OUR 150 + FILMS
Since 2008, Motionpoems has been a world leader in poetry filmmaking. What’s a poetry film? It’s a fully imagined short film that treats a poem as a screenplay. We facilitate relationships between world-class filmmakers and world-class poets to create enduring works of film art that find their way to museums, festivals, and classrooms all over the world. Our films are beautiful big-screen animated and live-action spectacles, complete with sound design, professional casting, and special effects.
Below you will find a selection of our most recent projects. Click here to browse our complete collection, which spans twelve years and includes our regular seasons, ongoing special projects, past Hothouse productions, spoken word, Motionpoems UK, and Motionpoems for children.
PUBLIC ART
Motionpoems has produced a 3D-mapped building projection, a mass transit VR experience, and other public art experiences. Motionpoems installations are produced by Founding Executive and Artistic Director Todd Boss, an award-winning poet and public artist whose works include major riverway installations, opera and performance pieces, and audio projects.
2020: Our newest pop-up installation is MōMōVA: The Moving Museum of Virtual Art. It’s a museum in your pocket. This free app is activated by the GPS movements of a mass transit system—you can only access it from a participating bus, ferry, or train. We commission original works of bigger-than-museum art and exhibit on a rotating schedule. A partner project with Metro Transit and Pixel Farm Creative, MōMōVA is slated to pop up in a dozen cities around the world. More here.
2017: Motionpoems partnered with Pixel Farm Creative to create a first-of-its-kind 360º virtual reality experience aboard the Twin Cities Green Line train. The experience is still available. Download the Chaos on the Green Line app free for iOS or Android and climb aboard! Using geolocation, riders can use Google Cardboard or any VR viewer to experience a surreal virtual environment that emulates the train’s actual movement and orientation. A proof-of-concept for MōMōVA: The Moving Museum of Virtual Art. Contact us to create in your neighborhood.
2014: Projection-mapped onto the block-wide 3D façade of St. Paul’s historic Union Depot, “Arrivals and Departures” was a two-night spectacle of locally-sourced poetry films commissioned to celebrate a newly-renovated depot on the go. Named a “top literary moment of 2014” by City Pages, the project involved five local poets and five local filmmakers, and drew thousands of viewers during the St. Paul Art Crawl.
MōMōVA
MōMōVA asserts art’s power to transport and transform society by making it integral, free, and irresistible.
MōMōVA’s proof of concept was a surprise hit of Northern Spark Art Festival, and drew 600 goggle-wearers on a single night in 2017. Now you don’t need goggles. Simply hold up your phone and look through the screen to discover commissioned world-class artworks, “installed” in the landscape around you, viewable from all angles as you travel through space and time.
Art is commissioned by a rotating curatorial board, Pixel Farm, Forecast Public Art, and partnering institutions. Click here to subscribe for launch details and exhibition schedule.
This project is supported by The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, The City of St. Paul Cultural Star Program, the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, and the Archie D. and Bertha H. Walker Foundation, among others.
RETROSPECTIVE
Happy 10th anniversary to us! We’ve selected 30 of our best poetry films, available for public screening in three 30-minute a la carte programs. Contact us to rent this program for public presentation!
THEMED SHOWS
The following themed shows can be rented for screening at any venue. Pricing below. Don’t see a theme you’d like explored? Ask us to build you a custom screening!
SOCIAL JUSTICE Ten films, including:
My English Victorian Dating Troubles
BLACK LIVES Ten films, including:
The Tao of the Black Plastic Comb
How Do You Raise A Black Child
WOMEN'S LIVES Ten films, including:
LGBTQIA Ten films, including:
ANIMATED Ten films, including:
FOR CHILDREN Ten films, including:
HUMOR Ten films, including:
Postcard to My Third Crush Today
When at a Certain Party in NYC
Upon reading that Andromeda will one day devour Triangulum and come for us next
LOVE Ten films, including:
From 35,000 Feet / Praise Aviophobia
My Love for You Is So Embarrassingly
AGING Ten films, including:
EARTH AND ENVIRONMENT Ten films, including:
Having Intended to Merely Pick on an Oil Company, the Poem Goes Awry
COMING-OF-AGE Ten films, including:
FAMILY Ten films, including:
From 35,000 Feet/Praise Aviophobia
FOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS Ten films (and lesson plans), including:
FOR COLLEGE STUDENTS Ten films (and lesson plans), including:
A Day at the Mall Reminds Me of America
We're known for fun, lively discussions. Our themed programs run between 40-55 minutes each, and can include guest filmmakers, poets, or producers, including Motionpoems' founding Executive and Artistic Director Todd Boss. Pricing ranges from $300. Contact us for more details.
HOTHOUSE POETRY FILM CHALLENGE
Hothouse is a week-long pop-up film challenge, institute, and festival, all rolled into one. It is designed to bring any community’s POC poets and filmmakers together for a production intensive that utilized our contractual, developmental, and event expertise to teach, train, and celebrate. Download a fact sheet.
