Season 4 Winners and Finalist.
Animation - Winner "The Man in the Mangroves Counts to Sleep"
USA
The film depicts a fictionalized version of an encounter poet Donna Decker had with a homeless mathematician living in a mangrove swamp encampment in Key West, Florida. Her poem inspired James A. Moorer to compose a musical score, creating a new art form – the first speech-synthesized opera-novella.
James A. (Andy) Moorer is an internationally known figure in digital audio and computer music, winner of an Emmy® Award and an Academy Award® "for his pioneering work in the design of digital signal processing and its application to audio editing for film.” He is also the creator of the THX “Deep Note" sound—THX’s sonic logo, heard in thousands of movie theaters around the world.
"The Man in the Mangrove Counts to Sleep" builds on Moorer's pioneering work in computer music and more specifically in the use of computer speech synthesis for music. As an MIT and Stanford-trained engineer, Moorer's innovations include advances in the technology used for these compositional purposes. Many of these advances have become routine today in the world of electronic music.
Donna Decker is an award-winning English professor from the University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point and Florida State University. Donna has published dozens of essays and poems in literary works, including the “Between Two Rivers Anthology: From the Red Hills to the Gulf” and Tallahassee's “The Apalachee Review”; given over 100 readings and performances in conferences and venues throughout the U.S.
She is the author of the poetry book, “Under the Influence of Paradise: Voices of Key West”, which includes “The Man in the Mangroves Counts to Sleep”. It has been taught at universities and is now in its fourth reprint. Decker is also the creator, writer, and producer of the collaborative spoken word album, “Petty Secret,” and a multimedia choreopoem, “Paradise, Sing Me Home”, which includes the music of native Floridian, James A. Moorer.
Ralph Guggenheim is a producer and pioneer in computer animation. As a co-founder of Pixar, he produced “Toy Story,” the studio’s first animated feature film and a milestone in filmmaking history. He is the recipient of a Producers Guild Special Award of Merit and an Annie Award for Best Producer. Subsequently, Ralph was an Executive Producer at video game developer Electronic Arts before co-founding Alligator Planet, a San-Francisco animation studio where he oversees production of feature films, television series and educational media.
Original Score - Winner "The Man in the Mangroves Counts to Sleep" by James A. (Andy) Moorer.
Original Score by James A. (Andy) Moorer, who is an internationally known figure in digital audio and computer music. He is a winner of an Emmy® Award and an Academy Award® "for his pioneering work in the design of digital signal processing and its application to audio editing for film.” He is also the creator of the THX “Deep Note" sound—THX’s sonic logo, heard in thousands of movie theaters around the world. "The Man in the Mangrove Counts to Sleep" builds on Moorer's pioneering work in computer music and more specifically in the use of computer speech synthesis for music. As an MIT and Stanford-trained engineer, Moorer's innovations include advances in the technology used for these compositional purposes. Many of these advances have become routine today in the world of electronic music.Our vision is to be the leading platform for independent filmmakers to showcase their work, connect with industry professionals, and reach global audiences.
Documentary - Winner "Cutacre Country Park"
United Kingdom
Cutacre Country Park is a vast green space in England, which is near to where the Director, Pete Whitfield, often walks and cycles. It was once the biggest coal waste heap in Europe, now given over to nature, alongside modern industry. "When "I'm there, Pete's says, "I can feel the weight of history in it - and I love how it has been revived.
Pete Whitfield Director
Jan Koblanski Director
Oliver James Lomax Writer
Oliver James Lomax Key Cast
Jan Koblanski Videographer
Nicole Williamson Editor
Pete Whitfield Composer
Experimental - Winner "I Am All of You"
El Salvador
A visual and emotional journey that captures the oscillation of memory and feeling.
It is in Spanish with English Subtitles,
It's origins and filming in.El Salvador.
Schönenberg's Statement: As a filmmaker, I strive to craft beautiful, cinematic, and compelling narratives through powerful storytelling. By sharing truthful stories, we can impact lives and convey universal messages that resonate with everyone.
Como cineasta, me esfuerzo en crear narrativas hermosas, cinematográficas y atractivas a través de un poderoso arte de contar historias. Al compartir historias veraces, podemos impactar vidas y transmitir mensajes universales que resuenan con todos.
Credits.
Ari Aisenberg Director
Eduardo Schönenberg Director
Ari Aisenberg Writer
Eduardo Schönenberg Producer
Eduardo Schönenberg Director of Photography
Brenda Flores Production Design
Ricky Mina Hair & Make Up
Fernando Arroyo Sound Design
Ruben Herrera Colorista
Orlando Carranza Animación
Narrative - Winner "Thoughts Become Things"
Burmuda
Join a young Bermudian Gombey on a breathtaking journey as he encounters his ancestors in a tale that’s as gripping as it is mystical.
