~ ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival ~
Poetry Film at UK’s Lyra Bristol Poetry Festival
The Lyra Bristol Poetry Festival is due to begin on 12th April. Do check out our full programme as we have so much going on!
We have two poetry film events which I would love you to be able to see.
If you can’t be in Bristol many of our events, including the Zebra screening, will be live-streamed. Our ‘festival digital pass’ is only £15 and you will be able to view the events online.
The first poetry film event is Cancer Alley, the poetry film immersive hologram which is going to be screened at The Watershed 18-21st April from 10-5pm.
Cancer Alley is an immersive poetry film hologram which features environmental destruction in ‘Cancer Alley’, Louisiana, the heart of the Global petrochemical industry. The project draws attention to the need for multinational companies to take more responsibility for their impact on the environment and the growing public awareness of how people’s lives are affected by extreme pollution. Cancer Alley is free, and is available to view at the Watershed 17-21st April on a continuous loop.
Cancer Alley has been created by poet Lucy English, US filmmakers Pamela Falkenberg and Jack Cochran, and Bristol based company Holotronica.
The second is the curation of films by the Zebra Poetry Film Festival on Saturday 20th April at The Watershed 3-4pm. Haus für Poesie presents a selection of the best films from the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival. The programme shows short films on the subject of “Poetry and Technology”. On the one hand, the poetry films are technically extremely sophisticated or deal with topics such as artificial intelligence, algorithms and social media. The films are based on poems by Jörg Piringer, Raed Wahesh and Yehuda Amichai, among others.
Presented by Thomas Zandgiacomo Del Bel, who will join us for a special in-person Q&A all the way from Berlin.
I look forward to seeing you at the festival in person or virtually! Here’s the link.
Mrs. Bovary de Porrentruy by Ariane von Graffenried
This brilliant piece from Switzerland was just announced as Best International Poetry Film at the prestigious ZEBRA Festival in Germany. It is a gritty, contemporary retelling in verse of Gustave Flaubert‘s historic novel, Madame Bovary.
The film concept and editing are by Yannick Mosimann. The soundtrack is by the musical duo Fitzgerald & Rimini – Ariane von Graffenried and Robert Aeberhard. Ariane’s powerful text and voice are at the wrenching heart of the film, the poem translated to English by Anne Posten. Other collaborators are in the YouTube notes.
The judges were Rosa Maria Hopp (editorial director MDR), Federico Italiano (poet) and Maria Mohr (filmmaker and film educator). Their comments:
Hemmed in by the mountains, this film not only features a protagonist trapped in the dreariness of daily life but also an image frozen in time—sometimes the 16 mm image is torn, sometimes doubled. And then, there’s that battered post rock over and over. It’s a perfect whirlwind of cinematic elements, interwoven with the three languages of the extraordinary poem that fuels them. And in between, there’s that “disturbing woman.” Hardly any phrase encapsulates this film as well as, “Mrs. Bovary from Porrentruy isn’t who she wants to be / Her needs are big, her life’s petit.” (source)
In posting here, I have given the abbreviated English translation of the title. Zebra Festival gives its original as Fitzerald & Rimini – D Frou Bovary de Porrentruy. That title format suggests the film may have first been conceived as a music video. Indeed it can also be heard just as a music track. And what a tremendous meeting this is of music video and poetry film.
There were 25 finalist films in the international competition. These were selected from around 1,200 entries from over 90 countries. Winning films in other categories at the 2023 ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival are here.
Winners at Zebra Poetry Film Festival 2023 Berlin
The Zebra International Poetry Film Festival took place from 12 to 15 October at Haus für Poesie and Kino in der Kulturbrauerei in Berlin, Germany. A jury of Rosa Maria Hopp (editorial director MDR), Federico Italiano (poet) and Maria Mohr (filmmaker and film educator) selected three films for awards from the shortlist of 25 poetry films selected for the international competition. The festival attracts around 1,200 entries from over 90 countries.
The 2023 ZEBRA Prize for the Best International Poetry Film went to Fitzgerald & Rimini – D Frou Bovary de Porrentruy by Yannick Mosimann from Switzerland, with a poem by Ariane von Graffenried.
