International Poetry Film Festival

The 2025 REELpoetry International Poetry Film Festival is coming your way, starting March 31 and ending April 12. We’re excited to announce a new festival format, expanding our online programming to highlight national and international screenings. You’ll see juried submissions from across America plus thirteen countries worldwide. The online line-up will also include invited curators and festival directors from Austria, Ireland, Mexico, England, and America presenting special, themed programs. And, for the very first time, we also have some wonderfully imaginative poetry videos submitted by young creatives 18 and under.

For all you lovers of shorts and foreign films, this festival is both! Our films and videos are all less than six minutes in length but pack a powerful punch. These are shorts that have poetry in their words as well as beautiful, poetic imagery. We also offer cutting-edge work that deals with life in the raw, or that experiments with the footage as being its art form.

Foreign entries include work from Belgium, Canada, England, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Japan, Latvia, Mexico, Portugal, Romania, Spain, and all have translations. Many of these juried entries are U.S. and world premieres!

With new, expanded programming comes an expanded REELcafe, hosted by festival director, Fran Sanders. This is where filmmakers, poets, videographers, viewers, curators, creatives submission judges, old friends, and new get together in real-time to meet, talk, and network, every day. We’ll talk about what you’ve just seen, about what you’re doing now, ideas, questions, thoughts, whatever is on your mind. It will be great to see you there!

Saturday, April 12, we’ll be live and in-person, featuring poets and filmmakers from Houston and Texas in attendance, including the current Texas Poet Laureate among others. These programs include original collaborations, readings, interviews and performances by over twenty artists!

Schedule

SATURDAY, April 12

12:30 PM: Doors Open

12:45 PM: Opening Remarks

Host: Võ Đức Quang

1:00 - 2:00 PM: Screening Texas Poets

Outlier Moving Pictures (Pam Falkenberg and Jack Cochran) and in partnership with 4 Texas poets

2:00 - 2:15 PM: Break

Bathrooms are located downstairs and in Strake Hall. Refreshments are available.

2:15 - 3:15 PM: "Young Creatives" Writers in the Schools (WITS) segment

Outspoken Bean will present filmpoems created by WITS students.

3:15 - 4:00 PM: Location Houston

Raneem Bakir Alia (Ranyah) and 10 Houston filmmakers and poets will showcase films highlighting distinctive aspects of the city.

4:00 - 4:30 PM: Conclusion

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Date: March 31 - April 12, 2025