This poetic short film captures the essence of the Bermuda Gombey and Bermudian culture in a way never seen before.
Director Biography - Marquedelle Philip Rodriguez
Marq is a visual producer, videographer and editor currently based in Bermuda. He has become an international filmmaker gaining appearances in many major publications across all platforms.
His highly specialized style of capturing movement adds a unique dimension to his work. With every frame and capture, no two shots/films are the same.
Credits
Stephan Johnstone Writer
Marquedelle Philip Rodriguez Director
SJD World Ltd Executive Producer
Derek G Simmons Music (Original Score)
Places Gombeys Key Cast
SMS Gombeys Key Cast
H&H Gombeys Key Cast
Warwick Gombeys Key Cast
Gombey Evolution Key Cast
Gombey Warriors Key Cast
BDA Donquili Key Cast
St. David’s Islander &
Native Community, Key Cast
Director's Choice "Amergin"
Belfast, Northern Ireland
'Amergin' transposes the mythological first poet of Ireland, to the semi-desert settings of northeastern Mexico. Loosely inspired by the fascinating story of Irish soldiers in 19th Mexico, Amergin weaves together lyrics, images, flora and fauna of the poet’s two countries (Ireland and Mexico) to create a hallucinogenic sense of estrangement and cross-pollination.
Credits
Video poem with multiple sections. Text and voice: Dylan Brennan. Camera, sound, editing, post-production: Jonathan Brennan.
Jonathan Brennan Director
Dylan Brennan Writer
Jonathan Brennan is a multi-disciplinary artist working in printmaking, painting, photography, text, moving image & sound.
Student - Winner "We Are All Drowned Out"
USA
A Poetry Film for the poem of the same name from the book 'vanishing point.' by Kimberly Reyes. The poem explores the complicated identity and ancestry of descendants of the Transatlantic Slave Trade.
Directors Biographies
Writer, Director and Cinematographer, Gary de Búit stems from the land of hills, poetry and raw-rare people, Co. Monaghan. In recent years he completed a MA in Film (Screenplay) and holds a strong passion for the documentary genre, gravitating towards people/situations that are undertaking inspirational actions. He is the founder of STUDIO NUA, a proud member of the Vegan Society, and is at his happiest when climbing a mountain or jumping into the sea!
Kimberly Reyes (featured in the film) is a poet, essayist, visual scholar, and the author of the poetry collections Bloodletting, vanishing point., and Running to Stand Still. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, and The Associated Press, and she has received fellowships from The Poetry Foundation, The Fulbright Program, The New York Foundation for the Arts, the Irish Arts Council, and many other places. Always a force of nature, Reyes will officially become a Hurricane as she joins the Creative Writing faculty at the University of Miami in Fall 2025.
Credits
Kimberly Reyes, Director
Gary De Buit, Director
Kimberly Reyes, Writer
Studio 8 Labs, Producer
Kimberly Reyes, Key Cast
Finalists 4th Season 2025
Animation Finalist "Red Buckets"
USA
Red Buckets is an experimental animated reflection of a failed attempt to clean fish as a privileged child on the southern coast.
Credits
Patrick Moser Director
Kevin Mahoney Narrator
Chris Moser Producer
Richard Dudley Sound
Narrative Finalist "Field Song"
USA
Not content to merely say the names of Black women and girls killed by anti-Black violence, poet Hannah Drake imagines a glorious field where these women might—one day—find peace and be free.
“Field Song” is the product of an interdisciplinary group of artists and researchers weaving together poetry, music, and documentary film, and we would welcome the opportunity to show the film in a venue that provides a space for such collaborative approaches to filmmaking.
This piece features the commissioned poem “There Is a Field” by Hannah Drake, a Louisville-based poet, author, and community activist. Hannah co-founded the (Un)Known Project, a community-based arts-research project that helps draw lines of connection from slavery to lynching to mass incarceration to the resistance movements of Black Lives Matter and Say Her Name today. From the initial seed of student-produced footage, filmmakers Holland Hopson, Jamilah Cooper, Barbara Jane Brickman, Catherine Roach, and John Haley collaborated to supplement Hannah’s poem with music, vocals, images, and archival material.
John Haley is a documentary filmmaker, artist, and educator whose stories reflect fissures and seams in the American social fabric. Focused on individuals and communities navigating a fractured national landscape, his films juxtapose these narratives against institutional structures through observational cinematography, personal testimonies, symbolic imagery, and vivid, recurring soundscapes. His films have screened at DOC NYC, Palm Springs International ShortFest, Nashville Film Festival, Virginia Film Festival, St. Louis International Film Festival, and New Hampshire Film Festival, among others. John is currently an Assistant Professor of Creative Media at the University of Alabama.
