~ 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.
4th CYCLOP Videopoetry Festival program online
We received the following press release from CYCLOP organizer Polina Horodyska:
21 to 23 November, 2014, in Kyiv the 4th CYCLOP Videopoetry Festival will be held. The program features video-visual 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 poetry films, competitive program, awarding ceremony and other interesting intermediary projects.
This year lectures are devoted to the birth of the concept, experience of poetry film creation, visual component of literary projects, and videopoetry in cinematic discourse. At Saturday’s showing, you can watch the best examples of new Ukrainian videopoetry. On Sunday, we will show the unique festival video of international contests. You will also have an opportunity to watch the 1st ‘Videopoetry Laboratory’ findings and take part in their discussion, and to visit an incredible poetic-musical-visual «rozdilovi» performance prepared for the fest by «ArtPole» creative agency…
The International Poetry Film Festival’s selection will be shown on November 23, Sunday, at 12:00 – 16:30.
The program for the international screening, organized by cooperating film festival, is very international indeed. I was impressed by how many different festivals they’re working with: VideoBardo in Argentina; AVaspo in Vilnius; Liberated Words in Bristol; KHM Cologne & Kunststiftung NRW in Berlin; Rabbit Heart in Worcestor, Massachusetts; Ó Bhéal in Cork; and ZEBRA in Berlin. Click through for the complete list of films and filmmakers.
Type Motion exhibition opens in Liverpool
“FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology) is the UK’s leading media arts centre, based in Liverpool,” according to their website. A new exhibition should be of particular interest to fans of videopoetry and poetry film.
This November, FACT is pleased to present the UK premiere of Type Motion, an exhibition featuring over 200 outstanding examples of text and typography being used alongside the moving image. The exhibition celebrates the creative possibilities of opening up uses of text far beyond print, and seeks to showcase not only the importance of writing, but how bringing it to life with movement is an artform in itself.
Kinetic text has emerged as an important sub-genre of poetry animation in recent years, spawning some of the most popular poetry videos on the Anglophone web. This exhibition sounds as if it might really help contextualize that. It’s on from November 13 through February 8, 2015.
UPDATE (Nov. 14): See Grafik magazine for a short selection of poetry films from the exhibition. I like their thumbnail history:
The avant-garde filmmakers of the early twentieth century were interested in liberating the then-new medium from those other media that were already considered art prior to their incorporation into film — theatre and literature, language and writing. Today, however, the conceptual integration and the creative visualisation of what had once been (ideologically) rejected as ‘un-filmic’ has become a growing trend. Artists now strive to interpret literary works in animated poetry-clips, transform literary idioms into filmic language and draw attention to the form of writing to visualise the content it conveys.
(Hat-tip: ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival group on Facebook)
Call for submissions: Text(e) Image Beat exhibition at Galerie Sans Nom
(The following press release is from Annie France Noël, co-director of the GSN.)
The Galerie Sans Nom (GSN) in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada, is organizing a screening of videopoetry with the curators Daniel Dugas and Valerie LeBlanc. The exhibition will be presented from March 20 – May 1, 2015.
The work should be screen-based poems where the text, image and sound intermingle. The maximum duration of the work cannot exceed 5 minutes and must have been realized after January 2013. The works must be in either French or English. If the language in the video poem is other than French or English, the artist is required to submit a version that is subtitled in French or English. All video poems must be received by the December 15 deadline through a file hosting service (Dropbox) or through Vimeo. A short artist bio and synopsis of the video poem must accompany each submission.
No entry fee, CARFAC rates will be paid.
Deadline: December 15th, 2014
Submissions must include:
- Director’s name
- Address
- Duration
- Year
- Format
- Link (Vimeo / Dropbox)
- Previous screenings
- Synopsis
- Bio
- Artist portrait (JPEG, 300 DPI)
- Still image of video (JPEG, 300 DPI)
Submit as a WORD .doc attachment to: videopoesieGSN@gmail.com
Erica Goss on ZEBRA 2014
Poet Erica Goss’s Third Form column in Connotation Press this month is devoted to her impressions of the 7th ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival, and includes a short interview with ZEBRA’s artistic director Thomas Zandegiacomo Del Bel as well as a list of “ten video poems from the festival that deserve attention.” The majority of these have yet to appear on Moving Poems, so do check it out.
Thomas Zandegiacomo Del Bel on ZEBRA and poetry films
Directly following the awards ceremony at the end of the 2014 ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival in Berlin, I sat down with ZEBRA’s artistic director, Thomas Zandegiacomo Del Bel, for a brief chat. I wanted to learn a bit more about how he and the other members of the program committee (Anna Henckel-Donnersmarck, Heinz Hermanns, Ulrike Almut Sandig and Heiko Strunk) chose the films to be screened, and how Literaturwerkstatt Berlin manages to plan and produce such a big festival. And snce Zandegiacomo is something of an expert on the history of poetry film, I wanted to ask what trends or fashions he’s seen in recent years, and where he sees the genre going in the future.
