~ Vancouver Videopoem Festival ~
IT’S ALIVE! Visible Verse Festival announces new director, issues call for entries
Vancouver’s Visible Verse Festival is the longest-running poetry film and videopoetry festival in North America, and last April we shared the sad news that its founder and long-time director Heather Haley had reluctantly decided that she couldn’t do it anymore. Today on their Facebook group page, however, writer and entrepreneur Ray Hsu posted:
Just wanted to give y’all a heads up that Visible Verse is on for this October. Longtime Artistic Director Heather Haley will continue to offer her wealth of knowledge as an Advisor while I will step in as Artistic Director. I will try my absolute best to fill her shoes. :)
And he shared this Call for Entries:
VISIBLE VERSE FESTIVAL 2015
Call for Entries and Official Guidelines:
We seek videopoems and poetry films with a 7 minute maximum duration.
Works will be judged by their aesthetic interest, innovation and the integration/interplay between film and poetry.
The ideal video poem plays with image and word, whether the words are seen, heard or otherwise approached in the context of the piece.
Please do not send documentaries as they are beyond the scope of this genre.
Entries in any language are accepted, though if the video is not in English, then an English-dubbed or -subtitled version is preferred. Videopoems may come from any part of the world.
Please submit by sending the URL to your videopoem for previewing, along with a brief bio and contact information to Ray Hsu (Artistic Director) at drrayhsu@gmail.com.
If selected, you will receive notification and further instructions. Selected artists will be paid a standard screening fee.
VISIBLE VERSE FESTIVAL 2015 is scheduled to take place in October at the Cinematheque in Vancouver, Canada, in October.
DEADLINE: August 15, 2015
This is such great news. A huge thanks to Ray Hsu for stepping up and to Heather Haley for agreeing to stay on in an advisory capacity. Please join me in wishing them every success in this transition period, and do consider sending your best work.
It’s official: Visible Verse Festival discontinued
UPDATE: Visible Verse will continue after all!
Vancouver’s long-running Visible Verse Festival, which justly described itself as “North America’s sustaining venue for the presentation of new and artistically significant videopoetry and film,” is coming to a close. Festival organizer Heather Haley first mentioned the likelihood of discontinuing it in an update to her personal Facebook page last fall, after the successful completion of the 2014 festival. She’s now made it official with a post to the Visible Verse Facebook group:
It is with great sadness that I must inform you, my fellow videopoem and poetry film aficionados, that the Visible Verse Festival is coming to a close. My circumstances have changed drastically in the past few years and I can no longer afford to donate my time, especially as the work load, along with the festival, continues to grow. I now have a *real job,* rather a crappy job but one has to pay the bills, so neither do I have time to seek funding or find a sponsor. I am very grateful to the Cinematheque’s volunteers and staff, especially Artistic Director Jim Sinclair. We had a great run! I will keep this group page up, please feel free to continue posting and sharing.
Originally known as the Vancouver Videopoem Festival, it had its first run in 1999, found a home at The Cinematheque the following year, and ran every year since, with Haley doing most of the work single-handedly. Historically speaking, along with VideoBardo in Buenos Aires (biannual since 1996), Visible Verse bridged the gap between the Poetry Film Festival/Cin(E)-Poetry Festival in San Francisco—the world’s first poetry film festival, which ran from 1975 to 1998—and ZEBRA, PoetryFilm, TARP, Sadho, and all the other poetry-film festivals and organizations that sprang up in the new millennium. Haley also helped set the tone for many of these later festivals with her eclectic and inclusive approach to programming, representing mainstream, avant-garde, and spoken-word communities in roughly equal measure. She was a major inspiration for Moving Poems, as well. Visible Verse will be missed, but here’s hoping that Haley continues to direct her own poetry films and collaborate with other filmmakers as time permits.
2014 Visible Verse program
Ladies & Gentlemen! Announcing the 2014 VISIBLE VERSE FESTIVAL program:
- On a Prophet | David Richardson/Kathleen Roberts. Spencer, Indiana 2014.
- Indefinite Animals | Martha McCollough. Boston, MA 2014.
- In The Turning | Sarah Tremlett. Bath, England 2014.
