FILMETRY

The 5^th annual FILMETRY festival, presented in partnership with the Capital City Film Festival, will premiere 11 new short films adapted from poems informed by cinema. The event begins 5:30 p.m. Friday (April 19) at the Fledge.

Each poem will be displayed on the screen with pre-recorded narration before the corresponding film begins. Judged by poet and fiction writer Jim Daniels, who co-edited the anthology “RESPECT: The Poetry of Detroit Music,” published in 2020 by Michigan State University Press, cash prizes will be awarded to the top three films.

The poems and short films were produced by both global and local artists, including MSU faculty and students. Several poets and filmmakers from out of state will travel to Lansing for the event, which will include a Q&A session.

FILMETRY was co-founded in 2018 by MSU College of Arts and Letters faculty Cindy Hunter Morgan and Peter Johnston. Johnson, who will debut a film of his own, an adaptation of Hunter Morgan’s poem “Romance,” said this year’s event “is a celebration of the way ‘going to the movies’ has informed all aspects of contemporary life and art, including poetry.”

“The filmmakers had rich poems to work with as source material,” he said. “And the source material for the poems began with films. For this reason alone, it feels like a particularly special year for FILMETRY.”

Morgan is excited to give audience members an opportunity to see and hear poems come to life on the big screen.

“The festival enlarges poetry — literally, of course, but it also gives audiences a new way into experiencing poems,” she said. “The filmmaker’s art is a kind of alchemy: When an adaptation is done well, a poem is more than it once was.”

The event is free and open to the public. To learn more about FILMETRY, including a list of this year’s filmmakers and poets, visit filmetry.org.