2022 Press Release

FILMETRY FESTIVAL WILL PRESENT IN-THEATER PREMIERE WITH FILM ADAPTATIONS OF POEMS INFORMED BY “HOME”

EAST LANSING, Mich., September 22, 2022 – Artists have meditated on notions of “home” for centuries, and on Friday, September 30, filmmakers, poets, readers, listeners, and viewers will gather for the 4th annual FILMETRY Festival, which, this year, will feature short films adapted from poems informed by explorations of what it means to dwell somewhere. FILMETRY will feature 12 short films premiered live at 7 pm at the Lansing Public Media Center (2500 S Washington Ave., Lansing Michigan, 48910). The event is free and open to all, and it is sponsored by the MSU Department of English, MSU Libraries, MSU Film Studies Program, and the Lansing Public Media Center.

This year marks the fourth event for FILMETRY, which was co-founded by Cindy Hunter Morgan and Peter Johnston, who both teach in the College of Arts and Letters at Michigan State University. Johnston is an MSU Film Studies Professor who specializes in teaching digital media and film production methods and manages the Film Studies program’s lab space and equipment. Hunter Morgan teaches creative writing. Each year, they’ve done something new with the event. This year, they worked with a themed issue of MSU Libraries Short Edition, a journal which Hunter Morgan also helped found. Johnston shared selected poems from the “Home” issue in a call for submissions to filmmakers, who were invited to adapt those poems into films. The idea, according to Hunter Morgan and Johnston, was to connect the FILMETRY project with the MSU Libraries Short Edition project, engage with a recent home-themed exhibit at the MSU Broad Art Museum, and expand the important ways FILMETRY helps build relationships across the MSU campus community and across wider communities of artists. This year, for the first time, filmmakers and poets from throughout the world will be represented in the event.

Mythology is full of hybrid creatures. We created FILMETRY with that power and magic in mind: it’s part film, part poetry, and it showcases the truth of art, which is that art expands with art

Cindy Hunter Morgan, FILMETRY co-founder

FILMETRY Co-founder Pete Johnston said FILMETRY gives filmmakers opportunities to give new shapes to forms some might think of as fixed. “FILMETRY celebrates opportunities for discovery and transformation,” Johnston said. “This festival helps everyone – filmmakers, poets, and viewers – see the many places where art dwells. Art is in the mind, it’s on the page, it’s in the ear, and it’s in the eye. With FILMETRY, we celebrate a union of arts and a union of artists, and with this year’s event, we will share art from filmmakers and poets throughout the world. We’re thrilled to see how the festival is growing, and we’re excited to help new art reach new people.”

FILMETRY Co-founder Cindy Hunter Morgan said collaboration and hybridity are at the core of the festival. “The Greek poets understood the power and the magic of combining two forms,” Hunter Morgan said. “Mythology is full of hybrid creatures. We created FILMETRY with that power and magic in mind: it’s part film, part poetry, and it showcases the truth of art, which is that art expands with art. At its core, all art is ekphrastic, and through FILMETRY we’re using poems to help filmmakers push beyond what is written to discover – and create – something new. The project encourages experimentation, discussion, collaboration, and…new art!”

The idea for FILMETRY was formed in the fall of 2018. The Festival gives filmmakers –students, academic faculty and staff, and filmmakers throughout the world – opportunities to collaborate with poets throughout the world. The first FILMETRY Festival was presented in January of 2019. The 2020 event was to be held in Wells Hall, home of the MSU Film Studies Program, but was rescheduled as an online live-streamed event due to COVID-19. The 2021 event was virtual as well, and the 2022 event marks the return of an in-person premiere. More about FILMETRY, including a full list of 2022 filmmakers and poets, is available here: https://filmetry.org.