For the fifth time the Art Visuals & Poetry Film Festival will take place from 29 November to 1 December 2019 at the Vienna Metro Kinokulturhaus. The programme includes 101 films, 5 competition programmes, 3 USA screenings as well as supporting events, readings and film talks. With 101 film screenings on three days, the Vienna Poetry Festival is once again the second largest festival of its kind worldwide. Founded by Sigrun Höllrigl in 2013, it has been staged biennially in Vienna’s METRO Kinokulturhaus since 2015. Since then, the Vienna Art Visuals & Poetry Film Festival has grown steadily and has a unique selling proposition in Austria.
Two competitions in the run-up to the festival
Two poetry film competitions were announced in January 2019 and 170 films were submitted and evaluated. The main competition has always been reserved for film submissions from German-speaking countries. The second competition or “Special Award” is always about the filming of a poem given by the festival, which is available free of charge as a sound recording including the copyrights. According to Rainer Maria Rilke, the contemporary Viennese author Sophie Reyer is the festival poet 2019.
Festival programme 2019 – Focus USA
This year’s festival focuses on the USA as the host country. The festival will open on Friday, 29 November at 5 p.m. with poetry films from the University of Applied Arts. Afterwards, the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival will host a USA programme. The evening closes with the first screening of the main competition, which is about being on the move and travelling. On the second day of the festival, there will be two halls simultaneously. In addition to other competition programmes, the Saturday night will also feature a musical poetry performance by Sophie Reyer and Christine Huber. This will be followed by two further film screenings on the main theme of the USA. Vienna will host the largest American non-profit production label Motionspoems. Motionpoems has produced over 120 poetry films and received numerous awards. The U.S. Film Show was specially compiled for the Vienna Poetry Film Festival. Founder Todd Boss travels from the USA to the Filmtalk. At the same time, “The Beat Generation. An American Dream”, a rarely shown documentary film by Janet Forman. The flashback is intended to illustrate the stylistic influences of the Beat authors on contemporary writing techniques such as the stream of consciousness and spoken word. Saturday night is dedicated to the Audience Award, which is presented to handpicked international filmmakers. The festival Sunday closes with the second poetry film competition after Sophie Reyer and the last main competition block. This will be followed by the award ceremony.