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.
Press release from 29 February. (I was on the road.) Dear other poetry film festival organizers: Please send me press releases like this one, OK? —Dave
WORCESTER, MA – Doublebunny Press announces today that submissions have opened for the third 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 in October of 2015 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 gala awards ceremony and viewing party will be at Nick’s Bar in Worcester, MA on October 22nd.
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 in now for the third 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.
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 and 2015 Rabbit Heart attracted international attention, including not only European submissions, but the honor of a showcase in the CYCLOP festival in Ukraine and showings in Barcelona, Spain at pro.l.e.
This year Rabbit Heart Poetry Film Festival has been recognized with a grant from the Worcester Arts Council. Here’s the official language: This program is administered by the Worcester Arts Council, for the Local Cultural Council – an agency supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency.
Submissions are now open for the 2016 Rabbit Heart Poetry Film Festival, and will remain open through July 1st.
To learn more about this event, please go to:
www.doublebunnypress.com and click on the menu link to Rabbit Heart Poetry Film Festival
Call for collaborators!!!! I am creating a contemporary digital re-imagining of a Book of Hours. I will be making forty eight poetry films to represent four times of day for each month of the year. Loki English, from Berlin, will be building the site. I have made five films with Marc Neys and one of these, A Postcard From My Future Self, was screened at Visible Verse in Vancouver. Helen Dewbery, Carolyn Patricia Richardson, Eduardo Yagüe and Maciek Piatek have also made films. I would be interested in hearing from other film makers. Let me know if you would like to be part of this project. Here is a link to the website.
I am exploring different approaches to making poetry films. With Marc Neys we started with the sound. With Helen Dewbery and Maciek we started with the images. I also have a selection of poetry and I am keen to write more. Please contact me for further information: Lucy English, slamlucy@hotmail.com.
The Weimarer Poetryfilmpreis or Weimar Poetry Film Prize is a new venture associated with the same people who run the excellent, bilingual website and magazine Poetryfilmkanal (Poetryfilm Channel). The three-person jury consists of ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival director Thomas Zandegiacomo Del Bel, poet Nancy Hünger and experimental filmmaker Hubert Sielecki. Here’s the English portion of the call for entries:
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
Through the new Film Prize, backup_festival and Literarische Gesellschaft Thüringen e.V. (LGT) 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 8:00 mins, which should explore the relation between film and written poetry in an innovative, straightforward way. Films that are produced before 2013 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 €). Moreover, an audience award of 250 € will be awarded.
The competition »Weimar Poetry Film Prize« is financed by Kulturstiftung des Freistaats Thüringen, Thüringer Staatskanzlei and the City of Weimar.
Entry deadline: March 15th, 2016.
Form for submissions [pdf] by mail or e-mail.
The »Weimar Poetry Film Prize« call for entries is international. For the submission send with the other informations a quotable text of the related poem in German or English.
Presentation of awards: May 21th, 2016.
More information about the program: www.backup-festival.de.
ZEBRA, the world’s premiere poetry film festival, has been held in Berlin every other year since 2002, a project of Literaturwerkstatt Berlin (which is in the process of changing its name to Haus für Poesie). Though spin-off events derived from the main festival regularly occur all over the world in cooperation with local arts organizations, in 2016 the festival has a new home altogether—Filmwerkstatt Münster—and a new website at zebrapoetryfilm.org (with an English-language option).
The international ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival has a new home in Münster. From the 27th to the 30th of October 2016, for the very first time the Filmwerkstatt Münster, in cooperation with Literaturwerkstatt Berlin/Haus für Poesie, will host the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival Münster|Berlin.
The idea for a festival for short films combining poetry with moving pictures was created in 2002 by the Literaturwerkstatt Berlin/Haus für Poesie. They organized the festival in Berlin until 2014 and have established it as the biggest platform for the genre poetry film. At the initiative of Kunststiftung NRW, the relocation is anticipated to carry the genre beyond the borders of the capital and anchor it in North Rhine-Westphalia.
In Münster, ZEBRA is going to take place every other year – alternating with the Filmfestival Münster and the Lyrikertreffen. With special offers for schools, the kids programme ZEBRINO, film presentations about diverse topics, discussions and poetry readings, the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival Münster|Berlin invites a wide audience to discover the poetry film for themselves.
The ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival Münster|Berlin will be held from the 27th to the 30th of October 2016 at cinema Schlosstheater in Münster. On the 31st of October 2016, the winning entries and a selection of the best films will be presented in Berlin.
Of most interest to the filmmakers and videopoets reading this, I suppose, is the other article currently on their front page:
Submissions for the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival Münster|Berlin begin on the 1st of February 2016
From the 1st of February 2016 artists from all over the world can submit their contributions. A total of five prizes, among them two audience awards, are endowed together with 12.000 €. Eligible for submission are poetry films with a maximum length of 15 minutes that were finished after 1st of January 2013. Deadline for entries is the 1st of July 2016.
The international competition is the heart of the programme, which will be comprised of approximately 200 films in total. A programme commission consisting of film, poetry and media experts is going to nominate the films for the festival and the competition. An international jury will choose the winning films, which will also be shown by the Literaturwerkstatt Berlin/Haus für Poesie in Berlin.
The festival is also inviting entries of films based on this year’s festival poem, »Orakel van een gevonden schoen« by Mustafa Stitou. The directors of the three best films will be invited to Münster to meet the poet and have the opportunity to present and discuss their films. You will find the poem with a sound recording and various translations at lyrikline.org.
Visit zebrapoetryfilm.org for contact information. I’m pleased to see that Thomas Zandegiacomo Del Bel will continue as ZEBRA’s artistic director, suggesting that there will be a high degree of continuity despite the switch from sponsorship by an organization focused on poetry to one focused on film. He’ll be joined by managing directors Risna Olthuis and Carsten Happe, who have also run the Münster Film Festival since 2014.
CALL FOR POETRY FILMS
Utopia / Dystopia
Dance and Freedom
Liberated Words at Bath Fringe Festival 2016
Entry submission deadline 31st March, 2016.
The Utopians wonder how any man should be so much taken with the glaring doubtful lustre of a jewel or a stone, that can look up to a star or to the sun himself; … who hide (a precious stone) out of their fear of losing it … If it should be stole the owner … would find no difference between his having or losing it, for both ways it was equally useless to him … or how any should value himself because his cloth is made of a finer thread; for how fine soever that thread may be, it was once no better than the fleece of a sheep, and that sheep, was a sheep still, for all its wearing it. (Thomas More, Utopia, 62–64)
To commemorate the 500th anniversary of Thomas More’s Utopia, Liberated Words will be hosting two poetry film screenings alongside exciting performance poetry on 26th May and 2nd June at Walcot Chapel, Bath. These events will be part of The Utopia/Dystopia-themed Bath Fringe Festival, 2016. We are requesting poetry film submissions of up to three minutes in length for two categories: Dance and Freedom and Utopia/Dystopia. The dance poetry films will include a unique collaboration between Bath Dance College, Radstock and creative writing and media students from Somervale School, Midsomer Norton. The Utopia/Dystopia screening will include breakthrough films by gifted teenagers from Butterflies Haven in Keynsham.
For further details and entry form please follow this link: http://liberatedwords.com/call-poetry-films-2016/
April 1 is the deadline to submit to this uniquely generous poetry film prize from Carbon Culture with judge Zata Banks from the UK-based PoetryFilm project. Here are the details.
Poetry Film Prize
We want to integrate film and literary culture. Carbon Culture will award a $1,000.00 prize for the best poetry film. Zata Kitowski, director of PoetryFilm, will pick the grand prize winner and finalists. The winning entry will receive $1,000.00. The top five entries will receive high-profile placements across our social media networks, a one page note alongside honorable mentions in our newsstand print and device editions. Deadline for submissions is April 1, 2016.
By submitting, you grant CCR the right to publish selected poetry films in our online issue as well as recognition in our print issue. All rights revert to the film creator(s) and/or submitter.
Rules for Submission
- Create a video adaptation of your original, unpublished poem.
- Post the video to a Youtube or Vimeo account and make it live.
- Submit the piece as an .Mp4 alongside your bio or team member’s bios to us.
