The deadline for submission of poetry films and other shorts to the 2019 Newlyn Film Festival, originally set for December 30, 2018, has been extended to February 28. Visit FilmFreeway for all the details.
I should also mention that there’s an excellent interview on the Liberated Words website with last year’s winner, Dave Richardson, conducted by Sarah Tremlett: “Unchartered Terrain: The Personal Within.” I was especially interested to learn that Richardson’s first poetry video gig was making Flash animations for the late, great online magazine Born. It’s an influence that persists in his videopoetry to this day:
DR: My journalism training in college told me to cut and cut to what matters. When I started to do that with the more poetic stuff, it felt more authentic, like my real voice. I try to keep it simple so that I am not trying to over-write. Many times I stop with the second draft of the text, just to not over-think.
ST: In relation to that, often you have different text on screen to the voice-over – is this something deliberate and is there a point behind this? It is difficult to get this right and quite an art.
DR: I did some experiments with Flash years ago, where I was randomly coding phrases to interact with randomly loaded images, and I was enthralled with the endless results and connections that were unexpected. That randomness, just a quality of unexpected relationships between image and text — I try to recreate that in my work for fun, for the pleasure of seeing what might surprise me. It makes new meaning for me. And then I edit.
Read the whole thing. A genuinely illuminating conversation.
I am often caught between Kant and Hegel: Am I more interested in the free play of the faculties of imagination and knowledge and the incomprehensible “aesthetic idea” of a work of art, which always gives more to think than can be understood, or is the conceptual content more important for making a work valuable than its form? In this debate I never wanted to bend in one direction. Apparently my favorite poetry films have both: they create a unique mood associated with questions that are relevant and thought-provoking, but at the same time, they also create pleasure in listening and watching, a revelry in visual stimuli, textures, surprises. The following films are not a top ten list in the sense of a canon. There are just 10 examples I would like to collect here to fill in the format. Or let’s say: they are ten invitations to watch poetry films. Please enjoy them!
Arte Poetica
Director: Neels Castillon
Text: Jorge Luis Borges
The Polish Language
Director: Alice Lyons with Orla Mc Hardy
Text: Alice Lyons
A Petty Morning Crime
Animation: Asparuh Petrov
Text: Georgi Gospodinov
Pipene / The Pipes
Director: Kristian Pedersen
Text and voiceover: Øyvind Rimbereid
What abou’ de Lô / What about the law
Director: Charles Badenhorst
Text and voiceover: Adam Small
The Desktop Metaphor
Director: Helmie Stil
Text: Caleb Parkin
Chamada Geral / Calling All
Director: Manuel Vilarinho
Text: Mário-Henrique Leiria
Hail the Bodhisattva of Collected Junk
Director: Ye Mimi
Text: Yin Ni
Spree
Director: Martin Kelly with Ian McBryde
Text: Ian McBryde
Steel and Air
Directors: Chris and Nick Libbey
Text: John Ashbery.
Atticus Review is one of a small number of poetry journals worldwide that regularly features videopoetry as part of its online presence. Edited by David Olimpio, it has been published from the USA since 2010, gathering a large readership. Videos are featured in the ‘mixed media‘ section, edited by Matt Mullins, a maker of outstanding videopoems himself. Many interesting hybrids of poetry and video have appeared there since this kind of work became part of Atticus in 2011. Towards the end of 2018, the announcement was made that the journal would for the first time stage a videopoetry contest, and calls for entries went out internationally. I was honoured to be invited to judge via the internet, from where I live in Queensland, Australia.
By the submissions deadline in early December, 115 poetry videos from different parts of the world had been sent to us. It was a pleasure to view all the work. I found quality in most of it. In fact, as a film-maker myself, the rich creativity of my peers was generally humbling (in a good way). The diversity and innovation of subjects and approaches inspired me. So it was a challenge to select only four awarded videos. These were published in Atticus Review on 11 January, along with some commentary on each of them from me, and further information about the film-makers and poets involved. They are best viewed on their respective pages on the Atticus site. Follow the links below to watch and learn more.
Things I Found in the Hedge (first prize)
Kathryn L. Darnell (director, animation)
Lucy English (writer, voice)
USA / UK
Qué Es El Amor (What Is Love) (second prize)
Eduardo Yagüe (director)
Lucy English (writer)
Spain / UK
The Whole Speaks (third prize)
Caroline Rumley (director)
Nelms Creekmur (writer, voice)
USA
The Cleanest Hands (honourable mention)
Amy Bailey (director, writer, voice)
USA
The Atticus contest will continue to happen yearly, a welcome addition to the international calendar of events surrounding videopoetry. To be among the first to find out when the next call for submissions goes out, and to receive regular news of ongoing publications in the journal, subscribe to email notifications.
