Duende Sessions Festival Barcelona

In Duende Sessions our aim is to harness the unseen power and give a platform to the local and foreign talented Spoken Word artists and Musicians, that would go unheard if not given the space to create. We seek to attract the people who search for a deeper connection on the art scene along with the more popular music festivals that are held in the city of Barcelona.

As part of the festival we propose to put together, we would like to channel all of this energy and inspiration to create a place where it can be transmitted to a local audience as well as to the foreign audience who would like to see what the up and coming art scene is truly about.

We aim to give space to experimental or more classical music, combined with spoken word and audiovisuals, and take out the artists and the public from their comfort zone. We will be inviting artists from around the world, guaranteeing the quality of the performances throughout our events.

Duende Sessions Festival, started in July 2019 with a big success and in 2020, as the situation due to the pandemic didn't let us organize a live event, we produced the spoken word with music movie "Duende Sessions - The Movie". In our 3rd edition in 2021, we had more than 20 international and local artists participating, and more than 100 hundred people in the audience, making it a big success, combined with a 2 hours screening of video poetry and short films. After a break we needed to take, we are super excited to be back for our fourth edition in which we aim to take the level up and showcase unique performances, combined with the sound of the soul.

We are very happy to make an open call and collect video poetry works from around the world to showcase in our festival this year as well. The festival takes place in a venue with 3 separate spaces and the main stage is an auditorium with a cinema screen that can accommodate 160 people sitting. The festival lasts 8 hours in total. In the first 3 hours, we will play video poetry at the big screen of the auditorium. After the festival, all the videos selected, will be published on our website and they will be featured until September 2026. The festival will screen more the less a number of 30 video projects developed through the medium of poetry.

There are no restrictions regarding when the film was produced or if the film has premiered regionally or internationally. There are no restrictions on subject matter, theme, topic, or the language of origin. The Duende Sessions Festival will accept submissions of poetry films, filmpoems, digital-poetry, poetry video, Poetry, spoken word films, visual poetry, choreopoems, poetrinca, media poetry, and all films and videos that are driven visually by text or voice.

In the videos we aim to see the "Duende" in each one of you. Basic element in our selection procedure will be to make us feel something strong and capture our heart.
In the case that less than 30 videos will be selected due to lack of duende in the artistic projects that we will receive, we will play more than one time the projects selected.
The festival also calls for experimental film and video work that explores poetry or literature whether it will be oral, written, visual, or symbolic. This includes non-narrative work and the avant-garde.

To support the directors of short films, we also add a category of short films, narrative or not, with a maximum length on 20 minutes. We will screenplay one hour of short films. All films should be subtitled in English.