~ News and Views ~

New developments at Motionpoems

On 30 September, 2013 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - filmmaking

Some exciting news from our friends at Motionpoems, the Minneapolis-based arts organization responsible for a raft of well-made poetry films (especially animations) over the last few years.

Motionpoems will partner with Minneapolis-based Egg Creative as its production management team, and has engaged Jennifer David (formerly Executive Producer of Fallon Worldwide) to produce the coming season of 12 poetry films.

Egg Creative will provide production management assistance, and its music and sound division, Egg Music, will provide Motionpoems’ film projects with original scores, music supervision, audio production and finishing. Executive Producer Eric Fawcett says, “I’m inspired by how much raw talent exists in the ad industry, and we’re eager to connect those talents to Motionpoems’ film projects.”

Replacing Motionpoems co-founding producer Angella Kassube (who takes a seat on the board), freelancer Jennifer David brings 15 years of experience in agency work, including stints at Martin Williams and Carmichael Lynch before a 9-year run at Fallon serving as EP on Cadillac and Chrysler, and as Producer on accounts like Virgin Mobile, Travelers Insurance and Bahamas Ministry of Tourism. Her 5+ years on the board of the Weisman Art Museum acquaint her with the nonprofit arts sector.

Motionpoems’ annual season consists of 12 short films per year, adapted from poems cultivated in partnership with some of America’s most important poetry publishers. In recent years, Motionpoems has partnered with Copper Canyon Press, Milkweed Editions, Graywolf Press, and Scribner’s annual Best American Poetry anthology. All will contribute poetry again this year, along with newcomers American Poetry Review, McSweeney’s, The Believer, Tin House, Alaska Quarterly Review, FSG, Wave Books and others to be announced. Motionpoems has produced 40+ films over the past four years, working with Pulitzer Prize winners and early-career poets alike.

Read the rest. It’s good to see poetry videos continuing to gain mainstream acceptance in the American poetry establishment.

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Liberated Words Poetry Film Festival

On 20 September, 2013 by Lucy English with 0 Comments - festivals and other screening events

3rd October National Poetry Day, The Arnolfini, Bristol Poetry Festival, 2013

Liberated Words is the home of the first annual international poetry film festival in the UK, celebrating poetry on screen in many forms, combining original and adapted written poems, with spoken word, images, music and other forms of sound effects. This is a burgeoning genre with a strong tie between music, text and image.

Founded by performance poet and novelist Lucy English (Reader in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University) and Sarah Tremlett – media poet and arts writer (PhD on media poetry at The University of the Arts, London), Liberated Words began as part of Bath Spa University’s MIX Conference, at Corsham Court, 2012 in order to bring poetry film to the general public.

Liberated Words has been invited by Colin Brown of Poetry Can to present a one day event as part of Bristol Poetry Festival on October 3rd.

At the Liberated Words Poetry Film festival there are international screenings from our partners VideoBardo in Buenos Aires and Visible Verse in Vancouver, and talks from TS Eliot prize-winning poet Philip Gross, award-winning, Bristol-based film-maker Joe Magee, animator Professor Suzie Hanna, poet David Johnson, media artist Professor Martin Rieser, and community media artist Jackie Calderwood.

This year we are presenting the finalists from two competitions – ‘Liberated Words open competition’ and ‘4 x 4’, which features new work created by an international selection of poets and filmmakers. We also have a ‘Spotlight’ section including acclaimed practitioners Tom Konyves, Machine Libertine and Jani Sipila.

For further information on Liberated Words please visit our website.

Putting the la into LA and Bristol!

We are inaugurating two awards — the best music /sound award and the best edited award. We are delighted to announce that our music judges will be LA-based spoken- word poet Rich Ferguson and film maker Mark Wilkinson — whose teamwork produced the memorable music-based poetry film Human Condition.

Dates and times:

The Liberated Words Poetry Film Festival will run from 10am-9pm on October 3rd.