…..
I’m taking the opportunity now to share some more of the videos sent in to us. While they were not awarded in the contest, I find each of them uniquely inspired. They are presented here in the sequence I think is most conducive to viewing and appreciating each of them.
https://youtu.be/KL4hh3_FQ1Y
Victor A. Guzman (director)
Rich Ferguson (writer, performer)
USA
https://vimeo.com/267531514
Tisha Deb Pillai (animator)
Fiona Tinwei Lam (writer)
Canada
https://vimeo.com/290947393
Jane Glennie (director, voice)
Lucy English (writer, voice)
UK
https://youtu.be/bOzf7SQXqMM
Brendan Bonsack (director)
Amy Bodossian (writer, performer)
Australia
https://vimeo.com/238368813
Ian Gibbins (writer, director, voice, music)
Australia
https://vimeo.com/312567950
Tommy Becker (writer, director, music, performer)
USA
https://youtu.be/lN0B2SEMTng
Mark Niehus (writer, director, music)
Australia
https://vimeo.com/306908806
Pam Falkenberg & Jack Cochran (directors)
Lucy English (writer, voice)
USA / UK
https://youtu.be/kTwRJ8kTUlk
Edward O’Donnelly (director)
Malcolm Ritchie (writer, performer)
Scotland
(turn on ‘closed captions’ for subtitles)
https://youtu.be/7i8A-uUV8rA
Yves Bommenel (writer, director, performer)
France
There are yet more videos I would happily share from the contest submissions, by artists whose work I admire. Alas, too many for one article.
…..
I’ve now related my enthusiasm for the journal, the contest, the work received, the process of viewing and the honour of judging. So it may seem strange when I say that, in general, I’m not the biggest fan of competitions in the arts.
The arts can never be judged in a truly objective way, in the manner of sporting achievements, for example, that can be decided on measurable microseconds in a race. As I see it, the best we can do when adjudicating the arts is to be as impartial as possible in applying our personal preferences. Our individual sensibilities will have been formed from a combination of direct experiences in life, what we have learned in formal and informal cultural and educational settings, our raw responses to other work as audience members over time, and possibly our experience of participating in the creation process itself, including philosophies and methods we have developed. We will likely be affected by how these influences come together at the particular time when we are making our decisions, which might be different in another month, year or decade. Other factors might feed into this process, whether we are judges in a competition, or simply making personal choices about what to watch and recommend as the ‘best’. There’s nothing absolute in the arts. In short, as I see it, the reception of work in this arena is essentially subjective.
As an artist, and as someone who has been a teacher, I am concerned with the psychological, emotional, and ego ramifications of ‘winning’ or ‘losing’ in relation to creativity (when I say ‘artist’ in this context, I mean film-maker and/or poet). Competitions by their nature focus most attention and reward on the winners. Although we might not want to admit it, the much greater number of participating artists can be left feeling disappointed and lacking to varying degrees. Depending on stage of experience as artists, along with levels of personal and creative development, this may have an impact on ability to function in our work. In some cases, it can lead to artistic growth and more satisfying outcomes. In others, it is simply discouraging of an artist’s practice. Perhaps my attitude is overly maternal in relation to adult people responsible for their own response to challenges. On the other hand, the arts are an area where personal vulnerabilities are often put on the line in a rather naked way, and so the person behind the work may well be more vulnerable in ability to process a perceived ‘failure’. In an era when mental illness has risen to epidemic proportions, coupled with higher rates of this long known to exist in the arts, I think giving some consideration to these issues is warranted.
Competitions in the arts might also be seen in some ways as another expression of competition in capitalism. This makes me wonder: do we really want to approach the arts as survival of the fittest, or else as a kind of lottery? If we are idealistic, there might be some discomfort in approaching the arts in this manner, especially if political resistance or advocacy form any part of the motivation for being involved.
