Sunday 24th November 2024
11.00am and 12.30pm
*** FREE & ONLINE ***
All shortlisted films will be screened at the 12th Winter Warmer festival, Nano Nagle Place, Cork while being streamed live via our website festival stage, Vimeo, Facebook and YouTube channels. 30 films were chosen from 174 submissions received from 144 filmmakers in 29 countries. The 2024 shortlist represents 15 countries: Australia, Austria, Bulgaria, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Japan, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, UK and USA.
This year’s judges Colm Scully and Paul Casey, will select one winner to receive the Ó Bhéal award for best poetry-film, designed by glass artist Michael Ray. The winner will be announced directly after the shortlist screenings at Ó Bhéal’s 2024 Winter Warmer festival.
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Sunday 24th November @ 11.00am |
Poem: The Night
Synopsis – It was that kind of night: the wind dragged its vocal cords away through all the yards and colours…
Director: Damian Mihaylov (Bulgaria)
Damian Mihaylov is a director and composer from Bulgaria. He has directed short poetic films based on poems by contemporary Bulgarian authors in the project “Poetry and Memory of the 1990s”, staged the play “Mist” based on Miguel de Unamuno’s nivola at the Sfumato Theatre Laboratory – Sofia, and also composed music for various theatre performances and personal musical projects.
Poem: How Much Filipino
Synopsis – The poet comes from a mixed family background (Irish, Scottish, German, Czech, Spanish, Portuguese, and Filipino), with his father’s family having moved to the United States from the Philippines towards the end of World War II. Throughout his life, when discussing his family background with others, Greg’s often been asked, “How much Filipino are you?” This film was inspired by that question.
Director: Greg Roensch (USA)
Greg Roensch is a writer and poetry filmmaker from San Francisco, California. His short films include “The Missing Book,” “He Runs,” “Then Came the Firestorm,” and others. He also writes and records original music and is the author of two collections of quirky flash fiction. You can check out more about Greg’s work at www.gregroensch.com.
Poem: Un/Write
Synopsis – An erasure poem that teeters on obliteration, but ultimately veers back from the brink to reclaim creativity, inspiration, wonder and delight.
Directors: Fiona Tinwei Lam and Lara Renaud (Canada)
Based in Portland Oregon, Lara Renaud freelances animation projects for various clientele across the country. Applying her adaptive art skills she creates movies, shows, advertisements, and other commercial work, alongside personal and professional 2D, 3D, digital, and analog forms of art. She continuously works on deeper learning, understanding, and developing a multitude of skills across various mediums of art and craft.
Fiona Tinwei Lam has published three collections of poetry and a children’s book. Her poems have been featured in Best Canadian Poetry (2010, 2020) as well as in The Best of the Best Canadian Poetry Anniversary Edition (2017) and thrice with BC’s Poetry in Transit, as well as in award-winning poetry videos made in collaboration with filmmakers that have screened worldwide. Shortlisted for the City of Vancouver Book Prize and other awards, her work has been included in over 40 anthologies. She is Vancouver’s Poet Laureate 2022-2024.
Poem: Migrations
Synopsis – Migrations reframes the issue of illegal immigration across the Mexico/U.S. border, contrasting the migration of desperate people attempting to make their way across the Rio Grande on foot, with the natural and uncontrolled seasonal migration of monarch butterflies, who also traverse the shared border between Mexico and Texas. The ‘border problem’ is complex, but we should remember that, except for the original indigenous peoples who were there before everyone else, all of us in the U.S. are migrants or the descendants of migrants.
Directors: Pamela Falkenberg and Jack Cochran (USA)
Pam & Jack met in graduate school and made films together when they were young. Jack left to become a professional cinematographer working out of LA and London, while Pam went on to become a professor and experimental filmmaker. Now reunited, they try to live up to their name, Outlier Moving Pictures, by making technically innovative and poetic films about life, love, landscapes, social justice, and the environment. Jack earned an MFA from the Iowa Writers Workshop and has written poetry throughout his life, but never did anything with them, until he showed them to Pam, who said, “You’re a filmmaker — shouldn’t your poems be films?” Their film poems have been screened in many places around the world, which has led to interesting collaborations with other talented poets and filmmakers.
Poem: Last ode to the moon
Synopsis – Once upon a time there was a thick layer of culture regarding the Moon. Legends, myths, tales, rituals and deities flourished around her.
The Moon inspired stories, poetry, plays and songs. No self-respecting artist will touch the Moon now, even with a barge pole. The Moon is mawkish, banal, tasteless, dull, sentimental, conventional and corny. The Moon is cheap junk available to anyone. How we got here is a long and convoluted story. The film concentrates on the turning point of this chain of events, the moment when the last magic aura was blown away from around the moon.