- One submission per poet, please. If you previously created a poetry film for our initial guidelines listed in early 2015 for John Gosslee’s poem before we opened the contest to any original poem, you may submit this and one other poetry film for consideration.
Prize Announcements will be made in July 2016. Payment will be made via Paypal.
Film Types
All visual and textual interpretations of any contemporary poem written by you or someone on your team are welcome. Animation (digital or cartoon,) live action, kinetic poems, stop motion, anything you can imagine. We are looking for literal and non-literal interpretations of the poem. How long should it be? That is up to you. Poetry is meant to be heard and we encourage audio.
Eligibility
The prize is open to poets, students, individuals and teams.
Click Here to Submit Your Film.
A latecomer in this autumn’s line-up of poetry film festivals has just released a call for entries via their mailing list:
CALL FOR ENTRIES IS OPEN FOR THE 5TH EDITION!
DOCTORCLIP is an International Festival of Poetry Film, the first in Italy, and in 2015 reaches its 5th edition!
A Poetry Film it’s a mixture of languages, a crossing between word and images, it has no boundaries: it’s such a vast territory that encompasses the most experimental and creative forms of moving-image and poetry text.
The Festival will be held in Rome in December 2015, an international Jury will select the winner of the Doctorclip Award awarding a money prize.
NOW THE CALL FOR ENTRIES FOR THE 5th EDITION IS OPEN TO:
Films no longer than 10 minutes relating to a edited poem, aesthetically or in their form or content and produced after October 2013.
SEND US YOUR POETRY FILM Before November 20th, 2015!
In order to partecipate follow the instruction on the application form in ITALIAN or ENGLISH VERSION. For the first time digital files only are admitted.
contact us
info@doctorclip.org• website is under construction •
Hopefully the website will be updated soon.
Book your tickets! The annual autumn parade of poetry film festivals is about to begin. Some calls are still open: for the Vienna, Ó Bhéal and CYCLOP festivals (see below), and for the as-yet-unscheduled 5th Sadho Poetry Film Fest (deadline: October 30) and International Film Poetry Festival in Athens (deadline: November 20). And don’t forget that submissions to Zata Banks’ PoetryFilm screenings series never close.
September 15-19, Vilnius, Lithuania
TARP Audiovisual Poetry Festival 10: INTER-states
This year‘s special touch – audiozine, which will see poets Dainius Gintalas, Laima Kreivytė, Marius Burokas, Benediktas Januševičius, Agnė Žagrakalytė and others being recorded reading poetry in their favourite settings.
The last day of the festival TARP 10 will be dedicated to TARP academy, together with video poetry researchers Sarah Lucas and Lucy English from Great Britain, andan open discussion with the festival guests. The closing of the festival will be crowned as usual by an open mic readings and the opening of the „INTER-states“ exhibition – because it is just the festival that will end, while poetic states will flutter in the air for long afterwards.
September 30, Minneapolis, MN, USA
Big Bridges Film Festival
Mark your calendar for September 30, 2015 when we will reveal the winners of the Big Bridges Film Contest! The event, hosted by MotionPoems and the Target Studio at the Weisman Art Museum, will include a special screening of selected films from the contest. All are welcome!
More details coming soon at www.BigBridgesWAM.com!
October 4-11, Cork, Ireland
Ó Bhéal @ IndieCork Film Festival
→ Submissions open until September 15
This is Ó Bhéal’s sixth year of screening poetry-films (or video-poems) and the third year featuring an International competition.
Up to thirty films will be shortlisted and screened during the festival, from 4th-11th October 2015.
October 10-11, Worcester, MA, USA
Rabbit Heart Poetry Film Festival
Rabbit Heart 2015 will once again be at the delightful Nick’s Bar in Worcester, MA! This year there will be two shows–
Showcase Matinee – Saturday, October 10th 12-3pm
Join us for lunch, and check out some of the fantastic material that we wish we had time to share at the awards ceremony (we got SO many good entries this year!) We will screen the best of the best that didn’t fall into prize categories, as well as curated showcases from renowned UK archivist Zata Banks of PoetryFilm. Watch this space for more information on the individual showcases.Awards Ceremony and Viewing Party – Sunday, October 11th 8pm (doors at 7:30)
The show you’ve been waiting all year for – the best of the best, the handing out of trophies, popcorn and fancy dresses, and your lovely emcees Tony Brown and Melissa Mitchell! Come meet your judges and cheer for your finalists – and see who takes home the sparkle-hearted bunny for Best Overall Production.
