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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

11 films

Experimental I 3:00 pm

13 Films

Documentary 4:30 pm

4 Films

Breaks Between Categories

Narrative 5:15 pm

8 Films

Experimental II 6:30 pm

9 Films

Winners, Reception, Poetry

T B A

www.beyondBaroque.org

Screening Schedule Details 2-8 pm

Animation 2:15 - 2:50

1. The Chosen Few

 UK 2:09 

A poem about the words that poets choose not to choose. Alan David Pritchard, Director, Poet 

 

2. Requiem for a Spoken Word  

USA 2:58

 "Requiem" honors the passing of a single word from the heart of the poet, to the poet's lips, then to the audience and its fleeting life suspended in air. A tragic death or does that word find new life and meaning in memory?  This Experimental FilmPoem conjures a cortège for a spoken word and honors the 100 year anniversary of Jack Kerouac's birth.

Jim Hall, Director Marc Zegans, Writer, Poet 

Jimi Kijai, Original Score


3. Ships a Comin’ 

USA 2:55 Inspired by Octavia Butler and Zora Neale Hurston, "ships a comin" explores Afrofuturism and contemporary Black issues to examine the African American experience in the past and future. 

Ebony Gilbert, Director,Producer, Poet

Asher Fai, Animator

Frankie Natashia Grinner, Narrator  


4. Utility Pole 

Canada 2:58 

The film explores the transformation of trees into the poles that hold our communications, the many branched network that connect us, as the trees have been severed from each other and their own living networks.The soundscape is a binaural, 360 soundscape featuring a mix of urban forest sounds, with the sounds of technology today and the pointed call of Morse code, our earliest technologically enabled transatlantic communication.  

Mary M. McDonald, Co-Director, Co-producer, Cinematography, Animation, Original Score 

Fiona Tinwei Lam, Co-Director, Co-Producer, Narrator, Writer, Poet  


5. The Yes Yes Fish 

USA 6:00 

In this experimental short, a magic fish delivers a report reflecting on the fascist uprising in the US. 

Patrick Moser, Director, Writer, Poet 

Jackson Moser, Writer 

Kevin Mahoney, Original Score  


6. Hop Along Hang On 

Canada 4:17 

The poem-animation tells the story of an actual wedding conducted on Zoom between an American man and a Tanzanian woman whose families were unable to attend the ceremony in person because of Covid-19 and immigration restrictions. 

Cobra Collins, Director, Writer, Poet

Alex Moon, Animation 

Renn Madeleine Bibeau, Original Score  


7. The Combine  

USA 4:56 

The film tells the story of an actual incident involving a railroad switchman who encounters a Native American traveler in a rail yard in the middle of the night. The switchman’s supervisor traps the traveler inside a boxcar, resulting in serious injury. The switchman is blamed for the incident. 

Micah Chambers-Goldberg, Director 

Bill Ratner, Writer, Poet, Producer   


8. AstroTurf

Australia 1:38 

The film seeks, in a small way, to challenge the naturalized accounts of reality presented to us on a daily, minute-by-minute basis about the earth’s destruction. Gaele Sobott, Director, Writer, Poet 

Daria Lytvynenko, Animator  


9. Max and Bena’s Quarantine Wedding 

USA 3:05 

The poem tells the story of an actual wedding conducted on Zoom between an American man and a Tanzanian woman whose families were unable to attend the ceremony in person because of Covid-19 and immigration restrictions. Micah Chambers-Goldberg, Director

Bill Ratner, Writer, Poet, Producer  


10. Beat Heart 

USA 1:19 

The poem and video were inspired by the insertion of a pacemaker/defibrillator. Margo Stutts Toombs, Director, Poet  


11. Price  

USA 3:30

Talk is cheap, until there is a Price to pay for the silence… 

Jim Hall, Director, Marc Zegans, Poet

Joris Ragel, Original Score

Peg Simone, Narration 

Experimental I 3:00 - 4:00pm


 1. Counting

 UK 1:37 

Based on the poem Counting;  leaving one set of numbers and finding another. Dani Salvadori, Director, Poet  


2. Reading the Body

USA 13:20 

An exhilarating blend of poetry and dance, inspired by the challenges and possibilities of disability. Four dancers with disabilities create original choreography based on poetry from Bellevue Literary Review, set to music commissioned for this special event, plus ASL interpretation. 

