
Opening of the festival by festival director Sigrun Höllrigl
POETRY PERFORMANCE FILM AWARD
Moderation & spoken word performances Katharina Wenty
Live voting in the cinema!
The opening night is traditionally an audience night. Poetry films from around the world will be shown, including films from Oman, the USA, Canada, France, the Netherlands, Portugal, Greece, Hungary, Estonia, and Turkey. They are all dedicated to performance poetry. Spoken word artist and organizer Katharina Wenty will lead through the night. The audience will vote for the winning film, which will receive prize money of €1000.
Come and vote live for the winner!
In Berlin, there was a cafe in Schoeneberg called Toronto. The streets outside were cobblestone and the building reminded me of downtown Vienna near Stephansplatz. The poem is jazz and the lyrics are sultry, inviting the listener to grab a coffee and enjoy the scenery.
https://www.newnightbabies.com/
The BECOMING - A journey of creating BELONGING into INHERITANCE
Inheritance originated in the form of a poem, residing in Nada’s published photographic poetry book"Release | Inner conversations to Lead US Home."The BECOMING - A journey of creating BELONGING into INHERITANCE. At the heart of this film lies the exploration and reclamation of her inherited identity as an Arab Middle Eastern Omani Muslim Woman. Each of these labels held the weight of conformity carried throughout her life. Yet her life never fully conformed to the conventional expectations of her inherited labels. This automatically put her in the ‘less of’ category of what an Arab Middle Eastern Muslim Woman is defined to be - ‘not Muslim enough’, ‘not Arab enough’, ‘not Woman enough’. Naturally this embedded within her a sense of not belonging. A form of separation from her land, people and inherited identity. It was in the deep longing to connect to her ancestral lineage that she heard a call from the people of her land to reconcile and bridge the gap between her lived human experience and inherited identity. In this film she honours this call by sharing her inner transformation journey from separation to belonging. The weight of conformity is represented by the water in the clay pot, calling to be unlearned. The mystic surreal landscape of the salt flats echoes her sacredness, while the salt holds the power to cleanse, preserve, and to transform - becoming the silent witness to her inner transformation to belonging that is free from disowning her truth, essence and authenticity. By using her outfit design as a visual language to communicate her perspective, she re-creates her own meaning, interpretation, understanding of her inherited labels and beliefs to align with her soul knowing. She chose to use adornments to depict the common thread across the Arab and Middle Eastern world – made by her hand to reiterate the act of weaving belonging into her inheritance. The elements selected to design the adornments were silver and wool thread - silver being the soul of Oman and the wool thread being connection.
Polaroid photographs of a city. Words emerge to converse with the sounds of the streets. A poetic journey through Paris, far from the usual tourist clichés. From July to November 2024, I traveled through all twenty Parisian arrondissements, grouping them into five routes (four arrondissements per route). The aim of my urban wanderings was to use my Polaroid camera to collect words from the city - words on signs, books, posters, shop windows, etc. - and to use these words to create poems. They would be the fruit of a certain chance. Why Polaroids? Because it is both instantaneous and delayed (15 minutes for the photograph to reveal itself). Its images are slightly blurred, like all memories. And also because, since the new boom in Polaroid photography, few artists have taken an interest in the word and the poetry associated with this visual art. All this work can be read here:
https://vimeo.com/1133941896
“BESIDE MYSELF” is a poem/film that engages the reader/viewer to trade places with the poet for a generative new thing that can, with your help, change the world.
Step outside yourself, look back at yourself, whom do you see? That’s the question Bob Holman asks in “BESIDE MYSELF.” Fighting the metaphorical with the literal, H. Paul Moon's film captures a small band of Bob's friends voicing the poem in alternating identities, scored by composer David T. Little, for this meditative reflection on A.I. and the life cycle of the creative process.
The poem Naval Ode - "Ode Maritima" - by Fernando Pessoa captures the movement of separation between the dock and the ship, and thus the distance – between the inside and the outside, between myself and the other. The text is embodied by a mysterious and suspended dance, imbued with nostalgic desire, which swells like a sail.Fu LE is an award winning filmmaker and choreographer in the Tetrapode dance company in France. Graduated in sculpture at the Art Crafts National School in Paris, he then trained in physical theater and in contemporary dance in Argentina, Belgium and Switzerland.
Marinating is a poem about the powerful vulnerability of opening your heart and your mind to another. In this intimate description, two people surrender their brains, their own thoughts, to the other and allow themselves to be influenced. It is an equal act, in which they both yield. Marinating is a loving resistance against the fear of the influence we can have on each other. A painful yet empowering reminder of our interdependence.