Director: Sami Ala (Finland)
Sami Ala graduated as a painter in 2002. For the past 20 years, he has focused exclusively on video art. Often the starting point of his work is a text, either his own or someone else’s. His works have been exhibited in Finland, Europe, Asia and America.
Poem: Exeter Book Riddle 32
Synopsis – Anglo-Saxon culture loved riddles. They were a preeminent literary form for hundreds of years, with 90 collected in the 1,000-year-old Exeter Book alone. Watch WORKS OF HANDS and listen in to “Riddle 32” from that ancient codex. Can you name the “strange machine” the poet describes?
Director: Zack McCune (USA)
Zack McCune is an American filmmaker focused on crafting new stories from archival material. He has made original films from Hawaiian newsreels, vintage French postcards, and Buddhist shadow-puppet animations that have screened in over 17 countries. Since 2023, Zack has been adapting folk tales and ancient poems with Super 8 footage. The 1960s film style is grainy and intimate, creating a “yesteryear” quality that makes stories feel like mid-century fairy tales. WORKS OF HANDS is an exploration of an Anglo-Saxon riddle using this visual style, with a 1,000-year-old poem set to 2 minutes of Super 8 footage shot in San Francisco, California.
Poem: Untitled
Synopsis – The film is based on a speech by the Russian theater director Evgenia Berkovich. Together with the playwright Svetlana Petriychuk, Evgenia Berkovich has been under arrest and jailed since May 2023 on charges of “public calls to terrorism”. On the ninth of January 2024, before the verdict was supposed to be announced, she read her final speech in verse.
Director: Anya Ryzhkova (Germany)
Anya (Anna) Ryzhkova is an independent animation artist and filmmaker. She was born in Kaliningrad in 1998. In 2007 she moved to Germany and grew up in Chemnitz. Since 2019 she is studying Media Art and Design at the Bauhaus University Weimar.
Poem: In Tantum Clamor (In So Much as a Cry)
Synopsis – A vividly abstract play of shadowy figures, who portray the voices of those entangled in religious persecution and senseless brutality of the Albigensian Crusade.
Director: Damon Conway (Ireland)
Damon Conway was raised in Galway City and has been immersed in the arts from a young age, finding solace in the world of visual media. In 2022, he moved to Cork City to study and practice filmmaking at Cork College of FET, where he honed invaluable skills in visual storytelling on many student projects. With a focus on suggestive narratives and abstract visuals, Damon is passionate about making engaging and curiosity-inspiring films.
Poem: Daylight
Synopsis – ‘Her Eye’ presents itself as a shimmering vision: Crystal clear yet fragmented. In this film, this ambiguous identity is embodied by a mystical being. Driven by a poem and different types of light, we wonder: What can you see and what can you not see? Like the sun that is too bright to look into, while her reflection on the water can be soft. A light source and its reflection are the same but different.
Director: Jules van Hulst (Netherlands)
Jules van Hulst is a visual artist. His field of work is located where different media come together; usually with video as an overtone, but always tangible. Although his often mystical and philosophical themes, his work remains humorous and accessible to the viewer within a wonderful world that seems real but is still slightly different. His various own video productions are shown internationally; previously within the 33 ⅓ Collective. Since 2018, he has mainly sought connections with poetry in his work.
Poem: Blink Once
Synopsis – A metal detectorist reminisces while going through the day’s routine.
Director: Jim Haverkamp (USA)
Jim Haverkamp grew up in Iowa and lives in Durham, North Carolina, USA. His short fiction and documentary films have screened around the world, including the London Underground Film Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival, and the Drumshanbo Written Word Poetry Film Competition. Jim also teaches for Duke University’s Department of Cinematic Arts and goes bowling occasionally.
Poem: Butterfly
Synopsis – A poetic dance film about art, beauty and death.
Director: Alfio Leotta (New Zealand)
Alfio is a scholar and film-maker based in Wellington, Aotearoa-New Zealand. Alfio is also the founder and director of the Aotearoa Poetry Film Festival.
Poem: Now or There
Synopsis – An exploration of the complex, deepening relationship between humans and their surroundings as civilizations succumb to the relentless natural world.
Director: Dennis Routledge-Tizzard (Spain)
Dennis was born in London and has lived in Spain for close to a decade. He caught the film bug early and started out making short films with his school friends on a MiniDV camera from the age of 16. He started work as a freelance videographer in 2019 and moved to Barcelona to search for like-minded people who wanted to make both commercial work and creative films, and soon found the Barcelona Filmmakers Club. He has since participated in several different indie film projects and finally got to kick-start his first proper short film; Now or There.
