a page.
Poetry Film Live has responded to the changes that have developed during the Covid19 pandemic. The future of poetry gatherings, reading series and open mics is uncertain both in the short and longer term, therefore, Poetry Film Live is including performances and readings of poetry.
These are new and exciting times and we hope you will consider participating and supporting Poetry Film Live by sending us your submissions, we look forward to seeing your work.
Start by watching the two videos below: ‘How to Make Voice Recordings from Home Better’ and ‘Top Tip for filming yourself reading a poem from a smartphone’.
We have also announced the launch of online poetry film training for poets – see the link for more details.
The course is only £75 and I’m not aware of anyone else offering this right now, so I’m glad they’re featuring it. It’s a real service to the community.
The submission guidelines are mostly sensible, though it’s too bad the maximum duration is so short (six minutes). My only other criticism of the site is the large sticky header, which reduces screen real estate significantly. Viewers not in the habit of expanding videos to full screen, or clicking F11 on a PC to push the website to full screen, are sure to be frustrated.
But these are minor quibbles. It’s great to be able welcome Poetry Film Live back to active duty. (We at Moving Poems know all about unannounced brief furloughs!) Go visit.
Call for Entries: Midwest Video Poetry Fest
A new videopoetry festival has emerged in Madison, Wisconsin: Midwest Video Poetry Fest.
Arts + Literature Laboratory has brought creativity and community into the lives of thousands of people during our first four years in Madison through exhibitions, concerts, readings, and education programming for all ages. We bring together world-class artists, emerging and local artists, writers, musicians, and audiences for approximately two hundred events each year. In 2020, our programming and audiences will expand as we move into a new, more accessible, and larger location in the heart of Madison’s Capitol East District. At this new location, we will be hosting the first Midwest Video Poetry Fest (MVPF).
Video poetry gives creators an opportunity to use one of our newest art forms–film–to transform one of our oldest art forms—poetry. This emerging and exciting format is adding to the rapidly growing audience for poetry in America. Leading up to the screenings, which will be part of the Wisconsin Book Festival in October of this year, Arts + Literature Laboratory (ALL) will be hosting free poetry video making workshops, featuring video poetry on our ALL Review, and hosting discussions on the genre of video poetry.
MVPF will be the first of its kind in Wisconsin and will present the work of local, national, and international poets and filmmakers. All events will be free and open to the public.
Midwest Video Poetry Fest is made possible in part by a grant from Dane Arts. For sponsorship and volunteer opportunities, please genia@artlitlab.org.
Read the full Rules and Regulations here.
DEADLINE: August 1, 2020
Midwest Video Poetry Fest proudly accepts entries on FilmFreeway, the world’s #1 way to enter film festivals and creative contests.
Call for Entries: 8th Annual Ó Bhéal International Poetry-Film Competition
In case you missed the brief link in last week’s news round-up, here’s a press release from Ó Bhéal with the full call-out.
The 8th annual Ó Bhéal International Poetry-Film Competition
2020 is Ó Bhéal’s eleventh year screening International poetry-films, and the eighth year featuring this competition. Up to thirty films will be shortlisted and screened during the festival in November 2020. One winner will receive the Indie Cork / Ó Bhéal prize for best Poetry-Film.
Submissions are open from: 1st May – 31st August 2020. You may submit as many entries as you like. Films must interpret, or convey a poem which must be present in its entirety (audibly and/or visually), having been completed no earlier than 1st of May 2018.
Entries may not exceed 10 minutes in duration. Non-English language films will require English subtitles. The shortlist will be announced during October 2020.
One overall winner will receive the Ó Bhéal award for best poetry-film. Shortlisted films will be screened (and the winner announced) at the 8th Winter Warmer poetry festival (27th-29th Nov 2020).
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.
The Judges for this years competition are poet/playwright/filmmaker Dairena Ní Chinnéide & poet/filmmaker Paul Casey
Follow the link for an outline of the submission details:
http://www.obheal.ie/blog/competition-poetry-film/
