~ calls for work ~
All festivals, events and calls for work are mentioned by Moving Poems with our best efforts and in good faith. However, do check all details yourself as we cannot guarantee accuracy, and make your own judgements because we cannot verify the things that we share. Events may fail for a variety of genuine reasons, or may be a scam to elicit fees.
Call for poetry films: Newlyn Film Festival
A new international film festival slated for April 6-8th, 2018 at the The Centre, Newlyn, Cornwall, UK will include a poetry film section, selected by judges Lucy English and Sarah Tremlett, who should be well known to readers of Moving Poems. The deadline is January 31 February 21, 2018. Here are the guidelines. To see the categories and submission fees for each, click through to Film Freeway and look on the right-hand sidebar. Poetry films can be up to six minutes long, and are “limited to one per applicant.”
The other categories are Fiction Film, Student Film, and Documentary. General advice on eligibility notes that “The Festival is open to short films of all production techniques, including animation, documentary, drama, experimental or artist film and hybrid work from low to high budgets.”
Updated 2 October to correct information about the maximum duration of poetry films.
Introducing the Film and Video Poetry Society
Over the past two years, a mysterious, L.A.-based group called the Film and Video Poetry Society have built up a tremendous following for their Facebook page, on which they regularly share a wide variety of poetry films and videopoems from around the web. I liked the results so much, I included the link among the short selection of recommended sites at the bottom of the front page of Moving Poems — the first and so far only time I’ve done that for a page on the ubiquitous but web-destroying colossus that is Facebook.
Well, as of August 1 I no longer have to do that, because at long last they’ve debuted their own web platform… and it’s a doozy. Features include a live, TV-like channel of poetry videos, a finishing fund and production assistance program for poetry filmmakers, poetry translation assistance, and even a plan for print publications. Perhaps of most interest to readers of Moving Poems, they are welcoming submissions of film and video projects up to 32 minutes long for a big annual symposium to be held on April 27th – 28th, 2018 in Los Angeles. It would probably be easiest if I just pasted in the text of their About page:
OUR MISSION
The Film and Video Poetry Society (FVPS) mission is to encourage film and video poets to further their ongoing explorations by providing a platform for these artists to activate, collaborate, discuss, and maintain creative work developed through the convergence of these art forms.
FVPS PROGRAMS AND INITIATIVES
Finishing Fund
The first of our initiatives is The FVPS Finishing Fund and Assistance Program. This production award will assist film and video poetry projects that have started the creative process and seek additional assistance or funds to complete the final stages of production.Poetry Beam
We established an experimental distribution, archival, and publishing format for film and video poetry. Poetry Beam is focused on audience development, live streaming, digital curation, film and video exhibition, immersive technologies, and new methods of media licensing.Events
The Film and Video Poetry Society is dedicated to providing a platform for oral and written literature. We are doing this by coordinating international events such as poetry slams, readings, virtual panels, writing rooms, and pop-up poetry book-shops.Annual Symposium
FVPS is also organizing an annual symposium where we will host film screenings, workshops, and panels for a two day period each spring.Publishing
FVPS is currently adapting two poetry films into chapbooks and has published A Guide to Film and Video Poetry festivals!Translations
Finally, FVPS supports language diversity. Our efforts to assist poets and filmmakers to access wider audiences and festival markets include subtitling and closed captioning assistance for films of any language.
FVPS is developing a closed captioning app to offer video editors low cost multilingual translation on an academic level.The Film and Video Poetry Society embraces a demanding dream. We strive to balance our new world’s increased desire for visual content with our old world love for literacy, printed matter, and the poetic word.
We are deeply grateful for the poets and filmmakers who contacted us over the past year. The contributions of your work and the many ideas you have shared inspired our team to launch this platform.
Thank you for reading our mission statement and we encourage you to explore this website.
Click through to join their mailing list and check out the site.
A small disclosure: I have been in contact with someone (not sure who) from the FVPS a couple of times, and provided a critique of the site before it went public. They assure me they will reveal their identities soon, when they unveil a masthead. I am as always happy to welcome new websites and initiatives to the international poetry film/video fold, and I’ll be watching FVPS with particular interest given their evident good taste in poetry videos, their proven ability to generate social media buzz, and their physical location near the world’s most powerful center of cinematic production. I think their primary focus on filmmakers and artists makes great practical sense, because in my experience there’s much more openness to poetry film and videopoetry in those kinds of circles than (sadly) among poets.
