The Film and Video Poetry Society Presents:
The 2026 Film and Video Poetry Symposium
The Symposium screens a wide range of films developed through the lens of poetry. We also feature a curated media and video art gallery, along with panels, speakers, workshops, and public dialogues.
The Symposium calls all digital and film works that hybridize poetry, including, but not limited to videopoetry, poetry video, Cin(E)-Poetry, filmpoems, choreopoems, poetry films, motion poems, and poetronica.
Please submit documentary, animation, and performance art that explores or evokes poetry.
New Technologies: artificial intelligence, virtual reality & experimental video games are called to submit. Media installations and video art (single, multi-channeled, and/or sculptural) that explore aspects of poetry or text art are regularly selected for our gallery.
We encourage experimental filmmakers to submit work that operates within or outside of the realm of poetry. Artists’ moving image, avant-garde, and slow cinema filmmakers are encouraged to do the same. The Symposium highlights essay film, epistolary film, and oratorical works this way as well.
DEADLINE: August 31, 2026
NOTIFICATION BEGINS: OCTOBER 1, 2026
PROGRAM ANNOUNCED: October 5, 2026
THE SYMPOSIUM EXPERIENCE
The Film and Video Poetry Symposium is a 28-day annual event that is rooted in Los Angeles, CA.
Venues range from micro-cinema to architecturally significant facilities. We host a video art gallery for the duration of the event and occasionally present satellite programming internationally.
The Symposium has hosted with Los Angeles Center for Digital Art, Boston Court Performing Arts Center, The Getty Villa, Arts on Site NYC, Sheen Center for Thought & Culture, Cinema Kosmos Moscow, PAM, Revive Theater LA, and the University Library of Leuven.
All events presented by the Symposium are free to the public.
We value risk and audacity, but not at the expense of the quiet and mundane. Each year, submissions from poets, filmmakers, and artists arrive with a collective yet distinct voice. Programmers discern and frame that voice. As a result, we present a higher-than-average proportion of submissions.
Past collaborators, programmers, speakers: actors Robert Davi and Anatoliy Beliy, filmmakers Lynne Sachs, Nick Zedd, and Lili White, CUFF's Brian Ratigan, architect Cheryl Wing-Zi Wong, poets Kazmier Maślanka, Gabriele Tinti, and Cornelius Eady, Sundance Fellow Tony Patrick, Film Scholar Laura U. Marks, and the Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation.
The Symposium draws a general audience alongside poets, filmmakers, students, scholars, cinema enthusiasts, and public officials from around the world. In-person discussions, Q&As, and reflective engagement are facilitated. Participants also benefit to the fullest extent our resources allow, including free lodging when possible, travel, visa assistance, and opportunities for meaningful networking and professional visibility.
