Posts By Dave Bonta
Vuelvo a la noche / Back in the Night by Mía Gallegos
https://vimeo.com/326553588
This is the final film in Spanish director Eduardo Yagüe‘s Trilogía de Soledad (Trilogy of Solitude), which began with an adaptation of a piece by a Spanish poet, Pedro Luis Menéndez: La vida menguante (Waning Life), and continued with A media voz (Under My Breath), which responded to a text by Peruvian poet Blanca Varela. “Vuelvo a la noche” is by the contemporary Costa Rican poet Mía Gallegos.
Solitude has certainly taken on a different, potentially life-saving connotation in this time of pandemic, and my Spanish friends have been in my mind a lot lately. Eduardo has said that this trilogy was “sobre la soledad y el vacío existencial, creativo y amoroso” (about solitude and existential, creative, and romantic emptiness). All three poems were translated into English by the London-based translator and poet Jean Morris.
“Poetry and Climate” film screening at Lyra Bristol Poetry Festival
Lucy English and Sarah Tremlett of Liberated Words have organized a poetry film event focusing on poetry and climate on Saturday, March 14 in Bristol, UK. Tickets are free.
Curated by Liberated Words, these short poetry films will reflect on the current climate emergency as well as celebrate the natural world. Plus short discussion on the rising genre of poetry film and how artists and poets are responding to our changing environment. With Lucy English and Sarah Tremlett.
Arnolfini (Theatre)
Saturday 14th March 2020
1:00 – 2:00pm
There’s more information on the Liberated Words website, and it sounds like a really exciting event, with films from around the world and a panel discussion including Mark Smalley from Extinction Rebellion as well as UK ecopoets Helen Moore, Meriel Lland and Caleb Parkin. If you can’t make it to Bristol, Lucy and Sarah note that “We are also looking for further screening venues, and other poetry films on the subject, particularly including diversity within the makers.” For those who can attend, the whole festival looks pretty unmissable, with an overall theme of “climate, nature, and romantic Bristol.”
Call for entries: ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival 2020
Adapted from a press release from the Haus für Poesie
As of today, the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival in Berlin is inviting entries for its competition for the best international poetry films. Eligible for entry are international short films produced since January 1, 2018 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 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 “Lethe” by the poet TJ Dema.* 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.
Entry deadline is the 1st of July 2020.
Conditions of participation and entry form are here. Please submit using FilmFreeway here.
The 11th ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival will run from November 19-22, 2020 in Berlin’s Kino in der KulturBrauerei. It’s the largest international platform for poetry film worldwide. Since 2002 it has offered 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 program, it showcases in various sections the diversity of the poetry film genre. In 2018, more than 1200 submissions from 97 countries were submitted for the international competition.
Follow ZEBRA at Haus für Poesie and on Vimeo, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
__________
*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.
Your Dog Dies by Raymond Carver
When I saw this videopoem by the Spanish director Juan Bullón the other week, I immediately knew I had to include it in a screening I was curating for REELpoetry/Houston TX called Poesía sin fronteras / Poetry Without Borders. Though otherwise focused on Latin American poetry, the theme of the program was “translation, otherness, identity and death in cinepoetry from across the Americas”, and it made sense to close with a gringo poet’s take, especially given how well Bullón’s choice of mirrored images echoed some of the other films in the program. Also, it was good to end on a slightly lighter note than some of the more melancholy, slow-moving films. I’m happy to report that the audience loved it.
