Films/videos MUST use one of the ten provided haibun, which were selected by Haiku North America organizers from a separate, earlier contest that had 229 submissions. Visit https://discussion.movingpoems.com/2023-haibun-film-festival-texts-for-filmmakers/ (see our website for the live link) and input the password: haibun. These are all unpublished poems whose authors have given permission for this contest only.*
PLEASE INCLUDE THE AUTHOR'S NAME IN THE DESCRIPTION to help us screen out spam submissions. The author's name should also be included in on-screen credits.
Filmmakers may opt to use some rather than all of the text, if the author is OK with it. (We are happy to put them in touch with each other.) But the result should still look and sound like a haibun.
It's entirely up to the filmmakers how to present the prose and poetry—as text on screen or voiceover, or some combination of the two. We also don't want to discourage more experimental approaches, such as attempting to translate some of the prose portion of a haibun into wordless film poetry or narrative filmmaking, though that does of course come with a higher risk of rejection.
Films may be as long as seven minutes, but we encourage run times of 3-5 minutes.
Films must be submitted through FilmFreeway.
Submissions open January 1, 2023 and close March 15.
Selections will be announced on May 1.
*Password protection helps preserve the unpublished status of the texts, so that those not chosen for films may be submitted for publication elsewhere.
