Call for entries for the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival 2020
In 2020, the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival is inviting entries for the International Competition to find the best poetry films! Eligible for entry are short films produced in or after 2018, which are based on poems and are no more than 20 minutes in duration. All languages are allowed. The competition winners will be awarded prize money. A programme committee will select films for the International Competition and for all the other festival programmes from among the entries. The winning films will be chosen by a jury comprising representatives from the worlds of poetry, film and media.
ZEBRA is also inviting you to make a film interpretation of this year’s Festival Poem, “LETHE” by the poet TJ Dema. The directors of the three best film interpretations will be chosen by the programme committee and invited to come to Berlin where they will have the opportunity to present their films at the festival and discuss them with the poet. The Festival Poem may be used only for the purpose of film interpretation within the scope of this call for entries. For any other use at other festivals or on other platforms, etc. the film makers must obtain the rights from the rights holders. Text and audio of the poem can be found here at Lyrikline: https://www.lyrikline.org/en/poems/lethe-10308
Closing date for entries: 1. July 2020 (date as postmark)
The call for entries can be found here: https://www.haus-fuer-poesie.org/en/zebra-poetry-film-festival/call-entries/
Questions? – Contact us via zebra(at)haus-fuer-poesie.org
The ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival is organized by the Haus für Poesie in co-operation with interfilm Berlin and CineStar Kino in der KulturBrauerei. With the kind support of the Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa.
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Ausschreibung für ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival 2020
2020 schreibt das ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival den Wettbewerb um die besten internationalen Poesiefilme aus! Eingereicht werden können ab 2018 produzierte Kurzfilme, die auf Gedichten basieren und nicht länger als 20 Minuten sind. Alle Sprachen sind zugelassen. Der Wettbewerb ist dotiert. Aus den Einsendungen trifft eine Programmkommission die Filmauswahl für den internationalen Wettbewerb und für alle weiteren Programme des Festivals. Eine aus Vertreter*innen der Bereiche Dichtung, Film und Medien besetzte Jury kürt die Gewinnerfilme.
Darüber hinaus lädt ZEBRA ein, das diesjährige Festivalgedicht „LETHE“ der Lyrikerin TJ Dema zu verfilmen. Die Regisseur*innen der drei besten Verfilmungen werden von der Programmkommission ausgewählt und nach Berlin eingeladen. Sie bekommen die Möglichkeit, ihre Filme im Festival vorzustellen und mit der Dichterin zu diskutieren. Das Festivalgedicht darf ausschließlich zur Verfilmung im Rahmen dieser Ausschreibung verwendet werden. Für jede weitere Verwendung bei anderen Festivals, Plattformen etc. müssen die Filmemacher*innen die Rechte mit den Rechteinhabern klären. Das Gedicht findet sich in Text und Ton hier auf Lyrikline: https://www.lyrikline.org/de/gedichte/lethe-10308
Einsendeschluss: 1. Juli 2020 (Poststempel)
Die Ausschreibung finden Sie hier: https://www.haus-fuer-poesie.org/de/zebrapoetryfilmfestival/zebra-ausschreibung
Bei Fragen: zebra(at)haus-fuer-poesie.org
Das ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival ist ein Projekt des Haus für Poesie in Kooperation mit CineStar Kino in der KulturBrauerei und interfilm Berlin. Mit freundlicher Unterstützung durch die Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa.
ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival – Last call for entries
Till 25th April the 7th ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival is calling short films made on the basis of poems.
Conditions of Entry in full here
The prizes to be awarded will be the ZEBRA Prize for the Best Poetry Film, donated by the Literaturwerkstatt Berlin, the Goethe Film Prize, donated by the Goethe Institute, the RITTER SPORT Film Prize, donated by Alfred Ritter GmbH & Co KG, the prize for the Best Film for Tolerance, donated by the German Foreign Office and the Audience Prize awarded by the jury of radioeins listeners. The total value of the prizes in the competition is € 13,000.
The Festival is also inviting entries of films based on this year’s »Festival poem«, »Die Liebe in Zeiten der EU« (Love in the Age of the EU) by Björn Kuhligk. The directors of the three best films will be invited to Berlin to meet the poet and have the opportunity to present and discuss their films.