As part of the extensive notes in the online version of this program, I asked directors to share any thoughts they might have on translation and/or poetry filmmaking. Here’s what Juan told me:
I’m a Spanish film maker and writer. I write with creative, narrative or poetic intention for about twelve years. I come from the audiovisual world (television and advertising mostly). In recent years I have attended several creative writing workshops. Now, far from audiovisual as a profession, I dedicate myself to writing and coordinate a creative writing workshop in Seville. It is a workshop to experience the fact of creating and feeling literature. We try to go beyond writing or correct narrative, poetic, autobiographical or reflective texts, beyond knowing techniques and writing tricks. Creativity is the goal without end. We give great importance to reading aloud as a way to recognize and work the literary voice of each one, and also, we experiment with the audiovisual format as another way of learning to know how to interpret our texts, to voiceover them, and act on them. Video-poems are another part of the creative process and the recognition of each as an author, it is another way of creative knowledge. The essential is to pose, think and act, and in our case, create from writing to let go and leave our point of view, and be able to share it. And this ability to narrate and tell should be transferable to another means of expression, as another complement, as another revelation of our creative capacity.
Transferring our texts (or those of other authors) to an audiovisual format, relying on the image and music to create these video-poems is a challenge where the fundamental is the literary burden of the text. We do not consider it as a struggle between the greater or lesser relevance of the image, music or text. The written is the important, it’s essential, then, the interpretation and performance of these texts with a suggestive audiovisual dress. The direction and production of these video-poems must be guided by the simplicity and speed of creation in the event that they are self-produced or by taking advantage of what the internet offers with the royalty-free images and music that can be used and shared, with that democratization of the media. In turn, the video-poems we make are posted on the internet for anyone’s free enjoyment, helping to fill in that great library of Babel.
Moving the texts to an audiovisual format is a part of the creative process, a moment of enjoyment and self-knowledge. The important thing is to act, to be and to write it.
Visit Juan Bullón’s YouTube channel to see more of his and his students’ work.
Call for work: Cadence Video Poetry Festival 2020
Cadence: Video Poetry Festival is open for submissions! This annual festival at the Northwest Film Forum in Seattle, Washington will host screenings on April 16 and 17 and is looking for work ranging from adaptations to collaboration to include in the festival. Cadence approaches video poetry as a literary genre presented as visual media that makes new meaning from the combination of text and moving image. Send Cadence your video poetry through March 1 via FilmFreeway.
The foregoing is the (slightly altered) text of a social-media-adapted press release that Chelsea Werner-Jatzke emailed me this week—a good indication, I suspect, of just how well organized this festival is generally. In case you missed it, I interviewed Chelsea and her co-conspirator Rana San last July. See “How to start a major new videopoetry festival: an interview with the co-directors of Cadence.”
Ground-breaking documentary about videopoetry now at Vimeo On Demand
At long last, the documentary Versogramas or Verses&Frames by Galician director Belén Montero—a unique, multicultural look at contemporary videopoetry through the eyes of 14 filmmakers—is available to watch on the web:
We have great news to share with you: Verses&Frames is now available at Vimeo On Demand. Watch it here!
Now you can enjoy the documentary at home, at any time, for a really low price. Moreover, we have released all the different linguistic versions of Verses&Frames, so you can choose five screening possibilities: original version in Galician with Galician subtitles, Spanish version with Spanish subtitles, English version with English subtitles, reduced Spanish and reduced English versions.
This is how it works: For 3€ you can “rent” the screening of the version you choose. It will be available for 24 hours so you can watch the documentary as many times as you want. You can reproduce it on iOS, Android, Apple TV, Roku and Chromecast.
One of our main objectives when producing Verses&Frames has always been to contribute to the knowledge, research, enjoyment and diffusion of videopoetry. As well as the screenings conducted at festivals, museums and television, we believe that this is a good way to deliver the content of the documentary directly to the public, and to share with you all the emotions that videopoetry arises.
So, just a click away: Verses&Frames On Demand.
That rental price in US dollars is just $3.32. The Vimeo description doesn’t include links to the videopoets interviewed in the film, but you can find that on the project’s website (also available in three languages). I wrote a somewhat critical but generally positive review of Versogramas for Poetryfilm Magazine in 2018. I wrote, in part, that
The interviews are creatively shot and well edited, and the interviewees all come across as fascinating people with uniquely unconventional approaches to making poetry and art. There wasn’t one of them whom I didn’t want to immediately track down on the web and watch every one of their videos, and I was pleased by how many of them were new to me, either because their work had never been translated into English, or because they just hadn’t happened to have crossed my radar.