Danielle Ofri, Lesmah J. Fraser,  Lin Lombardi, Producers,

Key Cast, Paige Fraser, Samantha Figgins,Jerron Herman, Quemuel Arroyo (Q)

Tanner Probus, Videographer 

Paige Fraser, Creative Director,  

Carly Zimmermann, ASL Interpretation,

Saleem Hue Penny, Narrator

Randall Riley, Original Score 


3. I Am Already Free

USA 3:22  

A true story of a Los Angeles homeless man celebrating a moment of great clarity with a song he wrote and recorded while living in his vehicle. 

Chandel White, Director, Writer, Song Writer, Original Score

Tanner Cross FILMS, Producer


4. Unsaid

USA 17:51 

A visual adaptation of poems from the book Words In My Head, which explore emotions surrounding gender, sexual orientation, blackness and feminism through the eye of a gay director from a homophobic African country Nigeria. Ayodeji Otuyelu, Director, Writer, Key Cast

Ashleigh McGregor, Producer, 

Ejembi Adakole, Kone Sendou, Alem John, Paulin Essayiyas, Key C


5. Singing Ears in Spring 

China 6:47 

Adapted from four poems by Zhao Hanqing, in which he attempts to show the spiritual suffering of people living in modern cities. 

Hanqing Zhao, Writer, Director, Producer,

Dehan Liu, Producer,

Haochen Wang, Kun Shi, Mingjun Li, Yilan Hu, Key Cast  


6. Frantic Ghosts 

USA 3:04 

Inspired by a cross country road trip, this film explores the palpable emotional and spiritual energy of the deserts and highways in the United States. 

Kent Ameneyro, Director,

Brent Ameneyro, Writer  


7. Monologue Harmonic 

Canada 6:10 

A seemingly paradoxical visual and sonic offering speaking in part from legend, despotic visions, collective cultural analysis and individual repeal. Featuring two distinct and intrinsically connected worlds we witness a spiritual journey. 

Yuma Dean Hester, Director.

Janet Rogers, Writer, Producer, Key Cast, 

Joseph Owll, Key Cast   


8. The Parking Lot of Dreams 

USA 7:30 

Poetry written during and about the pandemic, with the solitary walks reflected in photo collages. 

Alexis Krasilovsky, Director, Writer, Producer  

Mao Chenhui, Key Cast: “Dancing Princess”   

David Gusakov, composer/violinist  

Vickie Sampson, Post Production Sound

Thomas E. Finney, Montage Sequence Design


9. Pathless 

Belgium 4:31

Poetic based film that connects the overwhelming periods of doubtful thoughts, yet with the resilient ambitions that one may encounter. 

Charlotte Verminck, Director, Writer, Cinematographer, Producer 

Bénie Boda, Key Cast, Make up

Inge Vrielynck, Rita Hutsebaut, Costume

Syntyche Boda, Make-up

Adele Etheridge Woodson, Original Score   


10. Odile Kennel - Going to Pasárgada 

Germany 1:04 

Per stop motion animated poetry film - minimalistic, associative - based on the poem by Odile Kennel 'Going to Pasárgada'. 

Ingrid Gans, Director

Odile Kennel, Poet  


11. Royaltee 

USA 1:09

The film highlights the hidden nobility of even the persecuted parts of Black culture. 

Kamari Bright, Director, Writer, Producer, Key Cast

Nyakuiy P, Jacintha G, Barry J, Tarik A,  David R, Key Cast     


12. Bárbaros 

Spain 6:33 

The hard trajectory of migration from home to an unknown land. Danilo Marinho, a young man torn between the new and the old world in which he grew up and the people of his own tribe, leads to an epic and real tale. 

Pablo Giraldo, Ivan Alvarado, Danilo Adriano Marinho, Directors

Núria Such Basiana, Writer, Producer, Key Cast 

Anna Tréa, Key Cast, 

Dancer, Danilo Adriano Marinho    


13. Pandora 

USA 2:32 

Pandora, (Greek: “All-Gifts”) the first mortal woman molded of earth and water in Greek mythology. Bestowed with the Olympian gods’ largesse, she nevertheless, was punished for her gift of curiosity - in turn humankind was punished along with her - opening the box unleashed evil into the world, only hope remained inside the jar/box. 