Poem: Janet Leigh is Afraid of Jazz
Synopsis – Here’s Janet Leigh; she’s afraid of jazz in reverse as an overlay to diagrammatical stereographic explanations. The knife-blade shrieks are Doppler warps to a molasses of strips teased. Unimaginable synchronicities abound. The drain eye has an arm and spins water into sound. It’s all very pointed in its touching.
Director: Matt B. Mullins (USA)
Matt Mullins makes videopoems and writes poetry, fiction, screenplays, and music. His videopoems have been shown at exhibitions, galleries, and festivals throughout the world. His poetry and fiction have appeared in online and print literary journals such as the Mid American Review, Pleiades, Hunger Mountain, Descant, decomP and Hobart. He is the Mixed Media editor of the online journal Atticus Review and currently teaches at Ball State University where he is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing. You can find a number of his videopoems at: vimeo.com/mattmullins
Poem: The Rock & The Stars
Synopsis – A poetry film by John Horan, animated by Jane Lee.
Director: John Horan (Ireland)
John Horan is a poet, writer and filmmaker living in Cork City. He works giving school retreats and running activities for people in care homes. He has a podcast called Subberculture. He likes meditating and trying not to think.
Poem: Un rastro de luz (A trace of light)
Synopsis – Searching for goddess Navia in the flow of the river, we ask ourselves what remains of us, once we pass away.
Director: Celia Parra Díaz (Spain)
Celia Parra is a Galician poet and poetry-filmmaker. Author of two poetry books, she has been included in diverse anthologies of contemporary Galician poetry. Her poems have been translated to different languages and published in anthologies of poetry in translation and magazines such as Shearsman Magazine, The Stinging Fly or HeadStuff. Celia was the creator of the original idea and the executive producer of Versogramas / Verses&Frames (Belén Montero and Juan Lesta, 2018), a groundbreaking documentary about the international videopoetry scene.
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Sunday 24th November @ 12.30pm |
Poem: Refugee
Synopsis – In his thoughts, a man who has taken refuge in a wasteland of ice walks straight ahead accompanied by a polar bear…
Director: Suki (France)
Born in 1977, Suki has self-produced over 98 animated short films that have been selected in Annecy, Dresden, Brooklyn, among others… In 2013, ‘N’Djekoh’ was selected in Annecy and included the following year in the program The New Faces of French Animation. In 2021 and 2023 ‘Mondo Domino’ and ‘A grain of sand in the universe’ were released, produced by Utopi, which he co-founded, and co-produced by Arte and Pictanovo.
Poem: I Would Like to Live on the Moon
Synopsis – A young non-binary person feels overwhelmed and wants to escape – literally, to the moon.
Director: Emily Burke (UK)
Emily Burke is a filmmaker and artist based in Lancashire, UK. During their animation masters degree, Emily made their first animation film, ‘I Would Like to Live on the Moon.’ Previously, they were a screenwriting undergraduate student at UCLan from 2017-2020. Alongside their degree, Emily co-founded the short film production company Jen and Em Films in 2021. Their first short film, ‘The Art of Forgiveness,’ premiered at HOME Manchester in June 2022.
Poem: Types of Rain
Synopsis – As weather patterns fracture and distort in the face of accelerating climate change, how do we define the types of rain than have come and gone, maybe never to return? How do we understand a future when we have failed to comprehend the past?
Director: Ian Gibbins (Australia)
Ian Gibbins is a poet, video artist and electronic musician living in South Australia. His poetry has been widely published in Australia and overseas, and includes four books, two of which are collaborations with visual artists. His award-winning poetry videos, video art and soundscapes have been exhibited to acclaim at festivals, installations, galleries and public art displays around the world. Until he retired in 2014, Ian was an internationally recognised neuroscientist and Professor of Anatomy at Flinders University, South Australia, having originally trained as a zoologist.
Poem: Songs of Vanishing
Synopsis – The film begins as a study of the movement of fog through a range of landscapes at dawn and dusk. As it progresses, the fog becomes witness to a quiet, dream-like celebration of nature, involving shadowy figures in a surreal forest world.
