~ festivals and other screening events ~
News about any and all events in which poetry films/videos are prominently featured, whether or not they include an open competition. Please let us know about any we might miss. And don’t forget to check out our page of links to poetry film festivals. All festivals, events and calls for work are mentioned by MovingPoems 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 films: Videobardo International Videopoetry Festival
The Buenos Aires-based Videobardo festival will mark its 27th year this November, and has just issued an open call in Spanish and English.
Videobardo Archive and International Videopoetry Festival, founded in 1996, has been presented in 21 countries and is the oldest active videopoetry Festival in the world. This 2023 opens its call to be part of a new edition of the Festival that will be held in November in Buenos Aires, Argentina, with itinerances to be defined.
We understand Videopoetry to be those audiovisual works in which the poetic verbal language (word, letter, speech, speech, writing, visual or sound sign) has a leading role or special transformative treatment. So that the three fields: Moving Image, Sound and Verbal Language dialogue to create a reality that is the Videopoetic Work.
Here are the terms and conditions. Note that all submissions should be subtitled in Spanish, though “subtitling may be dispensed with long as the artist and VideoBardo consider that it does not affect the understanding of the work.”
Call for entries: Filmetry 23
Filmetry, an online festival of poetry and film that began in 2019 and picked up steam during the pandemic, is inviting filmmakers to make new work from a set selection of poems, just as Moving Poems did with our own upcoming haibun film festival. If our experience is any guide, they may need extra help in getting the word out, so do share this widely:
FILMETRY: a Festival of Poetry and Film is an annual collaborative art-making endeavor that pairs filmmakers with poets to create exciting new pieces of work. Filmmakers are invited to synthesize and adapt poetic work into film with only one rule: a commitment to including the text of the poem, in full, in the finished piece. The hope is that through this collaboration, both artistic partners can witness not just an adaptation of a written piece into audiovisual media, but the transformation of the original piece into something wholly new.
PLEASE READ THE RULES BELOW BEFORE SUBMITTING. The festival invites filmmakers to create new work from specific poems available on our website. Work created from poetry not on this list will be disqualified.
In its 5th year, FILMETRY will invite curated work adapted from poetry engaged with cinema. Visit copy paste this link: filmetry.org/2023-work (password: filmetry2023) to view selected work for adaptation.
They have a very tasty selection of contemporary poems to adapt from the likes of Martha Collins, Sheryl St. Germain, Denise Duhamel, and Gary LaFemina. Click through to FilmFreeway for the complete guidelines.
Films for Haiku North America 2023 Haibun Film Festival
We’re pleased to announce that that the following nine films have been selected for screening. We extend our gratitude to all the directors who made brand-new work just for us, with astonishment at the variety in styles and approaches, even with some haibun proving to be hugely popular choices to work with! We’re also grateful to the writers who submitted haibun through HNA last fall, including those whose work was not ultimately chosen. Haiku writers have a unique, centuries-long tradition of using friendly competitions to push the art forward. It’s been awesome to feel as if we’re a part of that, in a small way.
Anyone who’d like to attend the festival on June 29 in Cincinnati can register for the conference here. The videos will of course remain embargoed until that point. Then we’ll ask the filmmakers to make them public so we can share them at MovingPoems.com, one post per film, and at that point we’ll also encourage both the filmmakers and the haibun authors to share the videos freely, online and off, and spread the good word about haibun video.
Please join us in congratulating the directors of the selected films.
—Jane Glennie, James Brush and Dave Bonta, judges
Table for One (haibun by Carol Ann Palomba)
Director Matt Mullins
United States
2:20
The Gone Missing: A Haibun by Joseph Aversano
Director Marilyn McCabe
United States
0:56
Haibun – The Gone Missing by Joseph Aversano
Director En D
Australia
1:00
Unremembered (haibun by Marjorie Buettner)
Director Pat van Boeckel
Netherlands
2:09
The Gone Missing (Joseph Aversano)
Director Janet Lees
United Kingdom
4:03
Hypnic Jerk (haibun by Alan Peat)
Directors Pamela Falkenberg, Jack Cochran
United States
2:56
The Longest Journey by Bob Lucky
Director Pete Johnston
United States
2:30
The Gone Missing by Joseph Aversano
Director Pete Johnston
United States
1:08
The Gone Missing (Joseph Aversano)
Director Beate Gördes
Germany
2:22
Vancouver’s City Poems contest: a model for local poetry-film competitions?
Fiona Tinwei Lam is the current City of Vancouver (Canada) Poet Laureate. She has had a very busy role co-ordinating the City Poems poetry project which aims to foster public engagement with local history and culture through poetry. I am very pleased to say that this project has a very significant poetry film component.
You can watch selections from the competitions while the project is open for the audience awards until 26th May 2023.
You can read more about the project in a short article Fiona wrote about the competition. I hope the project proves a good template for encouraging similar future projects in Canada and elsewhere in the world.
Call for films: Italy and Ireland
Some fresh calls for films this week … first up La Poesie che si vede, an international competition for poetry films based in Ancona, Italy, with the winner awarded €500.
The organisers say:
It is the product of the collaboration between two important festivals: La Punta della Lingua International Poetry Festival and Corto Dorico Film Festival. The first edition of La Poesia che si vede was held in July 2021. Its third edition will take place in June 2023.
The International Competition for Poetry Films is dedicated to poetry short films produced from all over the world. From kinetic text to sound text, from visual text to cine-poetry, up to the filmed performance, poetry film for La Poesia che si vede is total poetry, without discrimination of genre or format.
Submissions on FilmFreeway by 22 May 2023: https://filmfreeway.com/LaPoesiaCheSiVede
Next is the 11 Ó Bhéal Poetry Film Competition, an international competition based in Cork, Ireland.
