12 Poetry into Film Collaborations

A Heroic Couplets Initiative 

Co-presented with Defy Film Festival

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In-person premiere screenings hosted by OZ Arts Nashville on May 7-8, 2021

Virtual Premiere: Sunday, May 23, 2021

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Local independent arts incubators Kindling Arts Festival and Defy Film Festival have teamed up for a unique cross-genre collaboration pairing 12 local poets with 13 local filmmakers to create visually stunning poetic adaptations. In this premiere screening event at OZ Arts, the dozen new short films will be screened for the first time — all new cinematic works based on individual poems, mostly written in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic. Powered by an all-star list of diverse Nashville-based poets and filmmakers, this hour-long collection of films explores a year that sparked a new appreciation for nature, a renewed surge for racial justice, a changing relationship between the individual self and the broader community, and universal feelings of love, loss, grief, and hope.

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Featuring Poet x Filmmaker collaborations from:

Elise Anderson x Katie McCall
C. Sinclaire Brown x Drew Maynard
Dan Hoy x Sophia Gordon
Robyn Leigh Lear x Nichole Lim & Natalie Ruffino Wilson
Cameron Mitchell x Montez Mickles
Joshua Moore x Samantha Szwaglis

Lagnajita Mukhopadhyay x John Warren
Ciona Rouse x Luke Harvey
John Shakespear x Caleb Dirks
Frank “Frizzy” Sykes x Chris Durai
Meg Wade x Haven Nutt
Alora Young x Angell Foster