Somehow we missed the opening-date announcement back in July, but poetry filmmakers still have until February 25 to submit to the 2025 festival. Here’s the call-out:
Through the Weimar Poetry Film Award the Literary Society of Thuringia and the Weimar Animation Club are looking for innovative poetry films.
The aim of the award is to improve the exchange between authors and filmmakers in Thuringia and Central Germany, to sharpen the perception of poetry in multimedia contexts, and to create more awareness for the experimental short film genre »poetry film«.
The competition is part of the Poetryfilmtage (International Poetry Film Festival of Thuringia).
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 explore the relation between film and written poetry in an innovative, straightforward way. Films that are produced before 2022 will not be considered.
The Weimar Poetry Film Award stands for an independent and competent awarding process. The jury is international and consists of three jurors with expertise in the fields of poetry, film production or criticism, and festival organization. The competition films are nominated by a program commission. During the festival, the jury selects the winners of the Jury Prizes in the categories »Best Animation« and »Best Real Film«. Both awards are endowed with € 1,200. A €250 audience prize will also be awarded by the cinema audience.
The competition »Weimar Poetry Film Award« is financed by the State Chancellery of Thuringia, the Sparkasse Mittelthüringen, and the City of Weimar.
This year in person 31 May/1 June, with the online playlists available until 15 June 2024, the festival in Weimar always has a thoughtful and thorough programme of poetry film. It is all very well documented on their website and in a downloadable pdf programme: https://poetryfilmtage.de/
In this year’s prize award the organisers say they received “479 films from 51 different countries … the program commission nominated 12 films for the competition”. But do take a look at what else is on the programme beyond the competition selection.
I was excited to see this film become available on the web last week, because it’s the one my jury mates and I chose as winner of the Weimar Poetry Film Award last year. Filmmakers Hanna Slak and Lena Reinhold adapted a text by the contemporary German poet Daniela Seel. Here’s the statement we released last May:
Standard Time is a timeless, self-referential meditation on the power of communication to transmute and, at times, distort. Its flawless blend of text, sound and images suggests a worldview both deeply rooted and universal, shamanistic and apophatic. It does what all great poems should do in suggesting more than it says and leaving the viewer’s mind abuzz with creative energy and new ideas. Addressing the poetic possibilities of time as it does, it can almost be seen as a film about poetry film itself.
I wrote all about our judging process in “2nd Weimar Poetry Film Award: A view from the jury.” Much more recently, the folks at Weimar have come out with a very effective video collage of interviews and other shots from the festival. And they’d probably like me to remind you that submissions to the 2018 award are still open until the 31st.
An exemplary spoken-word poetry film directed by Dave Tynan, featuring actors Jordanne Jones and Deirdre Molloy as well as the poet himself, Emmet Kirwan. It was selected for Special Mention this past weekend by the jury of the Weimar Poetry Film Award, on which I was honored to serve along with animator Ebele Okoye and writer Stefan Petermann. Our statement, translated from the German:
What questions can a poetry film take? Perhaps: in what kind of a world do we live? And in what kind of world do we want to live? In a stirring manner, Heartbreak pursues this question. The film by Dave Tynan tells the story of a young, Irish girl who unintentionally gets pregnant and had to raise her son all on her own. At the same time it is the history of a misogynist structured society and this, not only in Ireland, but everywhere in the world. Carried by the passionate, multi-faceted oration of the Spoken- Word poets Emmert Kirwan, an efficient camera and a wise narration Heartbreak plays around the questions of self-determination about own bodies, objectification, sexism and gender roles. The film succeeds in an impressive way, to translate the powerful words into touching images while remaining clear and direct. Tynan and Kirwan know how to arouse empathy, stimulate thoughts concerning a situation, but above all, anger!, yet, looking into the future with confidence. Heartbreak is a feminist poetry film for women and men. Courageous, angry, heartbreaking; an exclamation mark. A film the world must see. C’mere, C’mere, C’mere.
The YouTube description notes that it was “commissioned and developed by THISISPOPBABY as part of RIOT, Winner of Best Production at Dublin Fringe Festival 2016.” To date it has been viewed over 1.3 million times on Facebook and 201,000 times on YouTube, where it has inspired a lively discussion, with the usual #notallmen idiots vastly outnumbered by those resonating with its message.
Die Jury des 1. Weimarer Poetryfilm-Preises, bestehend aus der Erfurter Dichterin Nancy Hünger, dem Leiter des ZEBRA Poetryfilm-Festivals (Berlin/Münster) Thomas Zandegiacomo Del Bel sowie dem Wiener Filmemacher Hubert Sielecki wählte den südafrikanischen Beitrag WHAT ABOUT THE LAW (2014, 3:14 min) zum Sieger des mit 1000,- € dotierten Jurypreises. Regie führte der südafrikanische Animationskünstler Charles Badenhorst; das dem Film zugrundeliegende Gedicht verfasste der südafrikanische Autor Adam Small.
The Audience Award went to Steel and Air, a film based on a poem by John Ashbery directed by Chris and Nick Libbey and commissioned by Motionpoems, which I shared back in March. The full list of nominees is on the Poetryfilmkanal website.