“In the heart of emptiness, as well as in the heart of man, there are fires that burn.” SENSIBLE invites us to experience, through dance and the works of Yves Klein, a sensory and hypnotic journey.
Using musical poetry performed within typical American backdrops, “Fear Not Fear Itself” warns against the atypical rise of hate and authoritarianism in the United States.
https://dawnwestlake.com/fear-not-fear-itself/
The HUNT is a timeless and placeless poetry film that traces the enduring persecution of women across centuries. The film combines the legacy of the witch hunts in medieval Europe with a poem composed of monologues inspired by the lives of women from around the world, past and present. These monologues depict situations that women everywhere may face, evoking contemporary witch hunts in countries such as Afghanistan and Iran—not as metaphor, but as lived reality. Performed and written by the poet herself, and accompanied by music composed specifically for the film, the work transforms personal testimony into a collective echo—standing for the countless women whose voices were silenced, erased, or never recorded. Blending poetry, music, sound, performance, and image, The HUNT reveals how the hunt continues—reshaped, renamed, but unbroken.
Mark Levin's poem "Senses" explores the idea that our perceptions and sensory experiences may not reflect reality as we believe. It questions the reliability of what we see, hear, and feel, suggesting that our understanding of the world is shaped by illusions or misconceptions. Through reflective and thought-provoking language, Levin challenges viewers to reconsider how they interpret their surroundings and the truth behind their senses.
Adrean Mangiardi is a Deaf filmmaker, producer, and editor whose work bridges art, accessibility, and storytelling. With over twenty years in film and video production, he has built a reputation for creating visually striking, inclusive, and emotionally resonant projects that center authentic Deaf representation. After losing his hearing, Adrean discovered a new way of experiencing the world, through vision, rhythm, and connection.
Still is a lyrical poetry short film about a woman who moves through the world feeling strangely misplaced — like an object left behind, present yet unseen. Drifting between fragments of everyday life, she experiences the quiet dissonance of being everything for others while slowly losing touch with herself. Through intimate images and the rhythm of spoken poetry, the film traces a subtle inner journey: from emotional fragmentation toward a fragile but conscious return to self. The visual language mirrors the poem’s emotional landscape, where absence and presence exist at the same time, and identity is something that can dissolve — and be rediscovered. Still speaks about those in-between states we rarely name: when we are no longer who we were, but not yet who we are becoming. It is a meditation on vulnerability, self-recognition, and the quiet strength it takes to come back to oneself.
Good Dogs is a poetry film that trails after the purpose of language like a dog chasing its own tail: looping,
delighted, slightly unruly, and endlessly curious about meaning.
https://mariagiesbrecht.com/
YOU HEARD ME is the poet's own "John Coltrane, A love Supreme" poem, a break-through psalm. The visual exploration of the poem, together with the music offers a new way of seeing and feeling the poem. This piece combines chalk green screen animations and textured analog video layers.
Should we push ourselves into a box, or shall we dare to be wrong? In a world that rewards success, failure
might be the most radical act. Based on the poem of European Poetry Slam Champion 2023 Joonas Veelmaa, film YES!
challenges the pressure of a society obsessed with achievement.
MADLI LÄÄNE is an Estonian filmmaker and lecturer. Her films delve into the contemporary art of loneliness, exploring
how bodies in space reveal the emotional chaos lurking behind the pursuit of perfection, all while navigating the delightful tension of modern life.
Farewell screenings at the historic Cine IDEAL. The longest-running cinema in Greece -102 years of continuous operation- “suddenly falls silent” and the music of 100-year-old Mimis Plessas (1924-2024), the most influential Greek composer of film musicals, is heard for the last time, bidding farewell in a cinematic mystique and touching ideally the eternal. IDE8L is the last audiovisual work to be filmed with songs and music by Mimis Plessas, with the much-beloved Greek film score composer’s permission.
Canary Canard Studios has the Blues…
A studio recording session has a Window on the World and an Eye on America. We aren't afraid of YOU Fascist MotherF@cKers... It's time to get in GOOD trouble, necessary trouble.
As I write this, another MURDER today in Minneapolis. 37 year old social activist and ICU nurse, Alex Pretti, was maced and pinned down by four ICE Agents who fired a reported ten shots at point blank range.
The incident followed the fatal shooting of Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, on Jan. 7.
The Resistance needs Artists and Musicians to create Anthems and Murals to inform the Movement and motivate peaceful non-violent protest. https://www.canarycanard.com/films.php