Tova Beck-Friedman, Director, Writer 

Natalie Rogers, Producer, Narrator  

     

Documentary 4:30 - 5:00

1. Photographing New York

USA 8:54 

Poem written about NYC from director’s 1st Photo Exhibition

Cesare Bedogné, Director, Writer/ Poet   


2. An Armenian Triptych: Retracing Our Steps 

USA 10:58

Three grandchildren of Armenian Genocide survivors respond to its haunting legacy and issues of Armenian identity. 

Kevork Mourad, Alan Semerdjian, Aram Bajakian, Directors,

Kevork Mourad, Visuals/Animation

Alan Semerdjian, Poet 

Aram Bajakian, Original Score


3. Odyssée, Ode to the City

Lebanon 7:07 

Music/Poetry video, an ode to our wounded city - Beirut

Jihad Saade, Director,

Sandra Arslanian, Writer  

Corinne Boulad, Writer

Sandra Arslanian, Corinne Boulad,  Spoken Word Poetry, Key Cast   


4. Dad by Numbers

Australia 3:07 

The poet recalls stories her father told her of the Jazz Age in the 1920s, and reflects on his other worldliness. 

Diane Charleson, Director, Producer

Carolyn Masel, Writer/Spoken Word Poet  

Narrative 5:15 - 6:15

1. This Oul Fermimn Life 

Ireland 6:50 

Based around the Charlie Gillen poem of the same name, this drama follows a lonely farmer as he meditates on the hard rural life that he has chosen. Working as one with nature, he compares his life to that of those caught in the ‘rat race’, and questions what is important in life. 

Tristan Crowe, Director, Writer 

Charlie Gillen, Writer 

Liam Logan, Chris Eva, Producers 

Eugene Mullan, Key Cast,

Mick Crossey, Additional Camera

Dick Glasgow, Original Score    


2. Alexithymia 

USA 6:09 

A Pandemic Short. Inspired by the poem of Charles Bukowski.

Brian Alan Hill, Director, Key Cast  


3. Little Gem Magnolia 

USA 13:54 

A story of a relationship between an artist and his muse, Ayva, who is a new immigrant to New Orleans.

Kathleen Kelley, Director 

Paul Rabinowitz, Writer 

Original Score by Tom Mariano and Jordan Rabinowitz  


4. Empty 

Spain 9:15 

Without you everything is empty. 

Angel Puado Veloso, Director, Producer, Writer 

Fernando Gessa, “Father” 

Sergio Brotons, “Son”  


5. I Miss You, why?

Switzerland 8:00 

Regrets and expectations of a couple through poetic letters. 

Robertie Valee, Director, Writer, Producer

Toptopvideoswitzerland, Producer 

Capezzali Berny, "Sarah" 

Booth David,"Peter" 

Bouchet James, "Le clown"

Jean Pierre Limborg, Original score  


6. A Rescues Song 

USA 4:28 

A veteran saves a dog, and in doing so saves both of them.

Kimberly Villarruel, Director, Producer

Tommy Mel Anderson, Writer,

Val Cole, Key Cast  


7. One Young, One Old 

USA 3:52 

The old did not speak of the war; the young did not understand it. The poem and film accurately depict the director’s youth, played by his son, and the truck, uniform, and barn were driven, worn, and built by the director’s father. Jeffrey N. Johnson, Director, Producer, Writer, 

Phineas J. Johnson, Key Cast   


8. When Spring Came, I Folded Your Name Inside a Prayer 

USA 4:01 

A woman struggles to let go of her past love. 

Jessie Klearman, Director

Tanya "Jade Vine" Singh, Writer

Jordan Cooper,"Writing Girl" 

Megan Horn, "Ghost of Past"  

Experimental II 6:30 - 7:30

14. Awoken Soma 

UK 20:44

Awoken Soma shares the reality of a small sample who have experienced trauma and have embedded emotions within their minds that cause everyday pain. However life goes on; things with us can be missed. Behind the smile you cannot always find happiness. Behind the hard work  it's not always just motivation. 

Nadia Gardner-Charles, Director, Writer, Producer 

Leyla Alizada, Emily Crouch, Producers 

Key Cast Members: Kloe Dean, Elsie Ayotunde, Mikiel Donavon, 

Helen Suzanne Olaonipekun, Colleen Joseph, Elliott Banks, 

Harrison Dante Jerome, Bradley Charles, Marcus Damon, SUPA D, 

Sarah Lisney

  

15. Madame Jarrar 

Canada 4:11 

Through the power of suggestion, my video-poem unites senses and sensations, inner and external rhythms and variations in time.  A dull landscape unfolds before Mrs Jarrar while the representation of masculinity poetically invades her inner world. Madame Jarrar is absent to her own self, totally imbued with her memories.