You can find the poem with a sound recording and various translations here on lyrikline
Children and young people will be able to award their very own prize: the ZEBRINO Prize for the Best Film for Children and Young People will be awarded by a jury of children to honour the best poetry film for eight-to-twelve-year-olds.
Deadline: 25th April 2014
The 7th ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival will take place from 16 to 19 October 2014. It is a project of the Literaturwerkstatt Berlin in cooperation with interfilm Berlin and with the kind support of the Hauptstadtkulturfonds, the German Foreign Office, the Goethe Institut and Alfred Ritter GmbH & Co KG. It takes place as part of the poesiefestival berlin.
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Noch bis 25. April können für das 7. ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival Kurzfilme eingereicht werden, die auf der Basis von Gedichten entstanden sind.
Vollständige Teilnahmebedingungen gibt es hier.
Vergeben werden der ZEBRA – Preis für den besten Poesiefilm, gestiftet von der Literaturwerkstatt Berlin, der Goethe Filmpreis, gestiftet vom Goethe-Institut, der RITTER SPORT Filmpreis, gestiftet von der Alfred Ritter GmbH & Co KG, der Preis für Toleranz, gestiftet vom Auswärtigen Amt und der Publikumspreis der radioeins-Jury. Der Wettbewerb ist mit insgesamt 13.000 EUR dotiert.
Außerdem lädt das Festival ein, das diesjährige Festivalgedicht „Die Liebe in Zeiten der EU“ von Björn Kuhligk zu verfilmen. Die Regisseure der drei besten Verfilmungen werden nach berlin eingeladen, treffen den Dichter und bekommen die Möglichkeit, ihre Filme vorzustellen und zu diskutieren.
Das Gedicht “Die Liebe in Zeiten der EU” im O-Ton von Björn Kuhligk nebst einigen Übersetzungen findet sich hier auf lyrikline:
Kinder- und Jugendliche können einen eigenen Preis vergeben: Der „ZEBRINO – Preis für den besten Kinder- und Jugendfilm“ wird von einer Kinderjury bestimmt, die damit den besten Poesiefilm für Acht- bis Zwölfjährige auszeichnen.
Bewerbungsschluss: 25. April 2014
Das 7. ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival findet statt vom 16. – 19.10.2014. Es ist ein Projekt der Literaturwerkstatt Berlin in Kooperation mit interfilm Berlin sowie mit der freundlichen Unterstützung durch den Hauptstadtkulturfonds, das Auswärtige Amt, das Goethe-Institut und die Alfred Ritter GmbH & Co KG. Es findet statt im Rahmen des poesiefestival berlin.
ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival – this year’s »Festival poem«
ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival is inviting entries of short films based on this year’s »Festival poem«, Die Liebe in den Zeiten der EU by Björn Kuhligk. A committee will select the three best film versions of the poems from among all the entries. The directors of the three best films will be invited to Berlin to meet the poet and have the opportunity to present their films and to talk about the process of making them. You will find the poem with a sound recording on lyrikline as well as translations into French (L’amour aux temps de l’UE), English (Love in the age of the EU), Spanish (El amor en los tiempos de la UE), Russian (Любовь во время ЕС) and into Breton (Ar garantez e mare unvanidigezh Europa).
In 2012 the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival invited film makers from all over the world to make film interpretations of the poem [meine heimat] by Ulrike Almut Sandig. 33 film makers from thirteen countries followed the call. Thirteen of the films have been selected and presented in the programme [meine heimat] one poem – many films. The directors of the three best films, Rainer Komers (film maker, writer, Mühlheim / Ruhr and Berlin), Lisi Prada (film maker, Madrid) and Johanna Wagner (film maker, Motala, Sweden; Edinburgh, Berlin), introduced their works on the stage, talked about how they approached working on the project and gave insights into the various ways a poem can be approached in film. Ulrike Almut Sandig has read from her books.
The closing date for entries for all the Competitions is 25 April 2014. You can find the full conditions of entry and the entry form here >>.
All films submitted are automatically considered for all selection processes!