October 17, Vancouver, BC, Canada
Visible Verse 2015 Festival
Presented by The Cinematheque since 2000, Visible Verse is one of the longest-running video poetry festivals in the world. Video poetry is a hybrid creative form bringing together verse and moving images. Visible Verse selects its annual program from hundreds of submissions received from local, national, and international artists.
On the occasion of the 2015 festival, The Cinematheque says a fond farewell and expresses its great gratitude to Heather Haley, founder of Visible Verse and its curator and host from 2000 to 2014. We welcome Vancouver poet Ray Hsu into his new role as Visible Verse’s artistic director.
November 20 and 22, Kyiv, Ukraine
5th CYCLOP International Videopoetry Festival
→ Submissions open until September 30
The festival programme features video poetry-related lectures, workshops, round tables, discussions, presentations of international contests and festivals, as well as a demonstration of the best examples of Ukrainian and world videopoetry, a competitive program, an awards ceremony and other related projects.
December 5-6, Vienna, Austria
Poetry Filmfestival Vienna (AKA Art Visuals & Poetry Festival)
→ Submissions from German-speaking countries open until September 15
After an inspiring Poetry Film Festival in 2014 we are happy to go on in 2015. What´s new in 2015? We found a new festival location in middle of city center. Metro Kinokulturhaus. It’s one the most beautiful cinemas in Vienna and the result of a new cooperation with Filmarchiv Austria.
India’s biannual poetry-film festival Sadho is alive and well and open for new entries. I’ve taken the liberty of copying and pasting their call:
Deadline: Submission by mail: October 30, 2015
Submission for online preview: October 22, 2015 (if the entry form is submitted through mail.)
Entry form can be downloaded from links given below on this page.
ABOUT THE FESTIVAL
The Sadho Poetry Film Fest, the first of its kind in Asia, is a unique biennial festival that showcases the finest Poetry & Poetic Films from all over the world.
The festival has two avatars. The two-day main event is organized at New Delhi every alternate year, in which all the films are screened and the viewers vote for the ‘Viewers’ Choice Award’. The next year, the festival travels to various cities with abridged screenings, also targeting destinations that are normally left out of the film-festival circuits.
The festival has a special section for poetry films made by students independently or as a part of their film-school curricula.
Sadho also has material exchange partnerships with other important organizations and festivals that focus on this genre of films in other parts of the world, and is always looking for new collaborations.
The screening of the travel festival will begin soon.
TYPE OF FILMS
We showcase films, that broadly fall into following categories:
ENTRY FORM
Please download the entry form in a format of your choice.
The Atticus Review is looking for filmpoems/videopoems of between one and eight minutes in length. You can submit a bio and link to your work via Submittable (https://atticusbooks.submittable.com/Submit) or you can contact our Mixed Media Editor directly at m-mull@hotmail.com.
CYCLOP, the videopoetry festival in Kyiv, Ukraine, has been running every November since 2011. “The festival programme features video poetry-related lectures, workshops, round tables, discussions, presentations of international contests and festivals, as well as a demonstration of the best examples of Ukrainian and world videopoetry, a competitive program, an awards ceremony and other related projects.” For the 2015 festival, they’ve brought in a panel of international jurors for a new contest for international poetry films.
5th CYCLOP International Videopoetry Contest
1 August — 30 September 2015Rules and regulations:
- Films of up to 10 minutes duration that are no more than two years old (January 2013) may be entered.
- There are no limitation about subject and language restrictions. All films that are not in English must have English subtitles.
- Video can be performed in any techniques using any necessary equipment (video, animation, flash etc).
- By sending your film, you confirm that the film may be shown at the CYCLOP Videopoetry Festival. The artist must have all property and screening rights.
- Each artist can send more than one work.
- 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)The closing date for entries is 30 September 2015.
All entrants will be informed by e-mail of the results of the call for entries from Oktober 2015 on. Please make sure that your e-mail address is correct.
Click through to the CYCLOP website for the entry form. They also have a Facebook page.