The daytime session costs £5.00/ £3.00; the evening session costs £5.00/£3.00 and an all day ticket costs £8.00/£4.00. For further information on how to book a ticket, go to www.poetrycan.co.uk, e-mail boxoffice@arnolfini.org.uk or telephone 0117 917 2300.

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How to replace a video at Vimeo without changing the link

On 16 September, 2013 by Dave Bonta with 5 Comments - video hosting

In the past two days, two different filmmakers have contacted me to let me know that they’ve changed the Vimeo links for their films in the Moving Poems archive. On the one hand, I’m grateful to them for letting me know. I do sometimes comb the archives here for dead links, but not nearly often enough, and I appreciate hearing from users of the site when a video has disappeared. On the other hand, they wouldn’t have needed to switch URLs just to replace the video with a new version; they could’ve simply swapped in a new file. This is actually one of Vimeo’s most under-appreciated killer features, in my opinion. (And the fact that you can’t do this at YouTube is a good reason not to use it.) From the FAQs:

Can I replace a video and keep the URL, Stats, comments, etc?

You sure can!

From your video page, click Settings below the video player. From there, head to the Video File tab and click “Replace this video.” This allows you to upload a new video file while keeping the video URL, comments, Stats, likes, tags, and all the other information associated with the video.

During the replacement process, the original video will remain viewable while the new one is uploaded. Once the replacement video finishes uploading and begins conversion, the original video will no longer be viewable, and will soon be replaced.

So there will be just a short time during which the video isn’t viewable (a few minutes if you have a Plus or Pro account, longer if you have a free account and are uploading during a busy time of the day).

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Poetry film festivals and screenings in October

On 13 September, 2013 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - festivals and other screening events

October is definitely the biggest month on the calendar for fans of videopoetry/filmpoetry, cinepoetry and animated poetry, with at least six seven major events on both sides of the Atlantic. Here’s a brief rundown:

Canada

  • Vancouver, Oct. 12: Visible Verse 2013 Festival
    “The 2013 festival will be selected from more than 200 entries received from artists around the world. As well, we are happy to host Colorado poet and filmmaker R.W. Perkins, who will give an artist’s talk on video poetry and filmmaking.”

Ireland

  • Cork, October 16-20: Ó Bhéal at IndieCork
    “This is Ó Bhéal’s fourth year of screening poetry-films (or video-poems), and the first year featuring a competition.” Deadline: September 15

Italy

  • Rome, October 24-25: 4th DOCtorCLIP Roma Poetry Film Festival
    “An international jury will select a winner of the Doctorclip Award, including a cash prize, from among the ten selected videos of the contest.”

Lithuania

U.K.

  • London, Oct. 3: National Poetry Day Live at the Southbank Centre
    “Several new Poetry Society commissions will also premiere at National Poetry Day Live: a new film-poem by Alice Oswald and Chana Dubinski explores water’s most transient states; while poets including Liz Berry and Ian McMillan have travelled the nation’s canal network with film-maker Alastair Cook.”
  • Bristol, Oct. 3: Liberated Words at Bristol Poetry Festival
    “We already have a fantastic line up of international screenings – including Maciej Piatek’s ‘Words’ from the poems of Polish immigrants, making us look twice at how we live our lives in Britain.”

U.S.

  • Minneapolis, Oct. 19: Co-Kisser Annual Poetry-Film Festival at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design
    “The mission for the fest is to see how poets and filmmakers are defining the genre of poetry-films and to challenge and be inspired by any and all of these definitions.”
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Erica Goss looks at poetry filmmakers under forty and “12 Moons”

On 30 August, 2013 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - filmmaking, literary magazines and websites

Erica Goss’s latest “Third Form” column at Connotation Press takes a look at “Three Video Poems from Artists Under Forty,” interviewing Jack Wake-Walker, Annie Ferguson and Jesse Russell Brooks about how they’ve approached their respective projects.

Goss is directly involved in another project still under development, a collaboration with Swoon (Marc Neys), Nic S. and Kathy McTavish called 12 Moons. Several things interest me about this: the sheer scope of it (twelve videos in twelve months), its collaborative nature, and the different media venues in which it will appear (web, DVD, print chapbook, festivals). It has real potential to break new ground for filmmaker-poets. Here’s how Erica describes the project.