The 7th ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival is taking place from 16th–19th October 2014.
Deadline: 25 April 2014
The ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival is a project of the Literaturwerkstatt Berlin in cooperation with interfilm Berlin and with the kind support of the Capital City Cultural Fund (Hauptstadtkulturfonds), the Goethe Institut, the German Foreign Office (Auswärtiges Amt) and Alfred Ritter GmbH & Co. KG. It takes place as part of the poesiefestival berlin.
World Poetry Day 2012 – Looking at Poetry & Film
Since 2002 Literaturwerkstatt Berlin, which is also home to lyrikline.org, has been organising the biannual ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival, showing short films that are audio-visual realisations of one or more poems. At this point, the archive is already filled with thousands of entries from the past 10 years. They show the exciting and multifaceted approaches of artists from different cultures to combining poetry and film. Works are sent from all over the world that range classic motion picture to animated shorts, video and media art, poetry performance clips, and documentaries about poets. They’re based on poetry from Shakespeare to sound poems. The filmmakers’ individual conceptions are as varied as the names they attribute to their works: poetry videos, videopoetry, poetry film, filmpoetry, poetry clip, cinepoem and more.
Diverse as the entries might be, there’s one thing that all the good ones have in common: they succeed if one can experience in some way a clever and maybe even poetic relationship and correspondence between the words and images. When poetic principles and features, such as rhythm, tempo, meter, imagery, denseness, and tone unfold, poetry and film together can reach another level and merge into something unique.
On the occasion of this year’s UNESCO World Poetry Day, next to publishing many new poets on lyrikline.org, we collected statements focusing on poetry & film from filmmakers, poets, and film and literary scholars (see below). Many thanks to Paul Bogaert, Avi Dabach, Tom Konyves, J.P. Sipilä, and Uljana Wolf!
If you would like to join the discussion about poetry and film, the audio-visual realisation of poetry and its many variations, or see more films, please visit the ZEBRA Facebook page, the ZEBRA youtube channel or explore Moving Poems, an online anthology of poetry videos.
Poetry & Film: statement by Tom Konyves
I am interested in the most advanced form of poetry film; I call the form videopoetry and I define it as “a genre of poetry displayed on a screen, distinguished by its time-based, poetic juxtaposition of images with text and sound.”
It has two constraints: (1) Text, displayed on-screen or voiced, is an essential element of the videopoem (work which does not contain visible or audible text could be described as poetic, as an art film or video art, but not as a videopoem); and (2) the imagery in a videopoem – including on-screen text – does not illustrate the voiced text.
The key to a good videopoem is balance – the weighing of image-text relationships for their suggestive (rather than illustrative) qualities, the determining of durations, the positioning and appearance of text, the proportioning of color, the layering of the soundtrack, the acceleration or deceleration of elements, etc. In the editing or “montage” phase, syntactical decisions are made to render image-text-sound juxtapositions as a metaphor for simultaneous “meanings”, which the viewer interprets as a poetic experience.
Here’s a poetry film that impressed me:
Claire Walka’s “Kleine Reise” (A Little Trip) – In our everyday lives, the artist finds clues to poetry; commonplace details, like the lines of a poem, are placed and sequenced with the aid of a video camera and intimate whispers.
Tom Konyves produced his first videopoem in 1978; for the past 3 years, he has been visiting film and video archives, researching and presenting talks about the form.
Poetry & Film: statement by J.P. Sipilä
What I do is videopoetry. It has a somewhat different approach to film and poetry than poetry film. I see poetry films as visual and kinetic illustrations of certain poems. But as far as videopoetry is concerned, video and sound are not mere reflections of certain poems, but a puzzle or juxtaposition of the three elements (video, sound and text). As videopoet Tom Konyves says: “”Videopoetry is a genre of poetry displayed on a screen, distinguished by its time-based, poetic juxtaposition of text with images and sound. In the measured blending of these 3 elements, it produces in the viewer the realization of a poetic experience.”
A good videopoem creates a new overall poetic experience from the three elements used. For me the video is the paper and screen is the mouth of my poetry.