In their statement, the jury said: “Hemmed in by the mountains, this film not only features a protagonist trapped in the dreariness of daily life but also an image frozen in time—sometimes the 16 mm image is torn, sometimes doubled. And then, there’s that battered post rock over and over. It’s a perfect whirlwind of cinematic elements, interwoven with the three languages of the extraordinary poem that fuels them. And in between, there’s that “disturbing woman.” Hardly any phrase encapsulates this film as well as, “Mrs. Bovary from Porrentruy isn’t who she wants to be / Her needs are big, her life’s petit.””
The Goethe Film Award – Borders went to Kin ma belle by Junior Mozese from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, who is also author of the poem the film is based on.nnhttps://vimeo.com/806089631nnThe jury’s statement: “There are no protagonists in this film, just a city that reveals itself through its contradictions and weaknesses. Singing its praises, the lyrical voice observes the metropolis from unexpected angles, from the sidewalks, from the depths of landfills, in the cracks of life—between healing and exclusion. The film is a vibrant love song to the wayside. This year’s Goethe Film Award goes to an entry that utilizes documentary techniques: “Kin ma belle” by Junior Mozese.”
The 2023 Ritter Sport Film Award went to Legs by Jennifer Still, Christine Fellows and Chantel Mierau from Canada, based on a poem by Jennifer Still.nThe jury’s statement: “Legs create a gap that connects several generations of women. Between a kid’s birthday party and swimming pools, the bodies—shells—cultivate a playful life of their own. The film distinguishes itself through its unique object creations and an extraordinary timing that often borders on the absurd. Colorful mourning in glitter. What’s left when the body’s gone? Stockings.”
Two special mentions were given by the jury.
The first one is a special mention of the Goethe Film Award for Satane Sefid by Shiva Sadegh Asadi from Iran, both director and author of the poem the film is based on: “How should one narrate a border crossing that affects the most intimate sphere? In tightly framed, claustrophobic images, the Iranian filmmaker Shiva Sadegh Asadi succeeds in showing that the private is always political. Woman, life, freedom!”
The second one is a special mention of the Ritter Sport Film Award for Meanwhile, somewhere in the state of Colorado by the Italian Gloria Regonesi, based on a poem by Simon Armitage: “Sometimes, the greatest art lies in visualizing the absolute. Through the simplicity of its visual language, this film is able to emphasize the power of poet Simon Armitage’s words without ever overshadowing them. Unpretentious and free of cliches.”
The ZEBRino Poetry Film Festival audience also awarded an audience award. The 2023 ZEBRino Award for the Best Poetry Film for children and youth was awarded to Abri by Julie Daravan Chea from France, based on a poem by Esther Granek.
A special mention was given to the film Swallows love by Mariya Onishckenko from the Ukraine, based on the Volkslied Shum.
Upcoming poetry film festival programs now online: Vienna, Midwest, Zebra
Autumn is a busy time in the poetry film world, especially when the biannual Vienna Poetry Film Festival, AKA Art Visuals & Poetry Filmfestival, is happening. It’ll be held on November 14-17 this year. Here’s the full program.
Highlights of this 10th anniversary edition of the festival include a poetry film competition based on the festival poem “la luna” by Viennese poet Manfred Chobot, with seven selections from around the world, and of course the main competition program, which is split into two sessions: one for Austrian films, and the other for German-language films from Germany and Switzerland.
A few days after that program appeared online, the Midwest Poetry Video Fest organizers uploaded detailed programs for their two-day event in Wisconsin, USA:
There will be two evenings of live Poet + Filmmaker performance followed by film screenings on October 14th and October 15th at ALL in Madison, WI and at Woodland Pattern in Milwaukee, WI. Each evening’s screening will be unique and will include a selection of works from the open call alongside works by artists especially invited by the Curatorial Team.
Each date links to a program, including thumbnails and a description of each of the 29 videopoems.
And then today the big dog, Berlin’s ZEBRA festival, announced its program. The English-language version is here, using what looks to be a repurposed URL from 2022. Each time it has a different national focus, and in 2023 that’s going to be Italy:
With selected poetry films from this year’s submissions, as well as the best Italian films of the past years, ZEBRA will present various facets of Italy film and poetry scene. Landscape, love, culture, tradition, and conflict are just a few of the themes. Films in this program are based on poems by Dante Alighieri, Gioacchino Belli, Elena Chiesa, John Giorno, Giacomo Leopardi, Milena Tipaldo oder Lello Voce.