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Poetry comics: cousin to videopoetry?

On 26 August, 2013 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - related genres, theory

In the same way that people often express astonishment that they’d never heard of videopoetry or filmpoetry before, considering how much great work is out there, I’m feeling simultaneously abashed and grateful to discover that there is such a thing as poetry comics, and that it appears to be flourishing. A friend on Facebook, the poet and publisher Kathleen Rooney, just linked to an anthology with eight contributors published last year by New Modern Press called Comics as Poetry:

A handful of artists have wandered away from mainstream comics only to find themselves at the periphery of poetry. Here, they bend and shove the vocabulary of comics to make the medium yield new effects. The results are original and surprising, and invite the reader to participate in experiments performed upon narrative, art, and language.

Check the press page for examples of their art.

Googling quickly turned up a blog called Poetry Comics by artist-poet Bianca Stone, who in a recent post links to a roundtable discussion at The Rumpus between her and three other artists, from the New York Comics Symnposium.

Comics and poetry may not often be mentioned in the same breath, but the two actually have a long history together. That history dates back at least to the mid 1960s, when the New York School experimented with combining the forms. (Much earlier than that, e. e. cummings recognized a kindred spirit in George Herriman.) Today, a small-but-growing group of creators work primarily in a hybrid of comics and poetry. Among these are Paul Tunis (PT), Bianca Stone (BS), Gary Sullivan (GS), and Alexander Rothman (AR). The four NYC-based artists sat down to discuss poetry comics in August 2013.

The strongest video parallel would be animated poetry, I suppose, but based on the samples I’ve seen, some seem equally close to haiga. Bianca Stone says in the roundtable:

I think what’s exciting is that we kind of don’t know what “poetry comics” means, and it’s just kind of this words-and-image exploration. But it’s not really fixed in either world.

I do love hybrid genres, and am always impressed by poets who turn out also to be gifted artists, or vice versa — as with author-made videopoems. When done right, art-poetry combinations can bring across to the reader/viewer something of that gestalt which I think lies at the heart of authentic perception.

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2013 Filmpoem Festival reviewed in The Huffington Post

On 25 August, 2013 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - festivals and other screening events

Due to Moving Poems’, um, extended vacation this summer, I’ve neglected to share until now Robert Peake‘s review of the first Filmpoem Festival in his poetry column for the Huffington Post: “The Film-Poem Arrives in Britain.” Here’s a snippet:

Over two intensive days of screenings and discussions, poets and filmmakers from all over the world converged and convened in the Dunbar Town House on August third and fourth to experience some of the most innovative works in this emerging genre. Described as “slim, but international” by founder Alastair Cook, the group of sixty enthusiasts in attendance was dense with heavy-hitters in both poetry and film.

Scottish poet John Glenday appeared to discuss the experience of having one of his poems developed into film-poems by five different accomplished filmmakers. Above all, though, it was the quality of films that stand on their own in representing the unique and exciting possibilities of this new medium–for poets, musicians, and visual artists throughout the UK.

Peake concludes with a selection of six of his favorite films from the festival, shared as embeds (rather than just links) for maximum viewership. Check it out.

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Motionpoems featured in the Georgia Review Online

On 25 August, 2013 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Animation, literary magazines and websites

The latest online column from Georgia Review assistant editor David Ingle focuses on Motionpoems, with mentions of other poetry-film projects (including this one). It’s great to see major literary journals such as GR beginning to pay attention to the genre. I also happen to like Ingle’s selection of recommended videos, and agree with his conclusion that the variety of approaches taken by the different filmmakers at Motionpoems adds greatly to the site’s charm. Go read.

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2013 Visible Verse Festival programme announced

On 24 August, 2013 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - festivals and other screening events

The 2013 VISIBLE VERSE FESTIVAL programme has been announced at the Cinematheque’s website:

Visible Verse, The Cinematheque’s annual festival of video poetry, is back! Vancouver poet, author, musician, and media artist Heather Haley curates and hosts our celebration of this hybrid creative form, which integrates verse with media-art visuals produced by a camera or a computer. The 2013 festival will be selected from more than 150 entries received from artists around the world. As well, we are happy to host Colorado poet and filmmaker R.W. Perkins, who will give an artist’s talk on video poetry and filmmaking.

