Screening at the Historic Venue of Beyond Baroque
681 Venice Blvd, Venice, CA
Doors open at 1:30 PM Saturday. April 30, 2022
The building and gardens.
Parking is free.
Meet some Filmmakers
And, some poets.
Coming to Venice, CA 4/30/22
Hollywood travels to the beach to screen 45 films from 11 countries. Screening Schedules below on this website. Ticket information at www.BeyondBaroque.org
Beyond Baroque, 681 Venice Blvd, Venice, CA 90291
Doors Open at 1:30 pm Seating is Limited.
Screening Schedule 2pm -8pm
Limited Seating -- Tickets Available at the door, prior tickets advised.
Animation 2:15 pm
Experimental I 3:00 pm
Documentary 4:30 pm
Breaks Between Categories
Narrative 5:15 pm
Experimental II 6:30 pm
Winners, Reception, Poetry
T B A
www.beyondBaroque.org
Hollywood has only a few poetry-based films...
Paterson, Directed by Jim Jarmusch
Poetry is the spine of this film!
The film Paterson was inspired by the poem "Paterson," by William Carlos Williams, who was born in Paterson, New Jersey.
"Despite being uneventful or anti-significant, the life of Paterson is weirdly fascinating to observe. Director Jim Jarmusch gradually unlocks the richness and depth of quotidian life, kindling our desire to be a wordsmith; not to build an ambitious career through words, but just to connect one’s self with the ordinary life he/she is living." by Arun Kumar, Author at High On Films.
Bringing Poetry to Film, and Film to Poetry.
Our Concept & Its History
Our mission is to explore the complex nature of combining poetry with filmmaking. It is a tricky, creative endeavor. Poetry is an ancient discipline of lyrical and written prose dating back thousands of years. Filmmaking is brand new by comparison, emerging only at the turn of the 20th Century. Poetry has had time to expand to what is available today, over 80 forms of poetry and verse just waiting for their essence to be captured in “moving pictures.” Of note, the first poem-based film was screened in 1905, The Night Before Christmas, by Clement Moore. It is an American silent film directed by Edwin S. Porter for the Edison Manufacturing Company.
December 2021 Interview with Founding Director Lynn Moss Holley, for the "Common Reader," by author John Griswold.
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New Poetry-Film Festival Underway
DECEMBER 13, 2021
I had never registered that there are film festivals dedicated to poetry and filmmaking until a friend told me recently about a new one, called the International Poetry Film Festival.
International Poetry Film Festival judges are currently considering 41 short films, from several countries, in categories such as Narrative, Animated, Documentary, and Experimental. The common thread is that all entries must be “poem based” and under 30 minutes. The Festival is open for submissions until February 28, 2022, but there is a “late deadline” three weeks after that. Entries can be submitted here at Film Freeway.
Founding Director Lynn Moss Holley stresses to me on on the phone that poetry is the spine of these films. “The poem can exist without the film,” she says, “but the film can’t exist without the spine of the poem.”
But films for the Festival do not have to include entire poems or use poems as scripts; they can also be documentaries about poets or poetic forms, or they can experiment with images and soundtracks inspired by poetry. Examples on the Festival site include an “homage to haiku”; an ekphrastic video about sculptures in Liverpool; and Auden’s “Night Mail” used in a documentary short of the same name.
Films chosen for the Festival will be co-curated by, and screened at, Beyond Baroque, a public space for the literary arts in Venice, California, which has deep ties to the Los Angeles poetry community and to independent artists across the country. In-person events will also include a day of panel discussions. Prizes include Best Film (possibly in different categories), Finalists, and Honorable Mentions, as well as an Audience Favorite Award and a Festival Director’s Choice Award.
“In case judges don’t pick the one I like best,” Holley says, laughing.
After the Festival ends, selections will be made available online for a nominal fee, she says.
Holley has been an active curator and art consultant for more than 15 years and has served as executive director of a large arts center in Florida and resident curator of two major art and science centers in California. Her graduate degree is in Museum Studies from the University of Leicester. She has also worked as a writer, journalist, and promotional filmmaker.
The 3 Minute Film Festival that she founded is in its 10th season, and her International Fine Arts Film Festival is in its fifth. She tells me they were getting enough poem-based entries that she thought those filmmakers should have their own festival.
Holley generally would like to see more Americans engage with poetry on a regular basis, and she feels that partnering with Beyond Baroque, whose model is what she calls “an exploration of the possibilities of language,” will help with that. The organization holds 150 literary readings, musical performances, and other events each year. Tom Waits, Wanda Coleman, Amy Gerstler, and Amanda Gorman have attended poetry workshops; Dana Gioia, Patti Smith, and Michael McClure have read or performed.
“Amanda Gorman got her legs at Beyond Baroque,” Holley says, “and you realize how empowering poetry is.”
In judging the Festival, Holley and her colleagues will “look at the whole elephant of film and poem.
“It is a very difficult balance this first year,” she admits. But, for her, “Poetry…cuts to the core of the emotion of a story, and the spine of the film must be the poetry, whatever else it’s about.”There is a page for Ekphrasis Poetry -- where paintings meet poetry, which is a precursor to poetry-based films. Certainly poets have been inspired by works of visual arts, specifically paintings and sculptures, since these two disciplines emerged eons ago. Yet, with the Ancient Greek muses, there were only muses for poems and verse, lyrics and songs, music, dance and theater of comedy and tragedy. There were no muses for painters and sculptors, who at that time were relegated to little more than a slave-status, until the early Renaissance. Times have changed, and we celebrate all the arts, individually and collectively, including Ekphrasis Poetry written in any form for the visual arts. Check out our page for Ekphrasis Poetry, as a competition will be announced soon to choose the poem that achieved the best results in describing a painting or piece of visual arts.
In Our First Season 2022
Although filmmaking is at the center of every film festival, we will explore poetry in its many different forms. Will a poem be a script for a narrative with actors, or an animation approach? Or, will it be an experimental film inspired by the words, the meaning, or the sound of poetry that a director can run with? Or perhaps a documentary of a poetic form or of a poet? Our special allure is the directors, writers, poets, cinematographers, and composers who will discuss how they use poetry in creating films and building films that are reflective of a poem's appeal.
A Special Addition - Ekphrasis Poetry
There is a page for Ekphrasis Poetry -- where paintings meet poetry, which is a precursor to poetry-based films. Certainly poets have been inspired by works of visual arts, specifically paintings and sculptures, since these two disciplines emerged eons ago. Yet, with the Ancient Greek muses, there were only muses for poems and verse, lyrics and songs, music, dance and theater of comedy and tragedy. There were no muses for painters and sculptors, who at that time were relegated to little more than a slave-status, until the early Renaissance. Times have changed, and we celebrate all the arts, individually and collectively, including Ekphrasis Poetry written in any form for the visual arts. Check out our page for Ekphrasis Poetry, as a competition will be announced soon to choose the poem that achieved the best results in describing a painting or piece of visual arts.