This is testimony to the sheer breadth of the international videopoetry community, I think. It’s impressive that the producers can focus on just one part of the world—Spain, especially the Galician region—add a handful of filmmakers and videopoets from outside that region, and still end up with a highly varied, complete-feeling snapshot of the state of videopoetry in the 21st century.
So go check it out! I know I for one will definitely be watching it again.
Call for Entries: Atticus Review’s 2nd Annual Videopoem Contest
This week Atticus Review, one of the best online magazines to regularly feature videopoems, poetry films, and other multimedia literary works, announced that their second annual videopoem contest is open for submissions. Marc Neys AKA Swoon is the judge.
Atticus Review is happy to announce our second annual Videopoem Contest judged by Swoon. You can submit up to 3 videopoems. The cost for entry is $10. You may submit video files or links to Vimeo or YouTube pages. Please no submissions from former students or close acquaintances of the Contest Judge. The videopoems can be previously published.
First Prize: $250 & Publication
Second Prize: $50 & Publication
Third Prize: Publication
Deadline: January 12th, 20120
Winner Announced: January 31st, 2020
SUBMIT HERE
ABOUT THE JUDGE:
Marc Neys / Swoon / No One
No One is a composer, Swoon a video-artist, and both personas reside in Marc Neys from Belgium.
As one of the leading and most prolific figures in modern videopoetry he made videopoems for and with writers from all over the globe. He inspired new creators through his workshops and showcases on videopoetry.
He creates works with a focus on the purely poetic quality of the moving image in relation to the spoken or written poem. A sophisticated interplay of constructed soundscapes and images with personal reflections. Through a visual language and references to his everyday life, he creates a framework in which the poems come to a different development.
He released 3 CDs over the last two years and his videos have been selected and featured at festivals all over the world.
Links:
https://musicfromnoone.bandcamp.com/
https://vimeo.com/swoon
Marc follows Moving Poems’ own Marie Craven, who judged the contest last year. (Here are the results.) Marc wrote about his philosophy on judging poetry film contests after his experience on the ZEBRA jury in 2016.
Refugee Blues by W. H. Auden
This 2016 film co-directed by Stephan Bookas and Tristan Dawes moved me to tears. That’s how effective, and affecting, I found this juxtaposition of W. H. Auden’s poem (text here) about Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany—read by a man identified only as Noah, a refugee and former child soldier from Uganda—with excellent documentary footage of contemporary refugees. Here’s the official synopsis from Bookas’ website:
Set to the verses of W.H. Auden’s 1939 poem, the multi-award winning “Refugee Blues” charts a day in ‘the jungle’, the refugee camp outside Calais. More intimate and unlike much of what has been seen in the mass media, this documentary poem counterpoints the camp’s harsh reality of frequent clashes with the French riot police with its inhabitants’ longing for a better future.
On Vimeo, Bookas includes a mini essay about the making of the film, which I found illuminating in its suggestion of how documentary poetry can differ from journalism. This was something I’d been thinking about because I recently attended a reading and slideshow from another documentary poetry project, which was a collaboration between a poet and a photojournalist: Julia Spicher Kasdorf and Steven Rubin’s Shale Play: Poems and Photographs from the Fracking Fields. Technically, Auden’s poem by itself would not be considered an example of documentary poetry, but as a filmpoem Refugee Blues certainly would qualify, in my opinion. Anyway, I hope Mr. Bookas won’t mind my quoting a sizable chunk of his post:
We didn’t set out to make a film at first – that idea came later – we just packed a car full of blankets, clothes, food and other items and went, not fully knowing what to expect. But of course, being filmmakers, we also brought along our cameras – to see if we might have the opportunity to document, to capture, to find the human story in all the chaos that was so ubiquitous in the media at the time.