For the international competition, they note that
About 1,200 entries from over 90 countries were submitted to 2023’s ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival. A program committee nominated 25 of them for the international competition.
The three-member international jury will award the following prizes this year: the “ZEBRA Prize for the Best Poetry Film,” donated by the House of Poetry, the “Goethe Film Prize – Borders,” donated by the Goethe-Institut, and the “Ritter Sport Film Prize,” donated by Alfred Ritter GmbH & Co KG.
There are also four thematically grouped programs, or prisms as they call them: The Worlds inside your mind – MEMORIES & DREAMS; All the What-Ifs – ECO POETRY & DYSTOPIA; Urbanities – CITY & SOCIETY; and How to connect – LOVE & BODIES. A couple of readings, a masterclass on animation, and the awards ceremony round out what looks like a very full and exciting program.
If any Moving Poems readers are planning to attend these events, we’d love to hear they went. Feel free to send in any reports or observations you may have.
Call for entries: ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival 2023
It’s that time again!
In 2023, the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival is inviting entries for the International Poetry Film Competition! Eligible for entry are short films, based on poems of no more than 15 minutes duration, produced in or after 2022. All languages are allowed. The competition winners will be awarded prize money. A program committee will select films for the International Competition and for all other festival programs. The winning films will be chosen by a jury composed of representatives from the worlds of poetry, film, and media.
Closing date for entries: 1 June 2023 (postmark date)
If you have any questions, please contact: zebra@haus-fuer-poesie.org
For submission, please use the FilmFreeway portal: ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival – FilmFreeway
Visit FilmFreeway also for the full guidelines.
ZEBRA 2022: The Cannes of Poetry Film Turns 20
Award ceremony – Zebra Poetry Film Festival 2022. Photo: Jane Glennie
Four days of events, readings and film screenings in one of the cultural hearts of Berlin was completed with the awards ceremony on Sunday 6 November 2022. In the fabulous venue of the Kino in der Kulturbrauerei, filmmakers and poets attended ZEBRA from far and wide – from Brazil to Ukraine by way of Ireland, UK and Switzerland to name but a few.
A wide-ranging and well-attended festival dedicated to poetry film is a marvelous thing. ZEBRA is the largest and longest-running festival of its kind, and the hosts were delighted to be fully in-person and without restrictions again. The event is welcoming, friendly and in a brilliant venue in a great part of a great city.
Film is often the first impression we get of a city in the world, and being from the UK, it took me a couple of days to get over the feeling of being in every Cold War spy movie I’ve ever seen that has passed through East Berlin. But I was lucky enough to be able to attend ZEBRA throughout the four days and soon felt relaxed and at home in this exciting, culturally rich city. It’s not physically possible to see all that ZEBRA has to offer because there are often events or screenings that take place simultaneously, but the film selection I enjoyed included animations, documentaries, spoken word films, and sign language poetry film. The programme committee want to represent the world in the films they choose for the International Competition, as well as a range of genres within films connected by the common thread of poetry or a poetic approach. They chose to have a focus on Ukraine with both films and poetry readings, and a retrospective of Maya Deren (born in Kyiv), but beyond the dreadful situation faced by Ukrainians, ZEBRA seem keen to use their platform to screen films that have pertinent and important messages to convey.
In the programme, the new director of ZEBRA, Katharina Schultens, said:
“Poetry and poetry films do not have a lot in common with the escapism of the entertainment industry and the consolation its products may offer. They reach much further than that. Yes, they can offer us comfort, too, but while doing so, they also pose the difficult questions we have to face… [such as] war and displacement … exclusion in societies … climate catastrophe…”
At this point in the week afterwards, reflecting on the films I have seen and the films I have missed, or been forced to miss because of simultaneous programming – this is where an online component would be hugely valuable, and I urge ZEBRA and all other festivals to consider the approach taken by the Women Over 50 Film Festival (WOFFF) in Lewes (UK) this year. WOFFF took place in a hybrid format. All films could be watched in the online festival leading up to the in-person event. But the really valuable bit is that attendees of the in-person event were offered a voucher to watch more of the films throughout the week AFTER the in-person event. Talking to people during the in-person event, and through the connections you make, you meet or discover writers and filmmakers whose work you have missed, hear recommendations for someone else’s favourite film, see a film of a type that you didn’t know you were going to love and you want to explore more of, or recall something that sticks in your mind and you want to watch again to appreciate fully. Or simply your appetite has been awakened for the very first time and you want to see more than you thought you would …
Kino in der Kulturbrauerei, Zebra Poetry Film Festival 2022. Photo: Jane Glennie.