Director: Martin Sercombe (New Zealand)
Martin Sercombe has been making artist’s film and video since the 1980s, alongside directing documentary and educational films as director of Media Projects Ltd. Since moving to New Zealand in 2014 he has taught film at Auckland University of Technology, and co-run an annual showcase of poetry film entitled Lyrical Visions in Titirangi, Auckland. For more about Martin visit: www.martinsercombe.com
Poem: Our Punjabi Market
Synopsis – “Our Punjabi Market” presents the vibrant interplay of culture and history in Vancouver’s Punjabi Market on Main and 49th, a quaint little marketplace with a storied history and variety. Tour this once bustling market through kaleidoscopic visuals and montages of decades old archival footage juxtaposed with the present, highlighting the community’s deep-rooted connection to both their heritage and its Canadian context as an ethnic enclave. Watch consumerism unfold through immigrant culture as the market took its place as a terrarium for cultures and languages to meet.
Director: Kenneth Karthik (Canada)
Kenneth Karthik is an up and coming filmmaker from Vancouver, Canada. As a graduate student researching Virtual Reality but also being an avid film enthusiast, the fusion of technology alongside filmmaking has always been a huge draw to him, Growing up in Chennai, India gave a very different perspective on life, contrasting it with his experience as an immigrant now in Canada.
Poem: Dracula’s Super Scary Halloween
Synopsis – A dark-comedy retelling of the Dracula story that’s sure to scare monster kids of all ages.
Directors: Kevin Maher and Joe Dator (USA)
KEVIN MAHER is an Emmy-nominated writer and celebrated filmmaker. His comedies have screened everywhere from MOMA to Troma. This is his second short film collaboration with Joe Dator. Their previous film, SANTA DOESN’T NEED YOUR HELP, was published as a book.
JOE DATOR is an award-winning cartoonist who has been a regular contributor to The New Yorker since 2006. His cartoons have also appeared in MAD Magazine, The American bystander, AirMail Weekly and on refrigerators nationwide. Joe’s collection INKED: Cartoons, Confession, Rejected Ideas and Secret Sketches was released by Turner Publishing in 2021.
Poem: Flight
Synopsis – Flight represents a new direction in my work. It is a very personal poem and poetry film about my childhood relationship with my mother, who suffered depression, though I didn’t know it at the time. We rattled around in a large, cold house – my father’s dream, bought at auction – but there were parts she never visited in her entire life. I cleaned and looked after the house and garden to help her, from the age of five. The visual imagery also includes samples of my neo-expressionist paintings and ‘Floor’ carpet, floor and dust sculpture from the 1980s. The poem is also inspired by an ekphrastic poem I wrote about Lanyon’s work ‘The Last Green Mile’ (Transitional : Otter Gallery Anthology, Chichester University, 2015). ‘Flight’ is from the forthcoming commissioned collection – Unexhibited, available in 2025.
Director: Sarah Tremlett (UK)
Sarah Tremlett is a prize-winning poetry filmmaker (sarahtremlett.com) and a director of Liberated Words. Author of ‘industry bible’ The Poetics of Poetry Film (Intellect) she has published Frame to Frames : Your Eyes Follow the bilingual ekphrastic poetry film & book project through Poem Film Editions, see liberatedwords.com.
Poem: Hwlhits’um | Signs
Synopsis – “Hwlhits’um | Signs” describes a boat trip from Canoe Pass to Lamalchi Bay on Penelakut Island off the west coast of British Columbia, during which Hwlitsum knowledge holder Lindsey Wilson traced the traditional path of Hwlitsum First Nation on their yearly hunting and gathering rounds, and shared his memories of his time on the Salish Sea. This poetry film is part of the installation “walk quietly: ts’ekw’unshun kws qututhun (walk quietly with respect and care along the shore),” a guided artist-scientist walk along Hwlhits’um (Brunswick Point/Canoe Pass) in collaboration with Hwlitsum First Nation. www.walkquietly.ca
Director: Kim Trainor (Canada)
Kim Trainor is the granddaughter of an Irish banjo player and a Polish faller who worked in logging camps around Port Alberni in the 1930s. Ledi was a finalist for the 2019 Raymond Souster Award. A blueprint for survival appeared with Guernica Editions in Spring 2024.
Poem: Maidin sul smaoin Titan a chosa do luaill
Synopsis – In the wake of Cromwell’s invasion of Ireland, Aogán Ó Rathaille (1670 – 1726) began to write Aisling poems.
Director: Marcella O’Connor (Ireland)
Marcella O’Connor is an documentary filmmaker best known for James Joyce: Framed in Cork (2020) and The Lament for Art O’Leary (2019), which won Best Documentary at the 2020 Film and Video Poetry Symposium in Los Angeles.
Poem: The Moment Before the Song Begins
Synopsis – This was to be the first in a series of short films that explored the life of writer and raconteur Starkey Flythe, Jr. via his poetry.