Soon after our arrival, we found the people living at the refugee camp to be very warm and welcoming, as long as we assured them we weren’t news-gathering journalists.
We didn’t film anything to begin with and just walked around, introduced ourselves as documentary filmmakers and listened to people and their stories. Every single one of them was unique and heartbreaking.
Following these discussions, we asked if it would be alright to take out our cameras and start filming. For the most part the answer was a resounding yes.
We spent the following days exploring the camp and talking to people, discussing the situation and the political climate and spending time with them, being invited for coffee and food and allowed to film elements of their daily lives. This turned out to be the calm before the storm, as things culminated in a clash between the camp’s inhabitants and the French riot police on the road leading to the ferry terminal, symbolic for the plight of the refugees and their struggle against institutional powers they are unable to defend themselves against. […]
Of course, our film can’t possibly even begin to try and unravel all the lives and personal fates entangled within this crisis. But in some small way, and for us especially, it has given this tragedy a face that’s less abstract, more relatable, more human.
Film festival news: Art Visuals & Poetry program; calls for work from Carmethan Bay, At the Fringe
In last week’s round-up I gave the Art Visuals & Poetry Film Festival too brief a mention since I hadn’t found much in English. But I just got a bilingual press release from organizer Sigrun Höllrigl, so I can rectify that. Here’s the English portion of her email. Note that the link at the end also goes to an English-language schedule of events.
FOCUS USA / International film guests
The Art Visuals & Poetry Film Festival will take place for the fifth time from November 29 to December 1, 2019 at the METRO Kinokulturhaus in Vienna. In addition to four competition programmes, Poetry Live and film talks with international guests, numerous curated film programmes will be shown. This year’s focus is on poetry films from the USA. Founded in 2013 by Sigrun Höllrigl, the Poetry Film Festival has grown steadily since its beginnings and, with 101 film screenings on three days it is currently the second largest poetry film festival world-wide. In addition to Todd Boss (Motionpoems USA), film guests from Dubai, Belgium, Germany and Ireland have announced their arrival and are expected to attend. Including the domestic film scene, 40 contributing artists will join the festival.
FILM COMPETITIONS AND AUDIENCE AWARD
In 2019, two international competitions were announced and 170 films submitted, 63 art works came from Austria. The festival will award cash prizes to 4 films: The Main Jury Prize and Special Award (poem by Sophie Reyer) will be awarded on the recommendation of the jury. The Hubert Sielecki Prize goes to an Austrian poetry film of his choice. This year, for the first time, the Audience Prize will be awarded among international films. Have a look at the festival and vote for the winner on Saturday night! Festival tickets can be ordered via the ticket service of the Metro Kinokulturhaus. Phone +43 1 512 18 03 daily from 14:00–21:00 or via reservierung@filmarchiv.at
Find the festival programme online https://www.poetryfilm-vienna.com/en/timetable/2019
We are looking forward to welcoming you at the festival!
* * *
My co-editor Marie Craven is currently on the road (for the poetry film cause) but alerted me to two new-to-me festivals that are still open for submissions:
Carmarthen Bay Film Festival
This Welsh festival includes a POETIC CINEMA section for the first time this year:
Poetry film is a subgenre of film that fuses the use of spoken word poetry, visual images, and sound to create a stronger presentation and interpretation of the meaning being conveyed. This fusion of image and spoken word (both independent and interdependent) creates what William Wees called the “Poetry-film” genre.
We are looking for Submissions that:
• Are based upon an interesting concept;
• Are innovative;
• Are well crafted; and
• Create an emotional resonance
The sidebar category dropdown elaborates:
Poets, filmmakers, and media artists are called to submit their work to this brand new category. We will accept submissions of poetry films, filmpoems, digital-poetry, poetry video, Cin(E)-Poetry, spoken word films, videopoema, visual poetry, poetrinca, media poetry, and all films that are visually driven by text. Eligible submissions must have a maximum length of 40 minutes. CBFF cannot be held liable or responsible for any claim involving copyright, trademark, credits, or royalty infringement.Entries that are not in English must be subtitled in English.