Mention is made of another Literaturwerkstatt production, lyrikline — an online archive of audiopoetry comparable to PennSound in the U.S., but many times larger and more international in its focus. They just added their 1000th poet on October 18.
As for my own impressions of ZEBRA as a first-time attendee: I found it very well-organized (albeit with a few technical glitches), intellectually and aesthetically stimulating, and a bit overwhelming. It was impossible to attend all the screenings, readings and other events even with a number of repeat screenings in the schedule — especially if one also took advantage of the opportunity to drink beer network and socialize each night. As I say in the video, I liked the way filmmakers were invited on-stage for brief interviews with the moderator after their films were aired, though I did hear other attendees complain that this interrupted the flow. As a web native, I suppose I have a pretty high tolerance for interruptions and distractions. But the folks at Literaturwerkstatt Berlin take the “werkstatt” (workshop) part of their name very seriously; craft talks are part of their core mission.
I was very impressed by the three-person jury (Cornelia Klauss, Alice Lyons and Michael Roes). Each of their four choices was a challenging, unconventional film-poem, in contrast to some of the more mainstream prizewinners from past ZEBRAs. I got the impression that 100% of the prize money goes to the filmmakers, but perhaps some of them will split it with the poets whose work they used, as I heard one animator in the awards ceremony audience vow to do if she won. I liked the themed screenings and was frustrated that I couldn’t attend more of them, but fortunately the paper edition of the festival program includes every film, so I can watch all the ones that have been uploaded to the web (probably at least half of them).
Vienna Poetry Film Festival announces competition films
still from a video by 4youreye
The Vienna Poetry Film Festival (A.K.A. Art Visuals & Poetry Festival) is coming up on November 5-6, as previously noted. Now they have released a list of the films they’ll be screening on November 6 from both competitions: Poetry films about the Festival poem “Kaspar Hauser Lied” by Georg Trakl, and Textfilm made in Austria. I recognize many filmmakers’ names, especially in the former category. Congratulations to all for having been selected.
The program for November 5, moderated by Sigrun Höllrigl and Hubert Sielecki, has also been released, including some teaser videos. It too looks very interesting. Best of luck to the organizers and participants for what is sure to be a successful and stimulating event.
“A real Arabic aesthetic”: Nissmah Roshdy on the making of “The Dice Player”
Egyptian animator and media designer Nissmah Roshdy talks about her film The Dice Player, an animation of a section of a Mahmoud Darwish poem of the same title. American poet Erica Goss, author of the Third Form column on video poetry at Connotation Press, interviewed Roshdy in a Berlin coffee shop the day after the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival, where The Dice Player won top honors.
Our conversation continued for more than an hour after the interview, but 20 minutes is about the limit to what I can upload at my slow connection speed. (I apologize for the sound not being perfectly in sync; I’m still learning how to use new editing software.)
Motionpoems’ “Colossal 3D poetry film installation” prepares for first run, issues nation-wide call for entries for 2015
Most poets seem to limit their greatest bursts of creativity to their writing, but Minnesota-based poet and force of nature Todd Boss (check out his new website) seems to come up with ingenious ideas for public poetry projects almost once a year — and given his background as an arts administrator, he then makes them happen, too. He’s really committed to bringing poetry to the people. He of course co-founded Motionpoems, of which he is still Executive and Artistic Director. In 2012, he worked with Swedish visual artist Maja Spasova on a large-scale public art project in the Mississippi River, Project 35W, which included audio stations and a print supplement of the associated poems in the local newspaper. Then there’s this:
https://vimeo.com/103811378
“Arrivals & Departures at Saint Paul’s Union Depot” has a page on the Motionpoems website. Let me paste in the first part of the announcement (minus some of the formatting):
A L L A B O A R D
F O R A M A J O R M O T I O N P O E M S P U B L I C A R T P R O J E C T“Arrivals & Departures at Saint Paul’s Union Depot”
C O M I N G | S T . P A U L | O C T 1 0 – 1 1 , 2 0 1 4
Motionpoems and public artist Todd Boss present “Arrivals & Departures at St Paul’s Union Depot,” a colossal 3D poetry film installation that will magically transform the facade of one of St Paul’s most impressive landmark buildings.
Follow #DepotPoems
for weather and late-breaking updates.This is the first of an annual projection.
NOW CALLING FOR POEMS by US poets. DEADLINE Nov 30, 2014.