The winners of Zebra 2022 seem to reflect an overall philosophy of championing weighty subject matter. Or perhaps they reflect an understandable mood of seriousness in the world. (The list of winners and judges’ comments are available on the ZEBRA website and in their press release.) Personally, I was disappointed by the choice of both Black. British. Muslim. Other. and Terra Dei Padri (Fathers’ Land). While each had a very strong story to tell, one through a very immediate approach in the poet’s performance and direction, and the other through the use of archive images, I did not think either was a great example of their type. Far stronger in the use of language, image and filmmaking technique was the film given a special mention, Zyclus (Cycle).
The strongest film receiving an award was Imaginings. Written and performed by a collective of deaf poets, the film is poetry in sign language. The direction of the film by Anja Hiddinga and the energy given to it by the poet performers themselves made this an extremely compelling film to watch. I give a personal special mention to the typographic choices made for the subtitling. The words were placed over the centre of the chest of each performer as they signed. This meant that you did not need to take your eyes away from their hands and their signing. At times the type could be slightly difficult to read because it bobbed about as the poet’s body moved, but this added to the physicality of the language because their bodies moved more in, for example, moments of frustration.
The most interesting poetry film I saw was one of the selected three best interpretations of the festival poem Anderkat by Georg Leß. The poem is fascinating but very oblique. I personally found it impenetrable when I tried to imagine a treatment. At the Festival Poem event, when Georg Leß was introduced and he talked about his poem, his fascination and work with horror films came to light which then made a lot of sense in relation to his writing. I could let myself off the hook a little because I can rarely find a connection with horror in film. One of the filmmakers talked about expressing the uncanny and I think this was the key to this poem. The longlisted films shown before the three best failed to do this and, as a result, felt very unsatisfactory and weak in their choice of images. But I thought the film by Beate Gördes was stunning. Notable because it used no words, only very peculiar, uncanny images, it is one of the films I really want to watch several times over to appreciate its subtleties.
Two very enjoyable films in the event were documentaries. Spatzen und Spaziergänge (Sparrows and Strolls) was the beautifully shot and framed film by Maria Mohr with the poet Marko Pogačar, and the other was The Last Cuckoo by Mark Chaudoir about the poet Dennis Gould which managed to capture the personality of the poet’s life in a hugely engaging way. Also pleasing was the community project from Dublin, Dance till Dán which fused choreography with collectively created poetry.
Overall however, I would have liked to have seen more films that interpreted poems of the very highest quality with visual results that are more intrinsically a fused filmic/poetic experience in themselves than they are illustrative or performative. Perhaps those are the ones I happened to miss? On that note, I reiterate, please ZEBRA, do consider an online offering that extends after the in-person event.
ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival, Berlin, 3-6 November 2022
The Zebra Poetry Film Festival has announced its four-day program. The biggest and longest running festival, this year Zebra received around 1,200 films from over 90 countries. The program committee selected 25 films for the international competition, and around 100 films for the ‘Prism’ programme. ‘Prism’ offers an insight into the sheer diversity of the poetry film scene spread across eight themes:
- Ecopoetry
- Dealing with poetry
- Myth and fairytales
- Internal and external conflicts I & II (two parts)
- Time travel
- Mental cinema
- Feminist voices
- Interrelations
The festival also offers a program focussed on films from Ukraine, a retrospective of Maya Deren, a masterclass, symposium, and interpretations of the festival poem ‘The Haircut’ by Georg Leß.
For full details see https://www.haus-fuer-poesie.org/en/zebra-poetry-film-festival/zebra-poetry-film-festival-2022/programzebra/
Click on the image below for a PDF of the program.