Unfortunately, it’s rather pricey to enter—currently USD $45—so I kind of doubt that they’ll get many submissions from the more avant-garde sub-genres they include in their list. This strikes me as a bunch of film industry types wanting to add a bit of experimental cachet to their program, while not actually welcoming scruffier poets and auteurs. Interesting as a possible sign of the times, though.
AT THE FRINGE International Arts Festival
AT THE FRINGE International Arts Festival will take place in Tranås (Sweden) from 27th June to 4th July 2020.
The film section of the festival is focused on screening experimental films and videopoems from all over the world and we are happy to open the new call for films!
Submit your film in one of these three sections: […]
GEMS – OPEN CALL FOR VIDEOPOEMS
A collection of precious stones. We are looking for videopoems, those films that stand on the border between audiovisual languages and words – written or performed. The festival is open to national and international filmmakers. Any film with no limitation of theme or duration is welcome to apply.
[…]
The videopoems submitted must have a duration of maximum 30 minutes (opening and ending credits included). They must include subtitles in English or Swedish (where the original language is not one of these two). There is no limitation for the number of works that each author can submit.
It’s great to see something like this in Sweden. And this time, the entry fee is more affordable: USD $10. The deadline is 31 March.
Poetry film festival news round-up
Poetry film festival season is now in full swing. Major festivals are just ’round the corner in Vienna, Berlin, Mexico City, and Athens.
First up is the biannual Art Visuals & Poetry Film Festival scheduled for 29 November to 1 December in Vienna. Though mainly a German-language event, this year it includes a special focus on the US-based production company Motionpoems.
Then it’s time for the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival in Berlin, whose full programme is now online. They sent along a press release, worth reproducing nearly in full due the central importance of this festival to the poetry film genre.
Once again, Berlin becomes the centre for the poetry film. From 5 to 8 December, the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival will for the 10th time be presenting the poetry film in all its facets in the Kino in der KulturBrauerei cinema. For the first time the current poetry film from Germany is the centre piece of the festival. Poetry film creation in the United Kingdom will be given a special spot in the limelight. The programme is now online. And Tickets go on advance sale in mid-November.
FESTIVAL OPENING
THU 5 Dec | 20.00 | Kino in der KulturBrauereiGuest of honour will be Jochen Kuhn, artist and film maker. A voice of contemporary German poetry, Özlem Özgül Dündar, is reading her latest poems. The music of the British and Berlin based multi-instrumentalist Rowan Coupland is often referring to poetry.
GERMANY-WIDE COMPETITION
Part 1: Yearned-For Places FRI 6 Dec | 19.30 (Repetition SAT 7 Dec | 14.30)
Part 2: Common Values SAT 7 Dec | 19.30. (Repetition SUN 8 Dec | 14.30)
all in Kino in der KulturBrauereiFrom more than 500 submissions from all over Germany the Programme Commission has chosen the best poetry films for the Competition. The international Jury of three will be awarding the prizes to the winning films at the awards ceremony on 8 December.
AWARD CEREMONY
SUN 8 Dec | 20.00 | Kino in der KulturBrauereiThe international Jury, comprising Jana Cernik (AG Kurzfilm), Charlotte Warsen (poet) and Tim Webb (filmmaker), will be awarding four prizes: the ZEBRA Prize for the Best Poetry Film, donated by the Haus für Poesie, the Goethe Film Prize, donated by the Goethe Institute, the Prize for the Best Film for Tolerance, donated by the German Foreign Ministry and the Ritter Sport Film Prize, donated by Alfred Ritter GmbH & Co. KG. Musical accompaniment for the evening will be provided by F.S. Blumm.