Call for work: 6th CYCLOP International Poetry Film Contest
On August 1, it was announced that the 6th CYCLOP Poetry Film Festival will be held on November 25-26, 2017 in Kyiv (Kiev), Ukraine. Filmmakers have until Sept. 30 to submit work. Visit their website for the rules and regulations, which I’ll also paste in below:
- Films of up to 10 minutes duration that are no more than two years old (January 2015) may be entered.
- There are no limitation about subject and language restrictions. All films that are not in English must have English subtitles. Each application must also contain the text of the verse in English.
- Video can be performed in any techniques using any necessary equipment (video, animation, flash etc).
- Each video should be placed on the Youtube channel in free access.
- By sending your film, you confirm that the film may be shown at the CYCLOP Poetry Film Festival. The artist must have all property and screening rights.
- Each artist can’t send more than two videos.
- All videos must be sent with the following characteristics:
File format: .MOV or .AVI.
Standard: PAL. Codec: H264.
Resolution: HD — 1920 x 1080 or 1280 x 720 (16:9) / SD — 640 x 480 (4:3) or 640 x 360 (16:9)
Click through for the entry form, names of the jury members, timeline for scoring and other information.
Call for work: new Oregon-based poetry film festival Cinema Poetica
Poetry film festivals are pretty thin on the ground in North America right now, so I was excited to hear about a new one set for October 28 in Ashland, Oregon as part of the Ashland Literary Arts Festival and sponsored by a newish journal called The Timberline Review. Like most film festivals, Cinema Poetica is set up as a contest, and submissions are via FilmFreeway, but the guidelines make it clear that they’re open to decidedly DIY, low-budget, poet-produced videos. It’s not entirely clear whether more professionally made poetry films are welcome, but they don’t appear to be excluded by the rules and terms per se. Instead, I think the “challenge” is intended to encourage adventurous poets with crap equipment to give it a go. But it might be worth querying the editors before submitting more polished work.
There are several other unique features of this contest, mostly reflecting the typical mindset of an American print literary magazine (e.g. the assumption that the poem is essentially textual, preceding the video, and the requirement that it be previously unpublished to be considered for publication) so I’ll take the liberty of reproducing their guidelines in full:
Cinema Poetica
The Timberline Review is excited to host Cinema Poetica, a film festival celebrating the cinema of poetry, an emerging short-film genre.
Make a one- to three-minute film featuring a poem you’ve written, or perhaps a poem you wish you’d written, as the dramatic narrative.
It’s poetry. Budget is limited. Technology is what you can shoot on your phone. There aren’t going to be any car chases, stunt doubles, FX, studio overdubs, 35 mm stock, or spaceships.
The Cinema Poetica Challenge
Strip it down to the poem. Strive to make your film not “polished,” but ever more raw, primitive, visceral, surprising, intuitive.
Start with the poem and let the poem be your guide. Shoot in real time. Shoot in real locations. Shoot in color. Incorporate location sound into your film. If you’re going to use music, make the music on camera. Use natural lighting. Use a handheld camera. Forget about special effects and optical filters.
Keep it low-tech and keep it real. Focus on the content of the poem.
For very basic access to editing tools, here’s a good – and free – editing app designed specifically for mobile devices — Adobe Premiere Clip.
Rules and Terms
Film must include a poem narrative and not just include the poem but be grounded in it. In other words, dramatize your poem.
All film submissions should be made through Film Freeway. Ready to submit?
Regular submission period runs August 1st through September 30th, 2017.
Maximum running time is 3 minutes.
Poems can be in any language, but if not in English, you must provide English subtitles.
No filmed readings, please.
If the underlying poem is not the submitter’s own original work, by submitting your film you acknowledge and warrant that you have obtained any and all necessary permissions from the author of the work, which must include the right to record and perform the poem you’ve used in your film.
Judging Criteria
All films will be evaluated by an independent group of filmmakers and poets. Films judged to best exemplify the Cinema Poetica challenge will be screened at the festival, receive additional recognition, and be considered for the Grand Prize* and Audience Favorite.
Prizes
Grand Prize winner receives a $250 cash prize and possible publication in The Timberline Review.*
Audience favorite receives a hand-drawn broadside of the poem.
Top ten finalists receive special mention and promotion on The Timberline Review website.