Sound and visual aspects have always had a huge effect on my poetry. I usually read poetry while listening music and when I see a piece of art I somehow automatically start thinking a story or a feeling behind it. Using video as a medium for my poetry was a step that was just waiting to be taken.
Here’s a poetry film that impressed me:
This piece dating back to 1978 can be considered the first videopoem, the starting point of it all, if I may say so. Of course there have been films and works that could be somehow understood as videopoetry in the past, for example Jean Cocteau’s Le Sang d’un Poète from 1930. However this piece by Tom Konyves entitled Sympathies of War is something that made way for a new genre of poetry. Something that is nowadays known as videopoetry.
J.P. Sipilä is a Finnish poet. He released his first book of poetry in 2006 and began making videopoems at the same time.
Poetry & Film: statement by Uljana Wolf
Like a translation, and like poetry itself, or perhaps like prose poetry, or the prose poem—already we see the problem here—a poetry film exists in a between-space, a Zwischenraum. It can not be named. It can only be invented with each attempt; its inability to occupy a name or a space or a genre is what generates these attempts to create something that is true to its name. It will fail every time.
Uljana Wolf (born 1979) is a German poet. She lives in Berlin and New York and was a member of both the programme commission and the festival jury of the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival.
Poetry & Film: statement by Paul Bogaert
Poetry Film City is in danger. To avoid it becoming a poster-like island that is overgrown with kitsch, a warehouse of beautiful animations or a hell of text illustrations, I think more poets should visit the City. To occupy a street or two, to copulate with film makers and sound experts, to enjoy a holiday or just to inspect the place of abuse.
Looking at a poetry film, I want to experience that it must have been made. ‘It’s Being a film based on a poem’ is not enough reason to make a poetry film. I also want to have the illusion that no other choices or combinations could have been possible.
Using a good poem (a poem that survives when separated from the film) is a condition, but not a guarantee for a good poetry film. The visible or audible presence of a poem can easily hide the fact that there is no poetry in the poetry film. A good poetry film doesn’t only contain a poem, it doesn’t only facilitate interaction between text, image and sound, but it also has ‘poetic’ qualities as a whole. A good poetry film is a film that I want to see again. And again.
An excellent poetry film is ‘YOU AND ME’ (2009) by Karsten Krause. A timeline made of love and four decades of footage. ‘Bourgeois show off’ meets ‘erotic slavery’. The lovebird lines and rhymes we hear are only a few times in sync with what’s (not) said. Nostalgia (toxic in its pure form) is countered by a cruel ‘fast forward’. The moving mix of images, playful-polite lines and subtle soundtrack appear to be the fuel for a death reminder.
Paul Bogaert (born 1968, Belgium), poet: “Most poetry films are based on or inspired by an existing poem. I think that doing it in the reverse way can yield good results too. I like writing the text and making the film simultaneously. It’s a complex thing to do, but it questions my normal process and it stretches the margins of my work.”
“Poetry film makers certainly have to consider the language problem. Can the poetry survive the screening when the used language is (too) foreign to the movie watcher? Subtitles are not always a solution and translations can be bad, or too difficult in a bridge-language (often English).”
You can listen to Paul Bogaert‘s poetry on lyrikline.org.
Poetry & Film: statement by Avi Dabach
I’m often asked by viewers or colleagues to define what poetry film is. For a long time, I would define it by explaining what it isn’t (it’s not a film about poetry, nor poets, etc.). Then I heard Bob Holman, an American poet, saying that there is no such thing as poetry film, but only different kinds of poetry: there is the spoken or performed poetry—the most ancient kind. The second type is written poetry, and even though it can be read aloud in public, it is more a text than a show.
The third kind is the filmed poem, or since the HD era, the Video Poem—a type of visual poetry. The basis for most video poems is written poetry, but for good video poems, the written words are only an inspiration. The words become part of a new poem created by the director. The video has a strong and complex relationship with the written poem, but it is no longer the same piece of art.
One of the best video poems “Nach grauen Tagen” by Ralf Schmerberg (select #9), takes the words and transforms them into a visual and emotional situation, and creates a new visual poem with its own meaning and beauty.
Avi Dabach, Born 1972, Jerusalem. Directed a dozen of video poems as well as documentaries and experimental films.
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