Click here to enter.We selected a handful of original poems by Minnesotans (theme: “Arrivals & Departures”) from a statewide call for poems (CLOSED), then commissioned Minnesota film teams to turn finalist poems into short films to fit digitally mapped 3D templates of the building.
In Oct 2014, we’ll project the films onto the screen-filled facade of St Paul’s historic Union Depot to loop at 5-minute intervals like trains, with accompanying audio from lawn-area speakers, during the St Paul Art Crawl, October 10-12, 2014.
The artistic vision for this project is to celebrate Union Depot’s renaissance as a rail hub with an act of place-making that will reclaim the space in the hearts and minds of all who experience it.
Read the rest (including the 2014 winning poems by Brian Beatty, Robert Dougherty, Mike Rollin, and Linda Back McKay).
Todd Boss, meanwhile, isn’t resting on his laurels. Next spring, Minneapolis-Saint Paul residents will get to experience the Wee Cinema:
https://vimeo.com/104415198
Poetry film festival news: Ó Bhéal releases shortlist; TARP plans 24-hour-long festival
There was poetry film festival news out of Ireland and Lithuania this week. Ó Bhéal International Poetry-Film Competition, due to be screened on October 18-19 in Cork, released its shortlist.
The competition shortlist of thirty films which follows, will be screened in two parts, at the Smurfit Theatre in The Firkin Crane, Cork. These have been chosen from over eighty submissions of poetry films completed in the last two years, from twelve countries – Ireland, England, Canada, USA, Ukraine, Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, Lebanon, Isle of Man and Macedonia/Croatia. The Ó Bhéal panel of judges will select one overall winner, who will receive the IndieCork festival award for best poetry film, at the awards ceremony. This year’s judges are Paul Casey, Stephen O’Riordan, Rosie O’Regan and Rab Urquhart.
And a post in English at the TARP website outlines the programme for this year’s festival.
Every year the audiovisual poetry festival TARP challenges itself and the audience – this year they will present a unique format of an event. Once the festival lasted for a month and visited the bigger cities in Lithuania, the only festival for interdisciplinary poetry will last for twenty four hours this year – from 9 am on 11 October until the same hour on 12 October in various places in the capital city.
The programme includes a preview of the 2014 ZEBRA festival due to take place in Berlin a week later, hosted by ZEBRA director Thomas Zandegiacomo Del Bel, as well as the opening of an international exhibition of graphic type animation, concerts, performances and more — check it out. It’s full of ideas that other festival planners might benefit from.
Organizers of the audiovisual poetry festival TARP have the right to surprise. Maybe the day has twenty five hours, maybe not read but performed text can have a completely different meaning.
Liberated Words offers unprecedented online access to the content of its festival
Poetry film festivals vary tremendously in their web presence, some little more than a Facebook page or a mention on the website of a related organization. Given that many are run by just one or two over-worked volunteers, it’s not surprising that putting content on the web would take a back seat to the immense logistical challenges of soliciting and judging submissions and planning the actual, meat-space festival. But for those with paid staff, interns, and/or crazy people who never sleep, bigger things are possible. I’m not sure whether that characterization applies precisely to the organizers of the Bristol, UK-based Liberated Words Poetry Film Festival, which just wrapped up its third annual event this weekend, but they are definitely raising the bar on how poetry film festivals share information and content.
First, information. For the second year in a row, Sarah Tremlett and Lucy English have produced a lengthy (58-page), full-color brochure and published it online via Issuu. (See also the 2013 brochure.) Illustrated by stills from the films and photos of some of the participants, the brochures contain detailed descriptions of each film and the people who made it — in many cases, information not found elsewhere in the web, to my knowledge (at least, not in English). So I learned some new things even about films and filmmakers I was already familiar with, to say nothing about work I hadn’t seen yet. This year’s brochure also includes statements from the organizers of four other, cooperating festivals: TARP, Zebra, Visible Verse, and VideoBardo. I especially appreciated VideoBardo organizer Javier Robledo’s essay (pp. 32-34), a wide-ranging exploration of where poetry film fits in the history of human use of written and spoken language, moving images, and audiovisual media.
As for the films, 21 of them have now been uploaded to the Liberated Words account on Vimeo. I’m not sure why they switched from YouTube, where the 2013 festival films are archived — possibly because so many professional filmmakers prefer Vimeo. But in any case, I applaud their decision to upload their own copies to the web rather than simply organize the various creators’ uploads into a channel or album. This way, their archives are secured against videos going M.I.A. (in contrast to the Moving Poems archives, as I was just complaining yesterday). Presuming the festival continues for a number of years, this online video library should become a very valuable resource indeed — especially given all the information about the films available in the brochures.