Up to 30 shortlisted films will be announced during October 2023 and screened at the 11th Winter Warmer poetry festival (26th-28th Nov 2023) at Nano Nagle Place in Cork city, as well as online.
Submissions on FilmFreeway by 31st August, or direct via the instructions on their website https://www.obheal.ie/blog/competition-poetry-film/
Call for films: Drumshanbo Written Word Weekend
Drumshanbo Written Word Weekend is looking for poetry films. Drumshanbo in County Leitrim, Ireland, hosts an annual literary festival bringing together some of Ireland’s finest writers and poets to celebrate the written word. Part of this festival is an annual Poetry Film Competition open to filmmakers and poets from everywhere. The shortlisted films are screened as part of the festivals opening ceremony, and is curated by Colm Scully.
The event offers a first prize of €400
Apply via Filmfreeway at the following link (€5 per submission) https://filmfreeway.com/DrumshanboWrittenWordPoetryFilmCompetition
or apply for free direct by sending a high resolution download link to writtenwordpoemfilm@gmail.com by Saturday 1st July with the following information on an attached Word document.
- Film Name
- Director
- Poem Name
- Poet
- Length of Film
- Country of Origin
- When completed
- Short Bios
- Contact Details
Films should be no longer than 6 minutes, and have been made since Jan 2021. Maximum two films per competitor. All languages welcome but films not in English or Irish require English subtitles or captions. Responsibility for copyright and third party authorisations lies with the creator. Please do not submit films that were previously entered.
Call for films: Festival Cinemistica – Spain
Festival Cinemistica describes its philosophy as:
… dedicated to transcendental cinema, at its several meanings, including philosophic, psychological, scientific, anthropological, spiritual and poetic cinema. Because transcendence in the man and the world, might be eventually ineffable and, on this, cinematographic art has certain advantages, and a huge responsibility.
The 2023 festival has several categories: Cinemistic, in which poetry film would be included, and indeed, ‘all cinematographic possibilities are welcome’; 2023 Mirrors of Love – for which the overarching theme to respond to is Refuge; and a category for films for children.
The Cinemistica Festival has been running for 9 years, and takes place in the beautiful Spanish city of Grenada in November. Entries are open on FilmFreeway until 15th July 2023.
Cadence Video Poetry Festival 2023 – Seattle and online
The 6th Annual Cadence Video Poetry Festival will take place as a hybrid event with screenings in Seattle, and online. There are multiple events in the programme and you can choose between single event tickets or festival passes. The in-person events will be between 27-30 April, while the online programmes will be available for a week longer until 7th May.
There are five intriguing sounding programmes in the festival, including The Edge of Here, The Great Entanglement, and the fantastic title of A Tune to Contain All Your Revolt, as well as a satellite in-person film programme at the Frye Art Museum.
There are also three, live, collaborative workshops with a mixture of in-person, hybrid, and online events.
See the Northwest Film Forum website for more details and a full programme.
Call for work: Aotearoa Poetry Film Festival
New Zealand poetry filmmaker Charles Olsen just wrote to let us know about this fabulous-sounding new festival, scheduled for November 2-3, 2023 in Wellington. Here’s the press release:
Submissions are now open for the Aotearoa Poetry Film Festival 2023
The Aotearoa Poetry Film Festival is an event entirely devoted to the celebration and showcase of poetry film in New Zealand. Poetry film or video poetry is a fast-growing art form that combines poetry, moving images, sound and music. We would like to invite film-makers and poets of any age and backgrounds to participate in the first edition of the Festival which will take place in November 2023 in Wellington. In particular, we encourage the submission of innovative and eclectic takes on poetry film as a distinct media form.
The Festival will feature a poetry film competition, workshops, seminars, poetry readings and retrospectives and it will offer the opportunity to showcase the diversity of poetry film produced both in Aotearoa New Zealand and overseas. The 2023 Aotearoa Poetry Film Festival is organised in collaboration with Victoria University of Wellington.
Submissions open: 1 February 2023
Submission deadline: 15 August 2023
Event: 2-3 November 2023
Website: https://www.aotearoapff.com/
FilmFreeway Page: https://filmfreeway.com/AotearoaPoetryFilmFestival-1
For more info please contact: aotearoapff@gmail.com
REELpoetry 2023: Ecopoetry Films & Subjectivity
Ecopoetry Films & Subjectivity is the title of a group discussion to be given by Ian Gibbins (Australia), Mary McDonald (Canada) and Sarah Tremlett (UK), as part of this year’s REELpoetry, a festival for videopoetry in Houston, USA.
These highly esteemed artists and thinkers will be discussing approaches to making poetry films in relation to the theme of ecopoetry and subjectivity. The full discussion will be streamed at REELpoetry on Sunday 26 February at 6:30-7:15pm (Houston time). The full festival program and more information is here.
The trailer:
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.
Haibun films still needed for our film festival!
One month ago, we invited submissions
for a screening of haibun poetry films at the biennial Haiku North America conference, to be held in Cincinnati, Ohio from June 28-July 2, 2023. Moving Poems is an official co-sponsor, and we’ll be the ones selecting the films. Winning films will be screened at the conference and published at Moving Poems.
We required filmmakers to use one of our provided texts, among other quite specific guidelines on FilmFreeway… which have been completely ignored by hundreds of filmmakers from around the world, much to my chagrin. I may have something to say about FilmFreeway’s appalling spam submissions problem later, but today I’d like to emphasize the bright side: So far we’ve gotten two strong submissions that follow the guidelines, and I’m grateful to both filmmakers. We just need a few more. Check out these haibun (password: haibun) and tell me there aren’t a ton of great potential films here! The deadline is March 15.