*To be considered for publication, poem must be previously unpublished in the English language.
The Festival
Films will be screened throughout the day, October 28, 2017, in the Hannon Library, on the Southern Oregon University campus in Ashland, Oregon, before an adoring public of indie publishers, authors, filmmakers, editors, and artists celebrating the independent spirit of film, literary, and visual arts. There is no admission fee. All are welcome to attend.
The Grand Prize winner, if present, may be invited to join a conversation about poetry and film with our judges and editors.
And Saturday evening at 6:00, it’s a party! Stay tuned for all the details.
The Gallery
Browse some examples of filmed poetry.
Questions
Get more information about the Ashland Literary Arts Festival, or contact editors@timberlinereview.com if you have any other questions.
The Fine Print
Cinema Poetica is a film contest, open to all, sponsored by The Timberline Review, a literary journal published by Willamette Writers, a 501(c)3 organization, based in Portland, Oregon.
Timberline Review editorial staff and members of the Willamette Writers Board of Directors and their immediate family members are not eligible for the Grand Prize.
All films remain the property of the submitter. The Timberline Review and Cinema Poetica retain the right to publicly display any film submitted to the Cinema Poetica film festival, for non-commercial purposes. The Timberline Review retains the right to publish, at its sole discretion, any underlying poem submitted to Cinema Poetica.
Special Thanks
Kim Stafford, Brian Padian, Cascadia Publishers, Mercuria Press, and our partners, Willamette Writers, Ashland Literary Arts Festival, and Film Freeway.
Call for submissions: Filmpoem Festival 2017 at Depot, Lewes
Filmpoem, the artists’ moving image project founded by British artist Alastair Cook in 2010, is at long last sponsoring another poetry-film festival and competition, this time partnering with Depot in Lewes, East Sussex and the UK’s Poetry Society. Submissions are open through September 8th, and the festival will be held on Saturday, October 28th.
Note that the rules are a bit stricter than for most poetry-film festivals: submission is by physical artifact (USB stick or DVD) only, and explicit permission, rather than simply the blanket permission granted by a Creative Commons licence, must be obtained for all copyrighted material such as music used in the film. UPDATE: Digital submissions and CC licences are now permitted. See the complete guidelines on the Filmpoem website.
While you’re there, be sure to read the essay on the About page, which appears to have been recently augmented with new material, for a better understanding of what Alastair means by filmpoetry.
Open call for poetry films: Festival Silêncio 2017
1. INTRODUCTION
Festival Silêncio is the celebration of word. Word as a creative unit and the vehicle of both thought and artistic creation is the engine behind this project. Festival Silêncio will take place in 2017 between the 28th of September and October 1st at Cais do Sodré, Lisbon.
“This is not a movie. It’s a poem.” is a poetry film showcase organised within the Festival Silêncio that includes a national and an international competition. The films in competition will be the manifestation of audiovisual poetical language which will be using cinematographic narrative to state itself as a message.
2. DATE AND PLACE
Between the 28th of September and October 1st, in Lisbon.
3. ADMISSION CONDITIONS
- Poetry films with the maximum duration of 10 minutes will be admitted for selection.
- There are no restrictions of genre, theme or approach.
- The films may be based on well widely recognized poetry, of Portuguese or universal origin, or be based on original poems.
- Films with spoken or written text, not in Portuguese language in the original version, should be subtitled either in Portuguese or English.
- Each participant can enter an unlimited number of films.
- There will be no admission of films already shown on commercial circuits.
- There is no age limit.
4. ENROLLMENT
- The enrollment of films is free of charge;
- Entries will cease on May the 31st; (Deadline was extended to June 20th!)
- To enroll a film the following items must be sent:
a. Enrollment form, properly filled.
b. 3 stills of the film with a minimum resolution of 4MP.
c. Other materials considered relevant, as, for example, the film poster.
The admission process must be entirely sent to poetryfilm@ctlisbon.com
5. TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS FOR SELECTED FILMS
Copy of the film (format MP4/H264 in HD 1080p or 720p, Quicktime/H264 or ProRes/H264 in HD 1080p or 720p) spoken or subtitled in Portuguese or English.
6. JURY/SELECTION PROCESS
The selection jury will be composed of elements chosen by the organization and will have the task to select the works that will be presented in Festival Silêncio.
