Cadence Video Poetry Festival, presented by Northwest Film Forum, programmed in collaboration with Seattle author Chelsea Werner-Jatzke and intermedia artist Rana San, is a series of screenings, workshops, and discussions on the genre of video poetry, during National Poetry Month.

Cadence approaches video poetry as a literary genre presented as visual media that makes new meaning from the combination of text and moving image. Featuring screenings, an artist residency, generative workshops for youth and adults, and juried awards, the festival fosters critical and creative growth around the medium of video poetry.

Schedule of Events

April 27, 2023

7:00pm: The edge of here [Hybrid]

(47 min TRT)
This video poetry showcase exists at the boundaries of sensation. Some pieces use borders as backdrops, others skim inner and outer landscapes, and all are in limbo between physical and psychoacoustic perception. Politics of the body, belonging, disabilities, and dreams reveal the poetry of what lies just beyond the precipice.

Clear Cut
The description of the location that the figure walks through is vastly different than its current state.
(director/poet: Valerie LeBlanc, Canada, 2022, 2 min, in English with no subtitles or captions)

My Home Is
A homesick tribute to the fertile swamps, swaying palm fronds, and fond descriptions of the filmmaker's Florida home, this film is alive with evocative language of the land's humid spirit.
(director/poet: Ariana Simpson, 2023, 2 min, in English with hardcoded English text and Braille)

The Wall (Cue' Yoo / La pared)
A photographic interpretation of Irma Pineda's poem "Cue' Yoo / La pared (The Wall)" that emphasizes how emotion etches itself on our memories, creating narratives that seep beyond expected boundaries of time and space. Translated to English by Wendy Call.
(director: Harvey Castro, poets: Irma Pineda & Wendy Call, Mexico, 2022, 3 min, in Spanish & English with no subtitles or captions)

How to build everything you hoped for
Instructions for building the perfect place to live.
(director/poet: Zoë Meager, New Zealand, 2017, 3 min, in English with English subtitles)

Blueprints. 10,3 m
We are perpetually amidst a flux of sounds – outer and inner, personal and learned, private and public – that form us and are formed by us. In what sense, in what form can a space – in our very case: a lonely, leftover one – preserve sounds and voices? The polyphony of past, present, and future converge through poetry and song.
(directors: Szabina Péter, Kristóf János Bodnár & Kinga Tóth, poet: Kinga Tóth, Hungary, 2021, 4 min, in German & Hungarian with English subtitles)

On the Road
In a world of constant motion, whether our movements are inspired or incidental, we must be reminded to occasionally find out what we might find in stillness.
(director: Arfin Widyatmadja, POET: Vincent Potgieter, South Africa, 2022, 2 min, in English with English subtitles)

Word II: Ars Poetica
A genuinely hypnotic experience, this video poem vibrates in harmony with the painted skin of its central figure, whose undulating dance reaches the ocean near the border of Tijuana and San Diego. Arriving in the surf, at sunset, the dance and poem plumb deeply felt and embodied wells of spiritual power, potential, and belonging.
(director/poet: Dez'Mon Omega Fair, US, 2021, 6 min, in English with no subtitles or captions)

soft ground
soft ground dwells lovingly on the smells and sensations of a walk through a deep bed of fallen leaves.
(director/poet: Indigo Eli, Australia, 2022, 1 min, in English with hardcoded English text and English captions)

I Woke Up in the Morning
Moving from total silence in the populous cityscape of Boston to a poem read over the emptiness of the Chihuahuan Desert, the structure of this film mirrors its narrated themes. It is a meditation on how our capacity for reflection is always at odds with the time and space we find ourselves in. We are further from the people and feelings we wish to be closer to; more able to articulate our longing for them when we least expect it, and often when it is too late.
(directors: Lilan Yang & Yutong Shi, poet: Lilan Yang, US & China, 2021, 6 min, in English with English subtitles)

Gaps
Gaps assesses the human tendency to fill time, even at the expense of hardening undesired habits of attention, rather than accepting it as the rare gift that it is.
(director/poet: Gabriella Maria Cisneros, with quotes from Oliver Burkeman, 2022, 6 min, nonverbal with hardcoded English text)

SOIL & SKY
Ordered thematically by the four elements, this series of reflections on the beauty of natural and social life becomes a poem that confidently bridges personal and planetary matters.
(director: Selim Haase, poet: Cat de Win, Netherlands, 2022, 11 min, in English & Dutch with English subtitles)

April 28, 2023

7:00pm - The great entanglement [Hybrid]

(42 min TRT)
A poetics of enmeshment told via climate crises, love letters, and AI interventions confronts the intertwining of humans, technology, and emotion. This showcase sets neural networks alight; dissonant exchanges open pathways to awe and creative agency.

