~ Film and Video Poetry Society ~
Call for entries: 2021 Film and Video Poetry Symposium
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.
News Round-Up: Pandemic Edition
“Why Poetry?” Video Podcast Special on Poetry Film with Lucy English
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPti3riEkh0
This is such an excellent look at the role of collaboration in poetry film-making. A very well-edited and satisfying program, focusing on Lucy English’s Book of Hours project, it ought to work well as an introduction to the genre for poets and filmmakers alike.
Ó Bhéal Poetry-Film Competition Open for Submissions
Weimar Poetry Film Award: Festival Postponed, Deadline Extended
FVPS Deadline Extended and The Symposium Postponed until Fall 2020
“The Film and Video Poetry Society will postpone our 3rd annual symposium; we are hopeful, and are committed to rescheduling for fall 2020. Submissions remain open and our deadline extended to August 3, 2020.” More here.
Newlyn PZ Poetry Film Competition Winners Announced
The 2020 Newlyn PZ Film Festival was cancelled, but we still know the winners of the poetry film competition thanks to a post at the increasingly indispensable Liberated Words website.
Cadence Video Poetry Festival, Other Film Festivals Move Online
Rather than cancel entirely, the Cadence Video Poetry Festival made the choice of screening films online in five screenings on 15-19 April. A number of other film festivals are opting to screen films online for a few days as well. It’s a shame that so many film festivals bar submissions of films that are freely available online. Otherwise it might be possible for Cadence and others to post all competition films to the web on a permanent basis, and people with dodgier internet connections (including myself) would have an easier time watching them. If the pandemic makes meat-space festivals impossible for the next couple of years, as seems possible, some festivals might end up doing a 180 and requiring all submissions to be available on the web. That would certainly shake things up!
Visible Poetry Project Films All Online
The Visible Poetry Project is one web-first, festival-like thing that wasn’t hurt by the pandemic. A film went up each day in April, and you can watch them all on their website.
New Book on Videopoetry by Valerie LeBlanc and Daniel H. Dugas
Books on or about videopoetry are a rarity, and this one is available for free as a PDF, with a print version due out later this year. Here’s Sarah Tremlett’s mini review. It’s cool to be able to read about the making of a film and then click a live link to watch it. I’ll be interested to see whether the print edition includes QR codes allowing readers with mobile phones to watch the films as they read.
Online “Festival of Hope” Features Videopoetry
This is a cool festival. And it looks as if the films may remain live for a while.
Corona! Shut Down? Open Call and Ongoing Release of Videos
It’s not just for poetry videos, but this is well worth checking out — and submitting to. As they say, “Corona isn’t the plague, and not all infected people are gonna be dying. Probably, the crisis is a wake-up call – to rethink and change!?”
Film and Video Poetry Symposium, Weimar Poetry Film Prize announce winners
Back at the end of April, the Film and Video Poetry Society website had a post announcing the winning films coming out of their inaugural symposium, presented in image form, with no accompanying text. They were:
Best Choreopoem
Moving Southwark (director & poet Jevan Chowdhury, U.K., 2016)
Outstanding Poem
Oceanik (director Lucia Sellars, poet Nia Davies, U.K., 2017)
Best Film Essay
Where Is Eva Hipsey? (director Orla McHardy, writer Justin Spooner, U.S., 2016)
Best Experimental film
Phantom Cinema (writer & director Cheng Li-Ming, Taiwan, 2016)
Best Videopoem
Dog Daze (director & poet Ian Gibbins, Australia, 2017)
(Details grabbed from their previously published shortlist.)
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Earlier this week, the 2018 Weimar Poetry Film Prizes were announced on the Poetryfilmkanal website, in German. Here’s how Google translates the first part of the post:
The winners of the third Weimar Poetry Film Awards are the films THE DESKTOP METAPHOR (jury prize) and PATATA DAY (Audience Award). The jury also awarded a special mention to the film BLUE FLASH FLASH.
JURY PRIZE
The jury of the third Weimar Poetry Film Award, consisting of the Thuringian poet Daniela Danz, the artist and curator Cathy De Haan from Leipzig and the Norwegian animator Kristian Pedersen, chose the English entry THE DESKTOP METAPHOR (2017) as the winner of the €1000 jury prize. Directed by the Dutch director Helmie Stil; the underlying poem was written by the British author Caleb Parkin.
Google makes a hash of the jury statement, but here’s the film:
And here’s the winner of the jury’s Special Mention, Blue Flash Flash by Jane Glennie:
The Poetryfilmkanal post also includes a trailer for the winner of the audience award, but that’s their own upload, so you’ll have to click through to watch it.