FOCUS UK
We Are Poets FRI. 6.12. | 5 pm
Very British FRI. 6.12. | 10 pm
State of the Art SAT. 7.12. | 5 pm
Stiff Upper Verse SAT. 7.12. | 10 pm
all in Kino in der KulturBrauereiThe country focus this year is on the United Kingdom. The programme ‘State of the Art’ shows the latest British productions, curated by the poets and film makers Chaucer Cameron, Helen Dewbery, Lucy English and Sarah Tremlett. The ‘Very British’ programme is a Best Of from the past few decades of the British poetry film. The documentary ‘We Are Poets’ by Daniel Lucchesi and Alex Ramseyer-Bache celebrates its German première at the festival. In ‘Stiff Upper Verse’ the British poets Simon Barraclough, Lucy English and Roseanne Watt will be reading in English, Welsh and the dialect of the Shetland Isles.
PRISM
Journey in the Mind FRI 6 Dec | 19.30
Transit SAT 7 Dec | 17.00
Parlour Games SAT 7 Dec | 19.30
Interrelations SAT 7 Dec | 22.00 | all in Kino in der KulturBrauereiThe Programme Commission has selected 35 films for Prism; three programmes present the broad spectrum of the German poetry film including animations, experimental films and features. The programme ‘Transit’ shows documentary portraits of poets.
NEW TALENTS
design akademie berlin & Hochschule Anhalt, Dessau FRI 6 Dec | 17.00
UdK Berlin & KHM Köln FRI 6 Dec | 22.00
HFBK Hamburg & Hochschule Düsseldorf SAT 7 Dec | 14.30
HFK Bremen & Hochschule Mainz SAT 7 Dec | 22.00
Bauhaus-Uni Weimar & HBK Braunschweig SUN 8 Dec | 16.00
all in Kino in der KulturBrauereiColloquium: The Eye of the Poem SUN 8 Dec | 11.00 | Haus für Poesie
Master Class: Between Film and Poetry FRI 6 Dec | 14.00 | Haus für PoesieThe poetry film is a popular genre at universities and film academies. Students at ten German higher education institutions will be showing poetry films made in the course of a collaboration over a year. In the Colloquium Anna Anders (UdK Berlin), Sophie Maintigneux (KHM Cologne), Ulrike Almut Sandig (poet), Tim Webb (Royal College of Art) and Sarah Tremlett (Liberated Words CIC) will be discussing the position of the poetry film in German and British higher education institutions. And the director Jochen Kuhn will be giving a poetry film master class.
FESTIVAL POEM: [native vegetation a natural resource]
SUN 8 Dec | 17.00 | Kino in der KulturBrauereiIn response to ZEBRA’s call for entries, film makers have submitted their film versions of this year’s festival poem, [dieses regionale getreide] ([native vegetation a natural resource]) by Daniel Falb. Film makers Zihrong Lu, Gruppe Leuchtstoff, Holger Mohaupt and Gabriele Nugara will present their film versions and be talking to the poet about poetry and film. You can read the poem on lyrikline.org.
WORD PICTURES – A ZEBRA NIGHT OF READINGS
FRI 6 Dec | 22.00 | Kino in der KulturBrauereiPoems by Özlem Özgül Dündar, Adrian Kasnitz, Ulrike Almut Sandig, Kathrin Schmidt and Raed Wahesh are the basis of this year’s films in the Competition and Prism. In the ZEBRA Night of Readings the poets will be reading their texts and talking to Alexander Gumz about making films based on poems.
PROGRAMM FOR CHILDREN AND YOUNG POEPLE
Media Workshop: The Spirits We Conjured up
WED 4 Dec | 9.00 | Haus für Poesie
Sorcerer’s Apprentices in the Moor of Horror: Programme of Ballads
THU 5 Dec | 9.00 | Kino in der KulturBrauerei
Holes in the Head: Programme in Focus Language English
THU 5 Dec | 9.30 | Kino in der KulturBrauerei
I Made It Myself: Films by Children for Children
FRI 6 Dec | 9.00 | Kino in der KulturBrauerei
ZEBRINO Competition FRI 6 Dec | 9.00 | Kino in der KulturBrauerei
Poetry Workshop Writing Netflix! FRI 6 Dec | 9.00 | Haus für Poesie
Workshop Slam: Rucksack and a Journey FRI 6 Dec | 9.00 | Herder-GymnasiumThe Best Poetry Film for Children and Young People will be chosen by the young audience themselves in the ZEBRINO Competition. There will also be a colourful programme of workshops and films for Berlin schoolchildren with, among others, the Spoken Word artists Bas Böttcher and Nicole May.