6.1. The film selection takes three categories into account:
6.1.1. Best National Poetry Film
6.1.2. Best International Poetry Film
6.1.3. Audience’s choice
7. COPYRIGHTS
The intellectual property and the copyrights of the films submitted to the competition will remain with the authors. When signing the admission form the participant declares being the author of the presented films and being the rightful owner of relevant copyright. The participant takes full responsibility on any controversy that might arise concerning the originality of the work and/or the property of the above mentioned rights. For all legal effects, the participants take full responsibility for the films they enroll. The Festival expressly disavows any responsibility, and will not be held responsible for any unauthorized inclusion of any content or materials within or relating to the submitted Film that are or may be the basis for any Third Party Claim.
8. FINAL DISPOSITIONS
When enrolling your film at the Competitive Showcase of Festival Silêncio, the participant agrees that the film can be, totally or partially, reproduced in any other place or event related to Festival Silêncio.
Call for submissions: 5th Ó Bhéal International Poetry-Film Competition
The Cork, Ireland-based Ó Bhéal reading series have just announced on Facebook that
Submissions are now open for the 5th Ó Bhéal International Poetry-Film Competition, in association with the IndieCork Film Festival AND we are thrilled to announce that esteemed Cork filmmaker Shaun O Connor will take part as one of this year’s judges (the other being a poet, TBC v soon!). Follow the link for submission guidelines & to view previous winners’ poetry-films.
The deadline for submissions is August 31, and the screening will be during the IndieCork festival (October 8-15). Past winners have hailed from Australia, the U.S., the Netherlands and Portugal. Check it out.
Doublebunny Press Opens Submissions for Fourth Rabbit Heart Poetry Film Festival
Submissions have opened for the fourth Rabbit Heart Poetry Film Festival.
The Rabbit Heart Poetry Film Festival is a competition meant to highlight poetry and visual art at the intersection of film. The festival, due to take place in Worcester, Massachusetts in October of 2017, focuses on short films that illustrate original poems, all of which are non-performance based (read: no footage of the poems being performed).
As well as a $200 prize for Best Overall Production, Rabbit Heart will be awarding $100 prizes in six other categories: Best Animated, Best Music/Sound, Best Smartphone Production, Best Under 1 Minute, Best Valentine, and the Shoots! youth prize. The matinee, and then the gala awards ceremony and viewing party will be at Nick’s Bar in Worcester, MA on October 21st.
Doublebunny Press is a small independent press that serves the New England area through poetry design, layout, and production of fine books and posters. Doublebunny also supported Omnivore Magazine, a poetry and arts monthly which, during its three-year run, published poetry and articles by over 150 authors, and carried a national subscription base.
Doublebunny has a history of great spoken word events in Worcester. They combined forces with The Worcester Poets’ Asylum to present V Day to the city in 2002 and 2003, and the Individual World Poetry Slam in 2005. In 2014, Doublebunny brought the inaugural Rabbit Heart Poetry Film Festival to the city, and now for the fourth year’s festival, they plan an even more exciting show for Worcester, inviting the imagination of poets and filmmakers to once again take center stage.
About Rabbit Heart Poetry Film Festival
Rabbit Heart Poetry Film Festival is one of very few outlets in the US for poetry on film, and the only festival that asks that the author of the poem participate in the making of the production. In 2014, 2015, and 2016 Rabbit Heart attracted international attention, including not only European submissions, but the honor of a showcase in the CYCLOP festival in Ukraine (2014) and showings in Barcelona, Spain at pro.l.e (2015, 2016).
This year, Rabbit Heart Poetry Film Festival has once again been recognized with a grant from the Worcester Arts Council, an agency supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council.
Submissions are now open for the 2017 Rabbit Heart Poetry Film Festival, and will remain open through July 1st.
To learn more about this event, including guidelines and galleries of winning films from past years, please go to doublebunnypress.com and click on the menu links to Rabbit Heart Poetry Film Festival.
Poetry Film Live unveils first issue, opens submissions
Please join me in welcoming and spreading the word about a new online magazine, Poetry Film Live. Unveiled on Friday, its first monthly issue “features poetry films from international poets and filmmakers,” names that should be familiar to most Moving Poems readers: Robert Peake, Marc Neys, Marie Craven, and Judith Dekker. There’s also an interview with Martin Rieser, which adds historical perspective and contributes some insights about poetry film I haven’t seen elsewhere.