Director: Matthew Buzzell (USA)
Matthew Buzzell is an award-winning filmmaker and a Professor of Film at Augusta University. Matthew’s films have screened at festivals the world over including AFI Fest, the BFI London Film Festival, the Cadence Video Poetry Festival, Slamdance, South by Southwest, the Tribeca Film Festival, and the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival. He has collaborated with many celebrated artists including Sacha Baron Cohen, Elvis Costello, Diana Krall, Patti LaBelle, Bob Newhart, Billy Preston, Jimmy Scott, and Mavis Staples. At Augusta University, Matthew teaches in the Department of Art and Design and serves as the Director of Programming for the university’s Cinema Series. Courses Matthew instructs include Cinematography, Experimental Film Production, Music Video Production, Screenwriting, and Short Film Production.
Poem: Proximities
Synopsis – When two human bodies touch, a silent, unwritten “history of proximity” emerges – a dance through time, fleeting yet enduring. Based on drawings by Austrian artist Lisa Est and with the poetry by Herbert J. Wimmer, the film depicts touch as evidence of a shared history, as a tacit conversation between bodies that triggers a new history of commonality (Tactile Historiogenesis).
Director: Mersolis Schöne (Austria)
Mersolis Schöne is a multidisciplinary film artist, visual artist, and researcher based in Vienna, Austria. In his cinematic work, he deals with methods of filmic philosophising as well as with the communication of art, philosophy, and science. His process-oriented approach combines these methods with experimental and poetic forms. In 2017, he founded Moving Thought – Film+Philosophy (www.movingthought.org) to implement projects that focus on these purposes.
Poem: Savior
Synopsis – Featuring acclaimed Albuquerque, New Mexico poet Marcial Delgado, “Savior” is call to action, a cry for help, and ultimately a harsh indictment of U.S. Immigration policy. Part op-ed, part confrontational oratory, Delgado speaks his truth to a society that routinely vilifies immigrants.
Director: Ray Santisteban (USA)
Ray Santisteban is an award winning documentary filmmaker whose work has aired nationally and internationally on public television. His work consistently gravitate towards politics and artist profiles, addressing the themes of justice, memory and personal transformation. Awards include: a 1992 Student Academy Award (information division), a NYFA Media Fellowship, 1993, a 2005 Rockefeller Film and Video Fellowship, and a 2008 and 2016 Artists Foundation Filmmaker Award. He is based in San Antonio, Texas.
Poem: On the 19th day of the war
Synopsis – When a war is going on, the consequences are terrible for many civilians. Together with documentary scenes from the war in Ukraine, voices from all over the world are heard in this short film. They express their reaction to the war, by translating and reading a poem.
Director: Odveig Klyve (Norway)
Odveig Klyve is a Norwegian film director and writer. She has written and directed short films and art videos, selected for several international festivals and art galleries in Europe, India , Taiwan, Japan, Canada and USA. She is also an author of eleven poetry books. Her poems are translated into several languages. Klyve lives in Stavanger at the west coast of Norway.
Poem: Unknown
Synopsis – This film is based on a piece of satirical graffiti poetry posted in A.D. 1334 (Kenmu 1st year) in Nijo Gawara, Kyoto, the ancient capital of Japan. The author is unknown. It criticizes the political corruption, social unrest, and hardships of common people during Emperor Go-Daigo’s reign. Even after 690 years, these issues remain relevant across nations, making this work a timeless piece of social criticism.
Director: Q Poeta (POETAQ) (Japan)
POETAQ studied under the late Japanese poet Hiroshi Kawasaki and has been performing spoken word since 2001. His YouTube channel is “poetry reading by POETAQ” (since 2019). He performed at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe’s Online Open Mic from 2020 to 2023. His poetryfilms “The 3 Crises” (2021), “The Haircut”(2022) and “π (Pi)” (2023) were all ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival official selections. His film “la luna” (poem by Manfred Chobot) won the Special Award for Art Visuals & Poetry at Film Festival Vienna.
Poem: The Bride Goes Wild
Synopsis – Inspired by the poem, with its take on patriarchal views of women brilliantly told in subverted and repurposed film titles.
Director: Janet Lees (UK)
Janet Lees is a lens-based artist and poet. Her films have been selected for many festivals and screenings, including the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival, the Aesthetica Art Prize, and the International Vidoepoetry Festival. She has won first prize in the Ó Bhéal Poetry-Film competition, and been placed and shortlisted in many other awards. Her art photography has been exhibited around the world and her poetry widely published in journals and anthologies.