Don’t miss the illustrated and annotated (in German and English) shortlist. These were a bunch of really strong films.
A belated but nonetheless heart-felt congratulations to all the winners!
The Film and Video Poetry Society releases its 2018 symposium selections
The Los Angeles-based Film and Video Poetry Society, while remaining a bit of a cipher where its leadership and membership is concerned, does appear to be going ahead with the planned symposium on April 26-29. Despite the $18 submission fee, they seem to have had no shortage of submissions, because their just-released list of selections is not short:
The 2018 Film and Video Poetry Symposium, presented by the Film and Video Poetry Society, has announced its official program selections for the inaugural edition of The Film and Video Poetry Symposium. The Film and Video Poetry Symposium celebrates artistic excellence found through the union of poetry, film, video, and new media. The symposium brings together cinema enthusiasts, poets, filmmakers, video artists, and media artists to discover international work that represents this dynamic field.
This year’s symposium will screen over eighty films representing filmmakers, poets, and artists from over twenty countries, along with workshops, guided panels, and conversations. The Film and Video Poetry Symposium runs from Thursday, April 26 – Sunday, April 29, 2018 in Los Angeles, Ca.
Introducing the Film and Video Poetry Society
Over the past two years, a mysterious, L.A.-based group called the Film and Video Poetry Society have built up a tremendous following for their Facebook page, on which they regularly share a wide variety of poetry films and videopoems from around the web. I liked the results so much, I included the link among the short selection of recommended sites at the bottom of the front page of Moving Poems — the first and so far only time I’ve done that for a page on the ubiquitous but web-destroying colossus that is Facebook.
Well, as of August 1 I no longer have to do that, because at long last they’ve debuted their own web platform… and it’s a doozy. Features include a live, TV-like channel of poetry videos, a finishing fund and production assistance program for poetry filmmakers, poetry translation assistance, and even a plan for print publications. Perhaps of most interest to readers of Moving Poems, they are welcoming submissions of film and video projects up to 32 minutes long for a big annual symposium to be held on April 27th – 28th, 2018 in Los Angeles. It would probably be easiest if I just pasted in the text of their About page:
OUR MISSION
The Film and Video Poetry Society (FVPS) mission is to encourage film and video poets to further their ongoing explorations by providing a platform for these artists to activate, collaborate, discuss, and maintain creative work developed through the convergence of these art forms.
FVPS PROGRAMS AND INITIATIVES
Finishing Fund
The first of our initiatives is The FVPS Finishing Fund and Assistance Program. This production award will assist film and video poetry projects that have started the creative process and seek additional assistance or funds to complete the final stages of production.Poetry Beam
We established an experimental distribution, archival, and publishing format for film and video poetry. Poetry Beam is focused on audience development, live streaming, digital curation, film and video exhibition, immersive technologies, and new methods of media licensing.Events
The Film and Video Poetry Society is dedicated to providing a platform for oral and written literature. We are doing this by coordinating international events such as poetry slams, readings, virtual panels, writing rooms, and pop-up poetry book-shops.Annual Symposium
FVPS is also organizing an annual symposium where we will host film screenings, workshops, and panels for a two day period each spring.Publishing
FVPS is currently adapting two poetry films into chapbooks and has published A Guide to Film and Video Poetry festivals!Translations
Finally, FVPS supports language diversity. Our efforts to assist poets and filmmakers to access wider audiences and festival markets include subtitling and closed captioning assistance for films of any language.
FVPS is developing a closed captioning app to offer video editors low cost multilingual translation on an academic level.The Film and Video Poetry Society embraces a demanding dream. We strive to balance our new world’s increased desire for visual content with our old world love for literacy, printed matter, and the poetic word.
We are deeply grateful for the poets and filmmakers who contacted us over the past year. The contributions of your work and the many ideas you have shared inspired our team to launch this platform.
Thank you for reading our mission statement and we encourage you to explore this website.
Click through to join their mailing list and check out the site.
A small disclosure: I have been in contact with someone (not sure who) from the FVPS a couple of times, and provided a critique of the site before it went public. They assure me they will reveal their identities soon, when they unveil a masthead. I am as always happy to welcome new websites and initiatives to the international poetry film/video fold, and I’ll be watching FVPS with particular interest given their evident good taste in poetry videos, their proven ability to generate social media buzz, and their physical location near the world’s most powerful center of cinematic production. I think their primary focus on filmmakers and artists makes great practical sense, because in my experience there’s much more openness to poetry film and videopoetry in those kinds of circles than (sadly) among poets.