ASYMMETRICAL FUTURE (AVENIR ASYMÉTRIQUE)
A man and a woman. A first contact after a long break up.
(director/poet: Bryam Kinkela, France, 2022, 4 min, in French with English subtitles)

Impetus
This film is a reflective audiovisual collage of images and sounds that have never met and were never supposed to meet.
(director/poet: Migl? Križinauskait?-Bernotien?, Lithuania, 2022, 4 min, in Lithuanian with English subtitles)

A Reading From the Book of Regenesis
The first of a series of short films from The Fire Cycle — an interdisciplinary work comprising poems, music, film, and visual art.
(director/poet: Clay Steakley, US, 2022, 4 min, in English with hardcoded English text)

A Spark Catches
Excerpts from Jade Lascelles's book The Inevitable pair with images of climate crisis and individual isolation to outline certain dichotomies of serenity and destruction, passion and violence, that manifest in both nature and desire.
(director: Natalia Gaia, poet: Jade Lascelles, Mexico, 2022, 5 min, in English with English subtitles)

The moon appears (La luna asoma)
Liquid, digital animation lends another dimension to Federico García Lorca's already mysterious and multidimensional poem "La luna asoma (The moon appears)."
(director: Jelle Meys, poet: Federico García Lorca, Belgium, 2021, 4 min, in Spanish with English subtitles)

There are Still Owls, There is Still Night
A poetic exploration of temporal cognitive effects of climate change—what becomes visible as things disappear.
(director/poet: Karen Finneyfrock, US, 2023, 2 min, in English with no subtitles or captions)

Constant
A love poem using the Voyager Space mission as metaphor.
(directors: Colm Scully & Anton Floyd, poet: Anton Floyd, Ireland, 2023, 3 min, in English with English subtitles)

ANTIQUE LANDS
As an experiment in re-expressing the past with tools from the future, this short film uses AI to read Percy percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ozymandias" and generate new photographs from the words of the verses.
(director/poet: Zack McCune, US, 2023, 3 min, in English with English intertitles and hardcoded text)

The Facts
A love poem disguised as a video poem disguised as a recitation of extraneous facts.
(director/poet: Chris Bernstorf, US, 2019, 1 min, in English with English subtitles)

Kiss Me
A poetic and immersive voyage into the growing world of plants to rediscover love and explore how to re-entangle ourselves with nature's sentience and beauty.
(directors: Ruxandra Mitache & Simona Nastac, poet: Simona Nastac, Romania & Switzerland, 2023, 2 min, in English with no subtitles or captions)

Peace Piece
Responding to a curated cocktail of positive, harmonious keywords ("pacifism," "empathy," "sisterhood," etc.), Emily Dickinson's phrase "I many times thought Peace had come," and assorted other artistic input, this film is entirely co-created with artificial intelligence.
(director: Polyptech, poets: Polyptech, Open AI & Emily Dickinson, 2022, 1 min, in English with hardcoded English text)

Reverence
A poetic kaleidoscopic meditation on the irrepressible awe of being.
(director/poet: M Freeman, US, 2023, 4 min, in English with English closed captions)

Poems for an Aeolian Harp or Paintings for the wind
A collaborative video poem by participants in the festival workshop, Animated Poetry with Neely Goniodsky, set to Seattle Civic Poet Shin Yu Pai's poem "Poems for an Aeolian Harp or Paintings for the wind". These poems were originally published in Virga (Empty Bowl, 2021).
(director: Neely Goniodsky, poet: Shin Yu Pai, US, 2023, in English)