Mathiew Samaille, Director, Writer, Producer, Narrator and Original Score   


16. Counting Backwards From One Hundred and One 

USA 3:00 

The poem/film explores a sense of chaos and anxiety. It employs overlapping voices and competing narratives.

Carolyn Guinzio, Director, Writer   


17. In the End We Will be Archives for Someone Else to Make  Sense Of 

UK 23:00 

For this project worked from an archive of family photos recovered from a stash of negatives that had remained forgotten for over 35 years. They had all been taken within a two-year period. At times near a hundred were captured in a day. Then they were left, not to be looked at until I rediscovered and printed them a year ago. This photo archive documents my own first encounters, as a newborn child.  

Helga Dorothea Fannon, Director, Writer, Producer,

Megan Garrett Jones, Key Cast, 

Narrator Donna Mckevitt, Original Score   


18.  I Am Plastic 

USA 5:44 

Spoken word recording melding music, underwater footage, photography, typography and concrete poetry. 

Richard Hamasaki, Writer, Director, Producer

Rich Rath, Original Score in collaboration  

Thad Higa, Graphic Artist, in collaboration    


19. The Way In and the Way Out are One and the Same

Australia 2:14 

This poetry video explores the themes of identity, sense of self, dreaming and the past, using a personal lens and visualizes these themes using abstraction of repurposed and reworked found footage. 

Diane Marie Charleson, Director 

Carolyn Masel, Writer     


20. Midnight Houston 

USA 3:00 

Shot on Super 8mm film, “Midnight, Houston” is a video poem that depicts, in mythic terms, a parent’s attempt to share with their child the beauties and depravities of the city of their nativity: Houston. A collaborative project with poet Nick Rattner, originally created for "Location: Houston Poetry+Film Collaboration.” 

Krista Leigh Steinke, Director

Nick Rattner, Poet, 

Sherman Finch, Original Score   


21. Gaby - The Moving Picture 

UK 5:00 

50 years in love and in films. 

Piers Bedford, Director, Writer, Producer,

Gaby Bedford, Key Cast


 22. For He Who Wears the Sea Like a Malo

USA/Hawaii  4:44

This film is dedicated to the poet Wayne Kaumualii Westlake (1947-1984). Poem, by Richard Hamasaki, Director, Producer  "For He Who Wears the Sea Like a Malo" (a traditional loincloth worn by men for Ceremonial occasions). 

Babatunji Heath, Musician and Writer

Bailey Matsuda, Original Score,  

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.

A contemporary example of a poem-based film...

Mother's Cry is a poetry-based short film on climate change by Emmy-award winning filmmaker, Lisa Russell, featuring renowned youth poet, Savon Bartley. Screened at SBCAST, Santa Barbara, CA, 2017, in the  

3 Minute Film Festival.com

An historic poem written for and inserted into a documentary

Night Mail by British poet W H Auden, was commissioned in 1936, for inclusion in the last 3-Minutes of a documentary on the train from 

London to Scotland.

Other types of poetry-based films...

63  is a  video-poem, written, filmed and narrated  by Michael Cochran, England. 2018. Official Selection for the 3 Minute Film Festival, Santa Barbara, 2018.


This is a story about isolation, of an individual destined to look out towards the sea until the end of time. It is in a place of both beauty and loneliness. 

It was inspired by Sir Antony Gormley's Another Place Sculptures at 

Crosby Beach, Liverpool, England.

https://www.michaelcochran.co.uk/


A homage to a poetry form, as in Haiku...

"Haiku | 俳句" is a symphonic audiovisual project for two Japanese performers, alternating percussion groups, soundscapes and rhythmicized video sequences. The film is an experimental approach to pay tribute to the extraordinary art of Japanese haiku poetry. 

Director, Martin Gerigk, is a composer of contemporary music. His repertoire includes compositions for orchestra hamber music, and several solo concertos. Original 17 minutes, Haiku was screened at the Intern Fine Arts Film Festival, 2021.




Check out poem-based films now screening free @ the 3MinuteFilmFestival.com

    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.


     Search

    New Poetry-Film Festival Underway

    John Griswold

    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.  

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