International Video Poetry Festival

The International Video Poetry Festival in Athens attempts to create an open public space for the creative expression of all tendencies and streams of contemporary visual poetry. The IVPF has been around since 2011. It is one of the largest international platform for video poetry. Every year, it offers poets, film directors, video artists and festival makers from all over the world a platform for creative exchange, brainstorming and meeting with a broad audience. With poetry readings, live performances, concerts, retrospectives, exhibitions, performances, workshops and lectures present in various sections the diversity of the genre of video poetry and spoken word music.

The International Video Poetry Festival happens in two different zones. The first day is the Show Room Video Poetry, a unique zone that will include video poems, visual poems, short film poems and cinematic poetry and performances by artists from all over the world (America, Asia, Europe, Africa). The second day is the Live Performance Zone with multimedia poetry readings, concerts with experimental music, workshops and spoken word lives.

Poets, filmmakers, video and digital artists, media and performance artists are called to submit creative works to the 11th Annual International Video Poetry Festival in Athens, Greece. The festival celebrates and will screen a large scope of video projects developed through the medium of poetry. The International Video Poetry Festival will also host a series of panels, guest speakers, workshops, and public dialogues regarding film and video poetry. In addition to the screenings, programmers also curate a video art exhibition.

There are no restrictions regarding when the film was produced or if the film has premiered regionally or internationally nor on subject matter, theme, topic, or the language of origin. The International Video Poetry Festival will accept submissions of poetry films, filmpoems, digital-poetry, poetry video, Cin(E)-Poetry, spoken word films, videopoema, visual poetry, choreopoems, poetrinca, media poetry, and all films and videos that are driven visually by text or voice.

Live performances, video mapping, installation proposals, and grand-scale video art presentations that contain strong aspects of poetry are encouraged. The IVPF also calls for experimental film and video work that explores poetry or literature whether it be oral, written, visual, or symbolic. This includes non-narrative work and the avant-garde.

The IVPF strongly considers artwork that examines and challenges traditional visual communication methods while continuing to function as a tool for exploring poetry. The International Video Poetry Festival will consider documentaries that focus on poets, poems, poetry, poetic technique, literary movements, and historical events within these realms. The documentaries must have English or Greek subtitles.

The IVPF also calls for video work that explores poetry and literature whether it be oral, written, visual, or symbolic. This includes the film essay or cinematic essay, non-narrative work, and the avant-guard. We will also strongly consider work that challenges traditional and current visual communication methods while continuing to function as a mode for exploring narrative and personal expression.

Organiser and promoter of the International Video Poetry Festival are the Institute for Experimental Arts in co-operation with Void Network.

We would like to thank Dave Bonta from the influential video art site Moving Poems, a global site with the best video poems on the web that inspired us to create the International Video Poetry Festival in Athens and with which we cooperate since 2011 to spread out the announcement of the Festival each year to gather participation from all over the world.