Then there is the issue of entry fees for competitions. For some time I refused to enter any of my work in events that charged a fee to submit. Like so many artists, I have lived in relative poverty my whole life, and have already freely invested time, talent, passion, skill, and whatever limited resources I have available, to produce the work. Then again, I know that there are significant expenses involved in staging competitions as well, and that organisers are usually giving a great deal of their time for free, as well as their energy, dedication, passion and skills (but watch out for the profit-making motives of some events). Still, wherever possible, I think it would be best to avoid entry fees. My personal view is that competitions don’t need to offer cash prizes. Without these, entry fees may not be needed, or kept to a bare minimum. I believe the honour and attention focused on winning works is ultimately the most valuable and practical reward.
Having said all that, I’m not really ‘against’ competitions. The shades of ambivalence I feel are mostly about idealism versus practical realities on the ground. While I have some hesitations, I recognise the value of competitions for generating excitement in artists and audiences, and for focusing and growing an artistic culture. Ultimately, the more ways to highlight creative work we love, the better.
In the specific case of videopoetry competitions, my personal experience has been positive in almost all instances of submitting, and of having work celebrated or declined. Rejection letters have been respectful, sometimes even encouraging. I find the videopoetry community to be unusually supportive of artists on the whole. But from past experience on the broader film festival circuit, and what I know of other artists’ experiences, this is not always the case in the wider world of the arts, where personal creative work can be treated much more like pure commodity. So I’m offering what I’ve said here as food for thought about the staging of arts competitions in general, and to encourage ongoing care in the treatment of artists and their work.
…..
Videopoetry appears to be ever-growing, with artists from many nations now engaged in the practice, and a collective body of work increasingly exhibited and appreciated worldwide. This hybrid of poetry and cinema (including all its various generic labels), has roots going back a long way in film history, especially in the areas of the experimental and avant garde. As Helen Dewbery has suggested in a recent article, its roots may be more ancient still, if we think of the genre as simply one of the myriad contemporary expressions of poetry itself. In this line of thinking, it might be said that poetry began as an oral tradition and has adapted to new technologies and approaches throughout history. Long may this fine lineage continue, in any of the old and new forms the future promises.
The Art Visuals & Poetry Film Festival is a biennial, multi-day celebration of German-language poetry film held in Vienna. The next one will be 29 November to 1 December, 2019. The organizers issued a call for entries on 1 January. The main competition is only open to entries from German-speaking countries (residency or nationality), but there’s also an international award:
We know that there is a great interest from the international community to participate. Therefore we have created a second competition called “SPECIAL AWARD” after a given festival poem. This competition is open to film makers from all over the world. For the next Poetry Film Festival we have chosen a poem by the Viennese writer and composer Sophie Reyer. You can download the spoken version of Sophie Reyers’ “Zuerst/First” in German for free. We also provide you with a licensed English translation of the festival poem under creative commons. It’s very interesting, that this kind of competition attracts many professionals who like to experience different versions of films based on the same text. On the other hand, it offers people a easy chance to make their first poetry movie in their life.
Click through for more details, guidelines, and the FilmFreeway submission link. The deadline for the Special Award competition is August 30.
MIX 2019: Experiential Storytelling
Monday 1st July – Tuesday 2nd July 2019
Corsham Court Campus
www.mixconference.org
After the success of the last four MIX conferences, MIX 2019 returns to the beautiful surroundings of Bath Spa University’s Corsham Court Campus in Wiltshire. This year’s conference will be a more intimate, single strand version, curated for a smaller audience to give time and space to instigate conversations around digital writing with a focus on experiential storytelling, including immersive technologies and new forms of publishing, from transmedia and poetry film to virtual reality to AI in storytelling.
Corsham Court
A conference where creative writing and media creation intersect with and/or are dependent upon technology should be as interdisciplinary as possible, and that’s what we are aiming for with MIX 2019. The conference will host a vibrant mix of academic papers, practitioner presentations and keynotes. Confirmed speakers include publisher, Maja Thomas, Chief Innovation Officer, Hachette Innovation Program; Thomas Zandegiocomo, Artistic Director Zebra Poetry Film Festival, Berlin; and writer Nikesh Shukla.
Within the single-strand programme there will be four themed panels. We would like to encourage the submission of research papers, artist/practitioner presentations and papers on pedagogy on the following topics;
We are looking for proposals for 15 minute papers/ presentations or 60 minute panels (composed of three 15 minute papers with time for q&a). Please submit 300 word abstracts and a 100 word biography for each paper/presentation you are proposing by Monday 4th February 2019. We will let you know whether your submission has been successful by the end of February 2019.