As great as it is to see ZEBRA continuing to flourish, now to the point of becoming an annual festival, I’m equally excited to see a new poetry film festival springing up — in Mexico City. Check out FESTIVAL FOTOGENIA, I missed the call-out (sorry) but thanks to social media posts by filmmaker Helmie Stil, this didn’t escape my radar altogether. The description on their website suggests an avant-garde perspective on the genre:
FOTOGENIA, FIRST INTERNATIONAL FILM POETRY & DIVERGENT NARRATIVES FESTIVAL promotes a space with alternative conception of films, a celebration of experimentation and avant-garde framework, the love of curiosity and research of the seventh Art. Everyone is invited, taking into consideration the disruptive nature of the selected works.
We welcome you to watch films in another way!
If you are an audiovisual maker interested in provoking the cinematographic image through the exploration of the frontiers and limits of film narrative, genre, format and the nature of film itself, in order to converse with the viewers in innovative and critical ways to ignite a confrontation between reality and cinematic phenomenon, this is your place to exhibit your passion.
![The +Institute [for Experimental Arts] and Void Network present the 8th International Video Poetry Festival 2019](https://i0.wp.com/movingpoems.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Athans-video-poetry-2019-call-out-1024x630-640x394.jpg?resize=640%2C394)
Meanwhile in Athens, the International Video Poetry Festival will be held on the weekend of the 14th and 15th. (But submissions remain open until November 20!) Special events this year will include a screening of videopoems by my co-editor Marie Cravens as well as the touring program of videopoems from around the world that she’s pulled together, Poetry + Video, plus the Margaret Tait 100 program celebrating the first Scottish woman to make feature films, who was also a pioneer of poetry in film. And there will be a videopoetry seminar panel including film-makers, writers, performers, and musicians.
Finally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t include a reminder that submissions are still open for REELpoetry/Houston TX 2020 (Deadline: December 9) and the 2020 Newlyn PZ International Film Festival (Deadline: February 24) .
Call for entries: 2020 Weimar Poetry Film Prize
As of November 1, the fifth annual Weimar Poetry Film Prize is open for submissions. And this time, it has its own festival.
Through the new film award, the Literary Society of Thuringia and the study field Multimedia narration of the Bauhaus University are looking for innovative poetry films. Filmmakers from any nation and of any age are welcome to participate with up to three short films of up to 10:00 mins, which should explore the relation between film and written poetry in an innovative, straightforward way. Films that are produced before 2017 will not be considered.
From all submitted films selected for the festival competition three Jury members will choose the winner of the main prize (1000 € Best Animation, 1000,- € Best Video). Moreover, an audience award of 250 € will be awarded.
In 2020, the Weimar Poetry Film Prize will be awarded for the first time as part of its own festival – the International Poetry Film Festival of Thuringia – which will take place from May to July 2020 in several cities in Thuringia. The core program (with the award ceremony) takes place from June 12th–14th in Weimar.
The competition »Weimar Poetry Film Award« is financed by Kulturstiftung des Freistaats Thüringen and the City of Weimar.
Deadline: March 31st, 2020
The Form for submissions [pdf] by e-mail to info[at]poetryfilm.de is coming soon.
The »Weimar Poetry Film Award« call for entries is international. For the submission please send with the other informations a quotable text of the related poem in German or English.
Presentation of awards: June 13th, 2020 at the Lichthaus cinema Weimar.