- Genocide Is My Man United | Kevin Barrington. Dublin, Ireland 2014
- Proxy Bounce | Ian Keteku. Toronto, ON 2014
- Out of the Forest-Sleight of Tree | J.P. Sipilä. Helsinki, Finland 2014.
- words/birds | vvitalny. Brooklyn, NY 2012.
- PROEM to Brooklyn Bridge | Suzie Hanna/Hart Crane. Norwich, UK 2013.
- Again and Again | Igor Andreevski. Amsterdam, Netherlands 2014.
- 1962 | Diana Taylor/Robin Kidson. Bristol, UK 2013
- The Killing | Swoon/Howie Good. Mechelen, Belgium 2013.
- Je tombe | Svitlana Reinish, Elena Semak. Kiev, Ukraine 2014.
- Penelopiad | Jade Anouka. London, UK 2012.
- In Hell | Michael Murnau. London, UK 2012.
- Ella (Her) | Javier Reta. Madrid, Spain 2013.
- If I Can Sing a Song about Ligatures | Abigail Child. New York, NY 2009.
- What The Flute Wants to Sing | Karin Hazé/Moe Clark. Haida Gwaii, BC 2013.
- Reservation | Kevin Barrington. Dublin, Ireland 2014.
- The Elephant is Contagious | Simon O’Neill/Eabha Rose. Dublin, Ireland 2014.
INTERMISSION
- Back to You | Karen Mary Berr. Paris, France 2013.
- Keepsake | Elizabeth Johnston. Montreal, QC 2013.
- Equus Caballus | H. Paul Moon/Joel Nelson. Elko, Nevada 2013.
- Embroidered | Andy Bonjour. Steubenville, Ohio 2014.
- Babel Death Star | Jeff Cruz/Kirk Ramdath. Calgary, AB 2014.
- Kenneth Patchen | J.R. Phillips. Los Angeles, CA 2009.
- WALLS | Walter Forsyth/Andrath Whynacht. Dartmouth, Nova Scotia 2013.
- Florid Psychosis | Othniel Smith/Bill Yarro. Cardiff, Wales 2013.
- My Dolls | Pete Burkeet/Melissa Barrett. Columbus, Ohio 2014.
- Aylool MacKenzie’s Convenient Skytrain Deppaneur | Tom Wiebe/Lyle Neff. Vancouver, BC 2014.
- My Country | Jelena Sinkik/Ralph Stevenson. Maroubra, Australia 2014.
- America | Sophie LeNeveau/Allen Ginsberg. Jupiter, FL 2012.
- Late | Keith Sargeant. London, UK 2014.
- Prism | Jamey Hastings/Price Strobridge. Colorado Springs, CO 2013.
- Tasting the End | Dean Pasch. Munich, Germany 2014.
- Deathless Man | Lena Samoylenko. Kiev, Ukraine 2014.
- Some Trees | Kurtis Hough/John Ashberry. Portland, OR 2014.
- Marianne | Richard O’ Connor. New York, NY 2014.
7 pm, Sat, Oct. 18 at the Cinematheque in Vancouver, Canada
2013 Visible Verse Festival programme announced
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!
VISIBLE VERSE FESTIVAL 2013 Call for Entries and Official Guidelines
- 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
VISIBLE VERSE FESTIVAL 2013 Call for Entries and Official Guidelines
- 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, Vancouver, BC
DEADLINE: Aug. 1, 2013
See the website for more, including a postmortem on Visible Verse 2012. To view more videopoems by various artists, visit Visible Verse on Facebook.
Visible Verse Festival organizer posts detailed “post-mortem”
Heather Haley, indefatigable organizer of Vancouver’s Visible Verse Festival, has just blogged a detailed account of this year’s festival, complete with descriptions of, and links to, each poetry film in the lineup.
“The best year yet!” is what I was told repeatedly. Good turnout, a bit of press coverage, and wonderful new staff to work with, the festival is definitely entering a new phase. Changing the date from November to October, immediately following the Vancouver International Film Festival helped raise our profile, and get more bums in the seats.
New reviews of recent poetry film festivals
Shannon Raye at reviewVancouver shared some impressions of the Visible Verse Festival of Video Poetry, which was held on October 13 in Vancouver, British Columbia.
