REELpoetry, February 2023, ecopoetry presentation, & still time to submit
REELpoetry, based in Houston, Texas and online will be with us once again February 24–26, 2023. There is still time to submit for the festival by the 19th not 15th of December, which isn’t themed this year, and entries are given prizes for the best film under four minutes and the best 4-6 minutes long.
There will be a host of different programmes apart from the exciting open juried screening: live events in Houston (Café Brasil) include: Texas Poets and Filmmakers screenings; ASL poets and performers, (a particularly important and unique feature of this festival with Sabina England now part of the team and top interpreters), an Open Mic and Deaf Open Mic, and Jack Cochrane and Pamela Falkenberg (see this site to learn more about their working methods) hosting an activist ecopoetry film screening. Online will include an online discussion with Deaf and Hearing participants; curations from around the globe – Mexico, Canada, Italy, Australia, England etc. and REELcafe networking opportunities. All in all a great lineup for a post-COVID event with Houston itself firmly back in the centre of things.
Fran Sanders, the organiser, is very active on the poetry scene in Houston through Public Poetry publicpoetry.net and, apart from the COVID hiatus has been building a strong foundation for poetry film in the city for a number of years. Submissions are via FilmFreeway: https://filmfreeway.com/REELpoetry2023
I am fortunate enough to have been part of the organising meetings and one of the judges (currently being confirmed), two of whom, alongside Fran Sanders, are: leading Australian digital artist and eco poetry filmmaker Ian Gibbins, and Canadian digital artist Mary McDonald.
As a triad Ian, Mary and myself are also making a short 40-minute video for the festival entitled:
Ecopoetry Films & Subjectivity: Behind the Making Process.
With the devastating effects of climate change, Ian Gibbins, Mary McDonald and
Sarah Tremlett present their films and discuss each other’s work and their varying
approaches in relation to the theme of ecopoetry and subjectivity.
Mary’s films will be Wishing Well (poet Penn Kemp) and Utility Pole (poet Fiona Tinwei Lam); Ian’s floodtide, and colony collapse, and mine I Cannot be Human, and Villanelle for Elizabeth not Ophelia. More to come.