BECAUSE YOU SPEAK OF FUR
In this adaptation of Georg Leß's Anderkatt (The Haircut), two women converse through an uncanny amalgam of images and soundscapes. One is on an expedition; the other follows the expedition's progress from afar.
(directors: Patricia Delso Lucas & Johanna Wagner, poet: Georg Leß, Belgium, 2022, 3 min, in English with no subtitles or captions)

April 29, 2023

7:00pm - A tune to contain all your revolt [Hybrid]

(51 min TRT)
Rhythm, rhyme, and rhetoric come to the defense of the sacred, the scared, and the sacrificed. These works exist to rise up, to turn against, to express rage, to make seen through planting seeds, through imagination, through joy, through poetry.

How to Tie a Turban
A video poem that links the act of tying a turban to a history of persecution and resilience, from WWI and Jallianwalla Bagh to the Kamagata Maru incident and Quebec's Bill 21.
(director/poet: Amritpal Singh Arora, Canada, 2021, 4 min, in English with no subtitles or captions)

Copperhead
Poetry and choreography call us into ourselves, asking us to assess who sets our standards of success, and encouraging us to elevate mutual growth in community as a true marker of prosperity.
(director: Andee Arches, poet: PHAero, US, 2022, 2 min, in English with English subtitles)

Transcendance
A Black trans woman finds solace within her ancestral practices.
(director: Jamil Suleman, poet: Mei'lani Eyre, US, 2022, 2 min, in English with no subtitles or captions)

Fathers' Land (Terra dei Padri)
In this poetic document of deportation, the verses of Fadil Hasin Ash-Shalmani tell the story of the civilians taken from Libya during the country's first years of Italian occupation. Film footage originally produced as propaganda is repurposed, edited to augment his powerful emotional narrative and reclaim the images as evidence.
(director: Francesco Di Gioia, poet: Fadil Hasin Ash-Shalmani, Italy, 2021, 11 min, in Arabic with English subtitles)

Petrykivka
Made during the early months of a highly mediated, geographically distant but emotionally resonant war, Petrykivka is a videopoetic reconjuring of acts of resistance and folklore within and across the borders, vicariously witnessing and testifying to the transformative possibilities of hope and imagination.
(director/poet: Anne Ciecko, US, 2022, 4 min, in English with hardcoded English text and English subtitles)

drummerman blues
A poem about all those men who bang our hearts out, but in a good way?
(director/poet: Jalen Christopher, US, 2022, 3 min, in English with no subtitles or captions)

When it feels hot, that rage against me
This poetry film is about the transition from being a girl to a woman, from the perspective of a mother who wants both to protect her daughter and to let her go.
(director: Helmie Stil, poet: Rebecca Goss, United Kingdom, 2022, 2 min, in English with English subtitles)

The Voice in Isabel Fleiss's Office
A woman with an unusual malady—cobweb buildup in the throat—receives an even more unusual treatment in this adaptation of a surreal poem by North Carolina writer Virgil Renfroe.
(director: Jim Haverkamp, poet: Virgil Renfroe, US, 2022, 6 min, in English with no subtitles or captions)

In-Side (A-Dentro)
What happens in-side? Is it my woman's body that thinks?
(directors: Charles Olsen & Lilián Pallares, poet: Dayana Jiménez, Spain, 2023, 3 min, in Spanish with English subtitles)

The Lamb (Le gigot)
Suspended mid-frame, a sacrificial lamb (of sorts) makes surreal pirouettes in this dramatically embodied poetic composition.
(directors: Hélène Matte & Marco Dubé, poets: Hélène Matte & Marion Collé, Canada, 2021, 4 min, in French with English subtitles)

moto baby
A love letter magnifying the intersection of transgender identity, nature, and motorcycles.
(director/poet: awa-moon, US, 2023, 4 min, in English with English subtitles)

Lacrima Da Capo
Every tear can be shed only once. A cyclic contemplation of the inevitability and irreversibility of loss, bracketed by the sign ||: , which signals musicians to repeat a phrase.
(director/poet: Andriana Minou, Greece & UK, 2022, 2 min, in English with hardcoded English text)