Barbara Jane Brickman is an Associate Professor of Media and Gender Studies at the University of Alabama. Her work has appeared in Camera Obscura, The Journal of Film and Video, and Journal of Popular Music Studies. Since the publication of her first book, New American Teenagers: The Lost Generation of Youth in 1970s Film (2012), she has written a volume on the film Grease for Routledge's Cinema and Youth Cultures series (2018) and, more recently, Suffering Sappho! Lesbian Camp in American Popular Culture (2023), the winner of the 2024 Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction. She is also the founder and director of the Druid City Girls Media lab in Tuscaloosa, AL.
Credits
Barbara Jane Brickman Director
John Haley Director
Hannah Drake Writer
John Haley Director of Photography
John Haley Editor
Holland Hopson Original Score
Holland Hopson Sound Mixing
Jamilah Cooper Vocalist
Catherine M. Roach Executive Producer
Catherine Roach Producer
Hannah Drake Producer
Barbara Jane Brickman Producer
Holland Hopson Producer
Experimental Finalist "Common Raven" (Corvus Corax)
Canada
An experimental poetry film on ravens and the bringing of fire into the world.
Director: Kim Trainor
"Common Raven (Corvus corax)" is one of 20 poems in a sequence called “Seeds." Each ‘seed’ functions as blueprint, whether simple human-made tool or complex organism driven by its DNA to adapt to and respond to our current existential threat, each showing a different way of being in the world: lentil, snowdrop, chinook salmon, codex, tardigrade, honeybee, “the beautiful cell,” among others.
Kim Trainor is the granddaughter of an Irish banjo player and a Polish faller who worked in the logging camps around Port Alberni in the 1930s. Her second book, Ledi, a finalist for the 2019 Raymond Souster Award, describes the excavation of an Iron Age horsewoman’s grave in the steppes of Siberia. A thin fire runs through me appeared with Icehouse Press (Gooselane Editions) in Spring 2023. Her fourth book, A blueprint for survival, will appear with Guernica Editions in Spring 2024. Her poetry has won the Gustafson Prize, the Malahat Review Long Poem Prize, and the Great Blue Heron Prize. In addition to working with the musician Hazel Fairbairn on a series of poetry films based on Ledi, she has recently completed an art song of her poem “Blackmud” with the composer Yi Ning for Art Song 2020. “Integument,” her first poetry film, was screened at the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival in November 2020 in Berlin. "Ghost" appeared in early 2021 at the 9th International Video Poetry Festival in Athens, Greece. Poems have appeared or are forthcoming with The Journal of Wild Culture, Cold Mountain Review (US), Women and Environments International (Canada), and Ecocene: Cappadocia Journal of Humanities (Turkey). She teaches in the English Department at Douglas College and lives in Vancouver, unceded homelands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Skwxwú7mesh, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations.
Credits
Kim Trainor, Director, Writer
Hazel Fairbairn, Sound
Experimental Semi-Finalist. "Little Hercules"
USA
Learon Inbar, Director Statement
Through poetry and filmmaking, I found subtle threads connecting stories of birthing women across the ages. Often, cultures have told stories of secret suffering through mythological, religious, and symbolic means.
During my personal time of unraveling, I felt bonded to these mothers by weaving the threads of shared experiences across time: from myths, from the news, from stories. I found this both strengthening and frightening — a worthwhile cross-section to explore through art.
“Little Hercules” is partially a documentary; the film documents moments in the life of my young family, newly transformed from two members large to three. These moments capture the true beauty unfolding during the early years of raising our son, the side that felt like paradise.
The other side of “Little Hercules” is experimental. From a certain perspective, these symbolic scenes also document my experience of early motherhood. This side of the experience evades conventional capture; it asks to be told as a horror story. I describe my journey through the surreal depths of postpartum depression.
Little Hercules represents both my unique experience with postpartum depression and the collective, intersubjective experience of this biological, psychological, and spiritual phenomenon.
Credits
Learon Inbar Director, Writer, Producer
Learon Inbar, Key Cast
Asher Kingsman, Key Cast
Jeremy Kingsman, Key Cast
Learon Inbar is a SSWANA mystic mama on a wise fool’s journey. A practitioner of visual and language arts, she draws on mythological, divine feminine, visceral, and flora & fauna motifs to convey philosophical questioning, spiritual exploration, and immense emotions. Find her through her social media presence @tiedyegadfly and in live encounters in SoCal. Patrons include Kultur Mercado, Art for Palestine Campaign, Reno Punk Flea Market, and many lovely individuals.