“Founded by Zata Banks over a decade ago, the PoetryFilm art project continues to play with the avant-garde” – aqnb

PoetryFilm is the research art project founded by Zata Banks in 2002 to celebrate experimental text/image/sound artworks, and to explore semiotics and meaning-making. Since 2002, PoetryFilm has presented 100 events at cinemas, galleries, literary festivals and academic institutions including Tate Britain, The ICA, Southbank Centre, Cannes Film Festival, CCCB Barcelona, O Miami, Freud Museum London, and Curzon Cinemas. Presentations include talks for MA Creative Writing (Warwick University), MA Filmmaking (National Film & Television School), MA Visual Communication (Royal College of Art), BA Graphic Design (University of Lincoln), and a keynote talk at The House of Lords on the topic of creativity. Zata has judged poetry film prizes for the Southbank Centre (London), Zebra Festival (Berlin), CYCLOP Video Poetry Festival (Kiev, Ukraine), Apples & Snakes poetry organisation (UK) and Carbon Culture Review art+literature+technology journal (USA).

In 2014, Arts Council England funded the cataloguing of the entire PoetryFilm Archive containing over 1,000 artworks. In 2015, The British Film Institute awarded funding to curate and produce three PoetryFilm Paradox events for the BFI LOVE season.

PoetryFilm is one of the British Council’s listed Experimental Film organisations, is an accredited member of Film Hub London, part of the BFI Audience Network, and holds a trademark awarded by the Intellectual Property Office.

“Categorisation is arbitrary but a psychological inevitability. It’s also how we make sense of the world around us and aqnb is a website dedicated to identifying and examining the rapid cultural shifts happening across Europe and the world today. With an eye for progress informed by the digital age, we seek to discover new articulations in the arts, through interdisciplinary practices, within a global context that is continually in flux.” – aqnb