Call for work: ZEBRA 2022
The ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival is inviting entries for the 2022 International Poetry Film Competition. Entries open on 1st May.
The event is long-running and very big in the world of poetry film. The organisers describe this year’s event:
“The 13th ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival runs from 3rd to 6th of November 2022 in the Kino in der KulturBrauerei and in the Haus für Poesie. 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.”
For full details about the call out, please see: https://www.haus-fuer-poesie.org/en/zebra-poetry-film-festival/zebra-poetry-film-festival-2022/call-entries/
Or look out for them on FilmFreeway
FESTIVAL POEM
As well as the international competition open to all poetry, the event also has a ‘festival poem’ – this year THE HAIRCUT by Georg Leß. Filmmakers are invited to make an interpretation of this film for the festival. The three best film adaptations’ directors will be invited to Berlin, where they will be able to present their films and speak with the poet.
Travel and accommodation in Berlin for the three selected directors will be paid for by the Festival.
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.
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.
Unseen Forces and the Protagonist’s Point of View
presentation at ZEBRA 2019
Whilst subjectivity often lies in the hands of the poet, the film-maker can double the affect. This can be through their narrative use of the lens in relation to the position of the protagonist, or narrator, particularly in response to unseen forces; placing the viewer or camera in interesting and even culpable positions. I have selected three pairs of films that utilize contrasting approaches to this technique. The first two generate comic pathos; the second two focus on man’s inhumanity to man; and the final pair on the difficult dramatic technique of intimating freedom from negative forces beyond the screen (this world which is not that world).
The Desktop Metaphor (2017), by British poet Caleb Parkin, with filmic interpretation by Dutch film-maker Helmie Stil, centres in content and form on the subtly humorous juxtaposition of the prosaic with the profound and mythical in relation to man’s position in a desktop universe. The light from a steadily repetitive photocopier plays central stage in this film, accenting the repetitions in the poem, where office products alongside Stil’s photocopied face are interwoven with concepts of the infinite – ‘The Great Stapler which attaches the night to us’.
On Loop (2013), one of the funniest films in recent years by British film-maker and animator Christine Hooper, also focuses on the impotence of man’s condition in order to create humour. However, in this case the viewer is given the point of view of the invisible protagonist, who is in bed and tossing and turning with insomnia. In a short space of time we get to know exactly who the protagonist is, without ever seeing her, since an imagination in overdrive lets slip the jumbled contents of her thoughts. These are married with a visually fractured room, and a hyper-alert voice-over (Susan Calman) that is so well chosen to dramatically accentuate, through the sharply rising and falling tones of the melodic accent, a disjointed, racing imagination. Placing the viewer in the physical and mental position of the protagonist is a clever device, the comic pathos doubled in affect.
Two contrasting filmic approaches to man’s inhumanity to man are found in Numbers (English and Piatek, 2016) and Hopscotch (Vilk and Aisha 2017). Numbers begins with the film-maker and the footage itself. Maciej Piatek asked Lucy English to write a poem to the footage centering broadly on someone trying to find their way in society. Lucy arrived at the refugee survivor’s narrative, which Maciej paired with a voice-over by a survivor herself.
The black-and-white footage is from a laboratory, and I quote Maciej: ‘showing each stage of death of a human white blood cell, revealing the dying cells apparently trying to alert their immune system allies that they are dying’. He says he ‘looped and delayed in time the same piece of found footage to make it look like a disease outbreak. At the end of the film one can see in the left top corner the cell is actually disappearing’.
This film rests on the visual absence of the survivors themselves. The screen and the cells as human experiment are a surface to reflect upon, in the way that a tombstone in a graveyard focuses our thoughts. We are entirely tuned to the voice and its wholly credible narrative. However, the voice slowly disappears and the liquid vibrating aspect of the cells delicately suggests the negative role of water and the ocean in the stories. Although the survivor’s voice lets us know she survived, the screen tells us a different story. The film intimates what is not shown.
The next film, Hopscotch (2017), also intimates an insidious negative force, highlighting targeted, everyday abuse, particularly against Black Asian Minority Ethnic (BAME) women in Scotland. It is based on a poem by Nadine Aisha, and is directed by leading film-maker Roxana Vilk, with executive production by AMINA – Muslim Women’s Resource Centre with support from Rape Crisis Edinburgh.