For further information and to submit your abstract visit www.mixconference.org
For queries email mix@bathspa.ac.uk
We hope to see you at MIX 2019.
another view of Corsham Court
Proving once again that the world of videopoetry and poetry film is too large for one person to keep track of, here’s a somewhat specialized contest and festival I just found out about that appears to be in its 15th year: the Hombres Videopoetry Award.
PLEASE WE ACCEPT ONLY VIDEOPOETRY THAT FOLLOW THE THEME BELOW!
The award is in collaboration with the Italian Association “Borghi autentici d’Italia”, that put together small and medium communities, local authorities for local development. The shared objective is a sustainable local development model, respect of places and people and attention to the enhancement of local identities.
The videopoetry must develop the following theme:
“Images, perspectives and ideas about the suburb of the future. It can be also a part of an old village contest that has to maintain a well-defined identity. The concept of old village can go separately from historical, temporal and geographic aspects”.
The component of the jury are: Dimitri Ruggeri (poet, videopoet and performer ), Marco Di Gennaro (filmmaker), Alessandra Prospero (poet and publisher), M° Roberto Bisegna (musician) and Ilio Leonio (Professor and member of the organization).
The jury will select the best ten videos for the finals which will be presented in the final evening, scheduled in Carsoli (Italy) in the month of July 2019.
Awards & Prizes
The best ten videos will be screen in the “Hombres Videopoetry Festival” 2019 and the winner will be announced in the night of the festival.
BEST VIDEOPOETRY:
Hombres Videopoetry AwardSPECIAL AWARDS:
Best poem
Best Original Music
Best Photography
Best PerformancePRIZES:
Local craft productsRules & Terms
RULES
Only one videopoetry for author
Age of the author of the video: up 18 years old
Duration of the video: minimum 1 minute, maximum 15 minutes
Date of production : after 01/01/2016
Language: italian and english. Other languages must be subtitled into italian or english
Fee: no
Deadline: 1 April 2019
The text in the video can be read, performed or put as subtitle.
Please don’t sent slideshow of photos with subtitles.
I’ve been remiss in mentioning that Lucy English’s unique Book of Hours, an online calendar of poetry films made in collaboration with video artists and filmmakers from around the world, is at last complete — and worth many hours of exploration. Not only that, but there’s a printed version of the texts now out from Burning Eye Books, a terrific UK publisher specializing in spoken word poets. Many of the most effective poems in the book emerged during the process of collaboration, making this a unique milestone in the history of filmpoem innovation comparable in stature to the poetry films of Tony Harrison.
To whet your appetite further, there’s a new review of the book by poet and novelist Deborah Harvey over at Poetry Film Live.
It’s an ingenious idea – a calendar of poems that re-imagine the illustrated psalter of mediaeval literature for a secular, 21st century readership/audience. Lucy is supported in this endeavour by her extensive knowledge of the both fields, coupled with a poetic voice that is especially well suited to the demands of poetry film.
For all that there are mentions of stained glass, doom paintings, sun dials and psalmicly panting sheep, the subject-matter of the poems is resolutely secular. Churches are places to be visited in a spirit of curiosity rather than devotion, saints are grey and made of lead, and no miracles happen at wells that are simply oozy patches in stony holes. Similarly, the lives encapsulated in the poems are not ones of monastic contemplation. The poems accommodate a sizeable cast of friends, ex-lovers, family members, former inhabitants of holiday cottages, personifications of the seasons, and animals, and include arrivals from and departures for destinations far beyond an anchorite’s cell.
And yet the sacred is here, in the poet’s tender attention to moments snagged in the memory, rendering them dream-like, and magnified by their lifting up as an offering to the reader. This is the poetry of non sequiturs, missed opportunities, small losses that loom large, the lives we don’t lead […]
Read the rest. And if you see an announcement of a screening of the project in your area, don’t miss it!
Multi-author collaborations are relatively rare in modern poetry culture — one of the significant ways in which videopoetry and filmpoetry deviate from established norms. With poetry films, collaboration is if anything more common than one-person productions. And this collaborative angle is nowhere more evident than in the new website for the Wild Whispers Poetry Film Project (whose call-out we shared here two years ago). The result feels like the audiovisual equivalent of renga-meets-exquisite corpse.
Wild Whispers is an international film poetry project that started with one poem and led to 15 versions in 12 languages and 12 poetry films.
The films, in different languages, were all ‘whispered’ from the previous one. The project travelled from England to India, Australia, Taiwan, France, South Africa, the Netherlands, Sweden, Wales and the USA, creating poetry films in English, Malayalam, Chinese, French, Afrikaans, Dutch, American Sign Language, Navajo, Spanish, and Welsh.