The editors are the energetic filmpoem-making team of Chaucer Cameron and Helen Dewbery, with assistant editor Lucia Sellars, a poet and environmental scientist who brings Spanish-language fluency to the table. Poetry Film Live is affiliated with The Interpreter’s House, a 32-year-old UK print literary journal. Here’s how they describe their mission:
Poetry Film Live is a collaboration with The Interpreter’s House poetry journal to show some of the best and most inspiring film and video poetry from the UK and around the world, by both new and established poets and poetry filmmakers.
Poetry film harmonises words, images and sound to create a new poetry experience … it’s more than spoken words, visual images and sound being in the same room together, it’s their ability to talk to one another that creates the magic in poetry film.
The editorial bias is toward poetry films with an emphasis on a convincing poetic experience rather than simply technical excellence. We encourage poet-made films or where the filmmaker has worked closely with the poet. We also encourage work from poets who are new to poetry film.
Submissions are currently open through June 30th. After that, the plan is to have three submissions periods per year, though new issues will appear monthly.
There’s been a real need for this kind of publication. Until now, videopoets and poetryfilm makers who have wanted to submit their work to online publications have mostly had to look for regular literary magazines that make room for videos, and with a few notable exceptions such as Atticus Review and TriQuarterly, that tends to be an afterthought. And all too often literary magazine editors want exclusive publication rights, as if they still don’t fully understand how the internet or the filmmaking world work. By contrast, the Poetry Film Live editors state that “Previously screened and shown work is fine,” and require “A link to your film/video hosted on Vimeo or YouTube” as part of the submission.
They do stipulate that “The author asserts, under his/her own liability, the complete right of use on used materials (images, words, sounds, music) that compose the artwork; the author undertakes complete liability for any breach of copyright laws,” which will exclude some remixes, but should protect them from the situation I sometimes face on Moving Poems of videos disappearing from the site due to DMCA takedown requests to (usually) YouTube from original copyright holders of remixed materials. (Though fair use/fair dealing provisions in U.S. and U.K. copyright law may protect such remixes, YouTube typically errs on the side of caution and takes a “guilty till proven innocent” approach.)
The appearance of Poetry Film Live was a complete surprise, by coincidence on my birthday — which is one day after Moving Poems’ own birthday (she’s eight). So as you can imagine I was really happy to see such a promising new publication joining our not very crowded field, based in a country where — unlike the U.S. — poetry-film actually enjoys some recognition from the poetry establishment as well as in the very active spoken-word scene. Here’s hoping they become a vital and influential player in the poetry-film world.
Call for essays on typography and text as image in poetry film
The Weimar-based, multilingual Poetryfilm Magazine generated as part of the fantastic Poetryfilmkanal website this week issued a new call for submissions. For their third annual issue, they’re looking for essays on Typografie und das Wort im Bild — Typography and Text as Image.
We are looking for essays dealing with the following questions: Is a text in a poetry film purely functional and underlines or explains the meaning of sound and image? What is the difference between a font in a book and a font in the form of a moving image? What kind of different or additional meaning(s) does it create? What is the relation between a text and other elements that appear in a film – or together in a frame? To which extent does this relation turn the text into a protagonist of the film itself? Why does a filmmaker choose for a particular font? What is the relation between sound, voice-over and other visual elements? How is the balance between reading, watching and listening?
As in the past two editions we are interested in a direct connection to the process and practice of filmmaking. We encourage everyone interested to send us their contributions (up to 10.000 signs and without footnotes if possible) until the end of July 2017.
Call for videopoems: SINESTESIA 2017
For the third year in a row, SINESTESIA is mounting an international exhibition of videopoems during Barcelona’s Poetry Week in June. The call is in Spanish (here’s the Google Translate version), but submissions are welcome in English, Spanish or Catalan, or with subtitles in one of those languages. With all the emphasis on conventional filmmaking in so many poetry film festivals, it’s refreshing to see Tom Konyves’ manifesto quoted in a call for work.
Speaking of poetry film festivals generally, I’ve just attempted a long-overdue update of Moving Poems’ list of active festivals. I say “attempted,” because it often isn’t clear if a festival has simply taken a year off or has run its course. If they’ve gone two years or more with no update, I assume it’s time to start talking about them in the past tense. In cases where the website has disappeared, but it’s only been a year since the last festival, I’ll leave the listing up. At any rate, please let me know if there are other festivals or regular screening events I should include.