Video poetry and poetry film festivals and sites continue to pop up all over the world; The Cinematheque’s Visible Verse Festival is proud to maintain its position as North America’s sustaining venue for artistically significant video poetry. As founder of both the original Vancouver Videopoem Festival and Visible Verse, Heather Haley has provided a platform for the genre since 1999, and has also vigorously contributed to the theoretical knowledge of the form. Ms. Haley was honoured for her work with a 2012 Pandora’s Literary Award.

Click through for the full listing of film notes and showtimes. In a post at her blog One Life, Haley goes into a bit more detail about the selection process and the special artist’s talk:

As with last year, we received a record number of entries, over 200. … We received stellar works from South Africa, Thailand, Germany, Belgium, Portugal, Canada, the U.S, Ireland and the UK. With only one night of screenings, I am unable to include a lot of video poems I like.

Fortunately the program does include Literary Movement, a discussion with R.W. Perkins on the process of creating videopoems and the integration of modern filmmaking techniques, Q&A to follow. We will be screening his videopems Morning Sex & Blueberry Pancakes and Small Talk & Little Else. R.W. Perkins is a poet and filmmaker from Fort Collins, Colorado. His work has been published in the Atticus Review, Moving Poems, The Denver Egotist, The Connotation Press, and The Huffington Post Denver. Perkins’s work has been featured at film festivals all over the world, including an 18-state U.S. tour with the New Belgium Brewery’s Clips of Faith Beer & Film Tour in 2012 and at the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival in Berlin, Germany. Perkins is also the creator and director of The Body Electric Poetry Film Festival, Colorado’s first poetry film festival, which held its inaugural event in May of this year. For more information on Perkins and his work, visit www.rw-perkins.com. We’re thrilled to have him!

The festival is Sat, Oct. 12 at the Cinematheque in Vancouver. My son has promised to edit a trailer for me, I’ll post it asap. *See* you there!

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Filmpoem Festival 2013: Submit!

On 14 June, 2013 by Alastair Cook with 1 Comments - calls for work, festivals and other screening events

This is the last call for Filmpoem Festival 2013 – get them in the post folks! We’ve had some incredible entries so far. Check this.

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VISIBLE VERSE FESTIVAL 2013 Call for Entries and Official Guidelines

On 14 June, 2013 by Heather Haley with 0 Comments - calls for work, festivals and other screening events
  • VVF seeks videopoems with a 12 minutes maximum duration.
  • Works will be judged by their innovation, cohesion and literary merit. The ideal videopoem is a wedding of word and image, the voice seen as well as heard.
  • Please do not send documentaries as they are outside the featured genre.
  • Either official language of Canada is acceptable, though if the video is in French, an English-dubbed or-subtitled version is required. Videopoems may originate in any part of the world.
  • Please submit by sending the URL for your videopoem along with a brief bio, full name, and contact information to Artistic Director Heather Haley at hshaley@emspace.com. There is no official application form nor entry fee.

VISIBLE VERSE FESTIVAL Oct. 2013 DEADLINE: Aug. 1, 2013

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Deadline nears to submit to Filmpoem Festival

On 7 June, 2013 by Dave Bonta with 1 Comments - calls for work, festivals and other screening events

Just a reminder that July 1 is a little over three weeks away. And given how quickly time tends to fly in the summer, anyone who intends to submit work for screening at the first Filmpoem Festival shouldn’t delay! Here are the guidelines [PDF]. Also, it’s not to late to make or change your vacation plans. The Filmpoem Festival will take place on August 2-4 at Dunbar Town House, Dunbar, Scotland.

(Three other poetry film festival deadlines are coming up at the end of July/beginning of August, and one on September 15, so chronic procrastinators can take heart. See the list of deadlines I posted here the other week.)