We are immediately drawn into the centre of the conflict. An invisible stalker hisses suggestive remarks to a girl who then retorts ‘he says to me’ placing us, the viewer, as her third-party confidante. At the same time the camera focuses on a girl strolling across the screen on a cold evening. Through this clever filmic device, we see from dual points of view – as both her friend and her assailant – creating dramatic tension.
We cut to daytime, on a bus, and she continues: ‘Sat on the bus with a stranger’s hot breath’ and we are there again, but from the point of view of the abuser sitting right behind her, just as Christine Hooper placed us in the mind and physical position of the insomniac. ‘I want you’ he hisses. We follow our prey through the streets, and the abuse continues ‘stuck up bitch’ ‘what’s wrong, can’t you take this’, ‘Slut, slag’.
Standing alone in a railway station as everyone else speeds past, we recognize the victim’s frozen isolation, and how such abuse robs us of an authentic, relaxed interaction in public places. She is left with the fallout of the words and an ensuing alienation: ‘clenched them tight in fists that now mark the imprint of nameless men trying to name me’. The film continues for nearly five minutes, exposing us, the viewer, to a sense of an unending and unpredictable persecution. Ultimately the stalking camera reaches a climax where the victim turns, takes the camera, and starts filming herself. For a moment she, as in everywoman, triumphs; but through the majority of the narrative Vilk has expertly drawn us in, to inhabit the obsessive mind of the perpetrator.
Roxana told me (email 11 December 2019):
One of the reasons I was drawn to the style I used was also about reflecting on the “male gaze” in cinema in the sense that it is often male directors behind the lens; and I wanted to parallel that to this harassment of women in public spaces. Then to give the poet/ protagonist the chance at the end to grab the camera and turn the lens on herself… so she could speak to the audience without the male gaze and take back ownership of the story.
Freedom from unseen forces beyond the screen provides the central tenet in the final two films. In Quarry (2019) with poem by American poet Melissa Stein and animated line drawing by British artist animator Josh Saunders, a dramatic narrative is placed squarely in front of us. With a delicate and charming line illustration, a girl and boy swim naked in a quarry. However, through the concise and well-placed choice of words which indicate brooding danger – for example ‘a girl is swimming naked in dark water’ – an undercurrent of impending loss of innocence emerges.
The narrative is told as if in the third person, but as it reaches the denouement the narrator enters the first person. It is at this point that we sense that the earlier controlled use of language might indicate a personal psychological burial, now being exhumed. Within the developing drama, Saunders’ figures swim with innocence and a fragile, vibratory naivety; dipping into and below the surface – at one with the water, the rocks and each other. As we realize this event actually happened to the author, so we adjust, and mentally include the invasive eye of an intruder. Achieving delicacy and innocence in a film is a difficult feat; however, with such restraint, both visual and verbal, the result is powerful and memorable, and shows how animation can add to narrative in dramatic ways beyond live footage.
Storm Song (2019) by young British artist (and Central St Martins graduate) Rebecca Hilton is also set in water, but underwater, accompanied by two poems. On the surface, it appears to be a lyric, moving abstract painting where mermaid-like figures (some fully clothed and with long trailing fabric) unwind and intertwine, being both the ink and the brush. However, this film contains an underlying tension, and, rather than making a loud political statement, uses space, language and embodied gesture to subtly deny the constricts on the surface of enforced identities and ideologies from the powers that be – ‘for all we understand is power’.
Alongside an enigmatic voice-over, the viewer’s gaze finds itself broken by frequent black ‘rests’ – a technique I haven’t seen except with intertitles. These black spaces, in a ‘ma’-like way, inspire reflection on what has just been said. And just over halfway through the two poems interweave with each other. The themes in ‘Ghost Ribbon’ (2019) explore return from failure, whilst ‘Cataclysmic Storm’ (2019) investigates the weight of authoritarian power and control ‘Suspended up up up until you breathe’.
Whilst in Quarry we are taken on a developing narrative that intimates in its dramatic unselfconscious innocence a dark denouement, in Storm Song, the darkness gradually filters through, as a continuous invisible, quiescent force.
An earlier version of this essay appeared on Liberated Words.
