I had the tremendous pleasure recently to serve as program chair for the 2023 Haiku North America (HNA) conference. As a writer of haibun – a Japanese hybrid genre of haiku and prose – and inspired by the wealth of video poems, haiku films, and work in a rich array of other types of work joining poetic writing and visual art, I was inspired to create for HNA the world’s first festival of haibun films.

The HNA Haibun Film Festival took place 29 June 2023 in the beautiful eleventh floor Reading Room of the Mercantile Library of Cincinnati and featured screenings of nine original films inspired by the haibun of five authors. The films selected for the HNA 2023 Haibun Film Festival were posted on Moving Poems shortly after the conclusion of Haiku North America.

My reasons for creating the HNA Haibun Film festival were many. As I remarked in my introduction to the Haibun Film Festival session, “I hypothesized that not only could haibun films realize latent potential of written haibun texts in the filmic dimension, but also that doing so could bring a certain freshness to a literary genre still finding its footing in English and essentially defunct in its native language, Japanese.”

The text of my introduction to the HNA 2023 Haibun Film Festival outlines my rationale for creating the HNA Haibun Film Festival, details the collaborative two-round competitive selection process that led to the final slate of films screened in the festival, and lists the haibun authors and filmmakers whose work was selected for it:

Why haibun films?  There’s the obvious ‘why not?’, especially when you consider that haiku films and other types of video poem are nothing new and are vibrant and seemingly limitless pathways for poetry into the stimulating realm of interdisciplinary symbiosis.

And the linking and shifting between a haibun’s haiku and prose – or a haibun’s non-haiku parts – can expand haibun’s narrative and expressive potential into the visual realm and the performative and temporal planes embodied in film.

In creating this, the first-ever haibun film festival, I hypothesized that not only could haibun films realize latent potential of written haibun texts in the filmic dimension, but also that doing so could bring a certain freshness to a literary genre still finding its footing in English and essentially defunct in its native language, Japanese.

The results of this project – which we’ll view this hour – will, I hope, inspire those who have not written haibun to explore this genre’s creative possibilities as seriously as they might explore other genres, like haiku, and to create haibun films as solo or collaborative enterprises.

The short haibun films you’ll see were catalyzed and selected though a multi-stage, internationally competitive process. Last year, Haiku North America sent out a call for submissions of unpublished haibun. We received 229 submissions in response. I asked Jim Kacian [founder and president of The Haiku Foundation and founder and owner of Red Moon Press] to serve with me as haibun co-screener, in light of his deep roots in the haibun soil, and also in light of his work in haiku films – thank you, Jim.  A moment here also to thank Paul Miller [HNA director and editor of Modern Haiku] for anonymizing the submissions before sending the haibun texts to Jim and me, and also for communicating directly with the writers who submitted haibun.

In a “double-blind” screening, Jim and I first narrowed down the 229 submissions to around 40-50 haibun. We eventually selected ten haibun for their merits as pieces of writing in this genre – interesting stories told in vivid prose and well-crafted haiku. I was also interested in feeling a certain space where the actual words on the page left off and potential visual responses  to the texts – not merely visual renderings or reenactments of them – might pick up.

The titles and contest entry numbers of the ten selected films were sent to Dave Bonta, founder of the video poem website Moving Poems and author of the haibun collection Failed State (Via Negativa Books).

I’d like now to acknowledge the authors of the ten haibun that Jim Kacian and I selected to send to Dave and Moving Poems, in alphabetical order by author last name:

The Gone Missing – haibun by Joseph Aversano, five different films by: Beate Gördes, Janet Lees, Peter Johnston, EnD, and Marilyn McCabe
Circuition – haibun by Mona Bedi
Unremembered – haibun by Marjorie Buettner, film by Pat van Boeckel
Of Demons and Angels – haibun by Penny Harter
The Chase – haibun by Bob Lucky
The Longest Journey – haibun by Bob Lucky, film by Pete Johnston
Table for One – haibun by Carol Ann Palomba, film by Matt Mullins *Film Awarded Best of Show
Hypnic Jerk – haibun by Alan Peat, film by Jack Cochran, Pamela Falkenberg
The Layout – haibun by Beth Skala
Haven – haibun by Laurie Wilcox-Meyer

Dave posted a call for film submissions on FilmFreeway and formed a committee to screen the film entries.  I’d like to thank Dave for organizing the film part of this project and for serving with the award-winning poets and filmmakers Jane Glennie and James Brush to judge the films that were submitted.

Dave, Jane, and James selected nine haibun films, which Dave will screen for us today.