POGROM
Responding to a poem by Romanian writer Maria Banu? (1914-1999), a sound artist and a visual artist illustrate a meal tainted by terror. An enveloping, claustrophobic tension descends on a family dinner, distorting the comfort of a domestic ritual. The sounds and smears of graphite and charcoal strokes amplify the dread described in the poem.
(directors: Ana Chiorean & Anamaria Pravicencu, poet: Maria Banu?, 2022, 4 min, in Romanian with English subtitles)

April 30, 2023

7:00pm - Melting memories [Hybrid]

(49 min TRT)
Where do we contain our histories? The works in this showcase trace memory from cellular blueprints to handwritten letters to public records and all the spaces in between. Using fragmentation, texture, origami, and surrealism, these video poems examine the grief, friendships, and intergenerational relationships we hold close (or let dissolve).

STRIKE
Reciting over homemade drone footage of her grandparents' empty home, a poet contemplates the building's imminent controlled burn, collapsing time through the act of remembering her family.
(director: Peter Johnston, poet: Cindy Hunter Morgan, US, 2022, 2 min, in English with no subtitles or captions)

how to outline grief
The enormous scale of the sea offers a comforting counterpoint to intensely closed, confused feelings of grief. Dance and poetry combine to express both anguish and energy; acceptance and exhaustion.
(director: Kym McDaniel, US, 2023, 6 min, in English & Korean with English subtitles)

A letter to Jacklynn
During the lockdown, I wrote a letter to my friend Jacklynn, recalling a meeting we had before the epidemic, and the memories began to emerge with the extended urban traffic line.
(director/poet: Jing Zhu, China, 2022, 3 min, in Chinese with English subtitles)

Dickinsonia
Dickinsonia is a 550 million year old oceanic species. As their soft bodies rarely leave fossils, traumas, marked by forgetting and dissociation, also seem to leave very few traces.
(director: Charline Dally, poets: Nicole Brossard & Astrida Neimanis, France & Canada, 2022, 16 min, in English & French with English subtitles)

3,260 Souls
Marrying ethnographic research and archival ephemera with a poetic narrative, this film is an audiovisual exploration of how to feel what has been "lost" to history. Its source material and temporal context – South Seattle's "Poor Farm" and "Potter's Field" at the turn of the last century – become an extrapolation from the local to the universal as the film leafs through themes of visibility, marginalization, and the damage wrought by industrial economies.
(director/poet: Elke Victoria Hautala, US, 2022, 4 min, in English with no subtitles or captions)

Together, Laughing
Using 16mm imagery of wilt and decay and archival audio of sick or deceased members of my family, Together, Laughing is a meditation on transience, memory, and the failure of the archive to truly preserve anything at all.
(director/poet: Claire Maske, US, 2022, 3 min, in English with no subtitles or captions)

When moon fall, I was me
A poem which is a breakup letter, a last will and testament, and a final love letter.
(director: Letian Lotte Wang, poet: Xuemeng Simone Zhao, US, 2023, 5 min, in Chinese with English subtitles)

Fragments
An (almost) invisible protagonist enters a restaurant and orders pea soup.
(directors: Gigi Perron & Anick Beaulieu, poet: Patrice Desbiens, 2022, 2 min, in French with English subtitles)

Towards a desert in her eyes
Shot on 16mm at the filmmaker's mother's funeral in a Serbian village, this film finds color, rhythms, and interplays of light and language amid the dim stillness of mourning.
(director/poet: Sabrina Rubakovic, US, 2019, 5 min, in English with hardcoded English text)

You cannot remember your mother's voice
A pair of hands folding origami objects learned in childhood embody the reflection on a mother's voice that can no longer be heard.
(director/poet: Lin Li, United Kingdom, 2020, 4 min, in English with English subtitles)

Date: April 27-30, 2023

Cost:
$14 General Admission
$10 Student/Child/Senior
$7 NWFF Member
Virtual Tickets: Pay what you can, $5-25
Festival Passes: Pay what you can, $55-85, For NWFF members, $40

Location:
Northwest Film Forum,
1515 12th Avenue,
Seattle, WA 98122.

Click here for more information