Started by the UK poet Chaucer Cameron of Elephant’s Footprint Film Poetry and Poetry Film Live, the project drew inspiration from recent political events and more, as Cameron explains:
[…] My own desire to connect was both personal and political and certainly focused on the bigger picture. I am most passionate about film poetry, and consider it to be the perfect vehicle for exciting collaborations and for fostering strong, positive connections between countries and across the world.
One of the initial inspirations behind the Wild Whispers project was a single image of a Buryat Shaman performing a libation – a ritual pouring of liquid, milk or grains, as an offering to the gods or spirits in memory of the dead. When I discovered this image I was also in the process of writing a vision statement for Elephant’s Footprint and came across an article by visual artist Mary Russell and author Gerard Wozek, the collaborative duo of “Mercury in Motion”. I found we shared a belief that visual and literary art carry spiritual, political, and sociological messages and that visual poetry is a physical manifestation of what it means to be a human being engaged in seeking community, and that the medium of film poetry is intrinsically alchemic—magic.
The call-out to poets, translators and poetry filmmakers to be involved in Wild Whispers has resulted in just that: magic.
Read the rest, then watch the films. (Disclaimer: one of them is mine.)
Just a reminder for all my fellow procrastinators that the deadline for the Atticus Review‘s first annual videopoem contest is coming up on December 3. Atticus Review is one of the few major online literary magazines to make room for multimedia work over the years, and the judge for this first contest, the Australian experimental filmmaker Marie Craven, is one of the most original innovators in the genre, so you don’t want to miss this opportunity! Submit here.
The New York-based Visible Poetry Project will once again be releasing 30 poetry films—one a day—in April, and for the third year in a row, their original call somehow slipped under my radar. (This is what happens when sites don’t have a blog I can subscribe to.) But when I finally remembered to go look at their website just now, I noticed that the deadline for both poetry submissions and filmmaker applications are still open… for five more days! Here’s what they say about the latter:
UPDATE: The deadline for applications has been extended to November 10, 2018!
Applications for the Visible Poetry Project 2019 series open on September 10, 2018 and close on October 31, 2018.
The Visible Poetry Project strives to emphasize the diversity of the global film community, and so encourage you to apply regardless of background or circumstance. Whether filmmaking is your hobby, profession, private outlet, or public expression, your work is welcome.
Within your application, please provide a reel and/or links to previous films you’ve created. All work samples must be original, and you must be one of the main contributors. You may submit up to three links. We recommend submitting samples that you believe to be representative of the greater styles and themes in your work. If you are accepted, this will help inform which poet you may get paired with.
You may apply as part of a team (up to two filmmakers). If you are applying as part of a team, please submit only one application. Please include links to reels for both collaborators, and send an email to visiblepoetryproject@gmail.com, CC’ing your co-director.
If you are a producer, director of photography, or editor, and are interested in being involved in the 2019 series, please email visiblepoetryproject@gmail.com.
Click through for the application form. (Here’s the poetry submission form.)
This project has yielded some really high-quality work so far in a wide range of styles, so if you’re at all ambitious about making poetry films, why not throw your hat in the ring?
For the fourth year in a row, a major poetry-film contest and associated screenings will be held as part of a multi-day festival otherwise devoted to student films from around the world, in the delightful, culture-rich city of Weimar, Germany. From the Poetryfilmkanal website:
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
Through the new film award, backup_festival and Literarische Gesellschaft Thüringen e.V. (LGT) 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 8:00 mins, which should explore the relation between film and written poetry in an innovative, straightforward way. Films that are produced before 2016 will not be considered. From all submitted films selected for the festival competition three Jury members will choose the winner of the main prize (1000 € Best Animation, 1000,- € Best Video). Moreover, an audience award of 250 € will be awarded.
The competition »Weimar Poetry Film Award« is financed by Kulturstiftung des Freistaats Thüringen and the City of Weimar.
Deadline: March 31th, 2018
Form for submissions [pdf] by mail or e-mail.
Literarische Gesellschaft Thüringen e. V.
Marktstraße 2–4
99423 Weimar, Germany
Email: info@poetryfilm.deThe »Weimar Poetry Film Award« call for entries is international. For the submission send with the other informations a quotable text of the related poem in German or English.
Presentation of awards: June 1st, 2019.