I have attended the last five years of the video poem festival, and this was my favorite year because of the diversity and quality of the work presented. Curator Heather Haley did a remarkable job bringing a full roster of culturally and artistically diverse video poems to the festival, which made for a fun and eclectic evening. Videos ranged from quirky anime and sci-fi fantasy to beautifully filmed short films with a narrative structure. I enjoyed the way the 38 video poems were presented, with funnier work following sentimental pieces, and experimental images following work that had more of a short-film feel.
One of the highlights for me was the number of international video poems. This year had a very global feel, with many European countries represented. In addition, there was a sizable selection of video poems exchanged from Argentina’s Video Bardo Festival.
Erica Goss travelled to Berlin for the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival held October 18-21, and this month in her Third Form column at Connotation Press offers the first of a two-part review of the event.
Watching poetry films as part of an audience is a new experience for me. Before the festival, I had only watched them at home on my computer, and usually alone. Sitting with other people in a dark theater while a series of intense, image-rich films rolled by on the big screen allowed me to examine them critically; for every film, I asked myself these questions: was it interesting? Did it create an alternative world? Was there a social, cultural, emotional, or intellectual message? Did the video enhance or detract from the poem? Was I startled, amazed, frightened or bored?
Vancouver’s Visible Verse Festival goes global!
Reposted from the Visible Verse Facebook page
We have lots of exciting changes in store for this year’s Visible Verse Festival! The date has been moved from November to Saturday, October 13, directly following the Vancouver International Film Festival and the program, still in the works, will include entries from 56 international artists and 100 videopoems from Australia, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Mexico, Norway, Portugal, Poland, Russia, the U.S. and Canada. And for the first time, we are exchanging videopoems with Argentina’s VideoBardo Festival and featuring a selection from their 2012 program. As well, we are happy to host Alberta artist Phillip Jagger who will perform his poetry and present “Reigning In Chaos: Words Into Video”, a hands-on workshop demonstrating the use of handcrafted video, a Kaos pad, iPod and video jamming software.
With videopoetry and poetry film festivals and sites popping up all over the world, Vancouver and Pacific Cinematheque’s Visible Verse Festival maintains its position as North America’s sustaining venue for artistically significant videopoetry. As founder of the Vancouver Videopoem Festival and Visible Verse, curator and host Heather Haley has provided a venue for the genre since 1999 and vigorously contributed to the theoretical knowledge of the form. Haley is to be honored for her work with a Pandora Literary Award and has been invited to present a keynote address at the 4th VideoBardo Festival/Conference in Buenos Aires in November on the theme of “Videopoetry; New Perspectives on an Interdisciplinary Practice.”
New deadline for 2012 Visible Verse Festival: August 1
The deadline for Visible Verse Festival 2012 has been changed to Aug. 1. The festival will take place Saturday, Oct. 13 at Pacific Cinémathèque in Vancouver.
Please help spread the (visible) word!
VISIBLE VERSE FESTIVAL @ Pacific Cinémathèque in Vancouver, Canada
Call for Entries:
- 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 hshaley@emspace.com. There is no official application form nor entry fee.
DEADLINE: Aug. 1, 2012
For more information contact Artistic Director Heather Haley at: hshaley@emspace.com
Program announced for Visible Verse videopoetry festival
Heather Haley has posted the program for the Visible Verse videopoetry festival, which will be in Vancouver, BC on Friday, Nov. 4 and Saturday, Nov. 5 at the Pacific Cinematheque. A few of the filmmakers’ names were familiar to me from curating Moving Poems (Swoon Bildos, Alastair Cook, Kathy McTavish), but the majority were not, which is exciting: it suggests that my online anthology, extensive as it is becoming, is really only the tip of the iceberg. Not only do I miss a lot of good stuff, but many people never upload their films to a video-sharing site, especially those who are more focused on getting into festivals.
This year’s festival will also include an artist talk/Q&A with Tom Konyves, focusing on his recent Videopoetry: A Manifesto, and a live reading by a vsisiting videopoet, Rich Ferguson.
Incidentally, the Facebook group page for the Visible Verse Festival, source of this information, is a good place to find links to new work, since anyone can join and post to it.
