Cadence 2021 – Housed But Never Homed [Online]

Screening on demand from April 16–25, 2021

All Cadence 2021 film programs are pay-what-you-can, priced on a sliding scale, $5–25.

Full festival passes are also available for $50, with $35 passes for NWFF members.

* No one turned away for lack of funds; email paul@nwfilmforum.org about free community tickets!

Enter the Cadence 2021 virtual cinema to see more film programs.

About

There are names for homes that are not on any maps. The complexity of calling a place home while struggling to find acceptance there permeates these video poems. As many of us are spending more time where we dwell than ever before, the gratitude we might feel for our home is colored by a feeling of entrapment. At the same time, the comfort, safety, and services of shelter are by no means guaranteed. This screening is for the displaced, the vulnerable, and the shut-ins crawling out of their skin; for those whose struggle to define and redefine a concept of home for themselves is continual.

Image credit: With Whom Shall We Live? by Nikkia Atkinson & Long Trần 

Showcase title credit: Homeless by Josta Hopps & WAYout Poets


Short Film Program:

A Barcode Scanner

A Barcode Scanner

(dir. David Shook, poetry by David Shook & Zêdan Xelef, 5 min, in Arabic, with English subtitles)
US premiere!

Shot on location at the Chamishko IDP Camp in Northern Iraq, A Barcode Scanner reflects the harsh day-to-day realities of the Êzîdîs who survived the Islamic State’s genocidal campaign against them.

With Whom Shall We Live?

With Whom Shall We Live?

(dir. Long Trần, poetry by Nikkia Atkinson, US, 2021, 3 min, in English, Vietnamese, with hardcoded English subtitles, English intertitles)
World premiere!

With Whom Shall We Live? illustrates the dangers of history continuing to repeat itself. Using the parallel struggles of Black Americans and Asian Americans, this visual poem anchors the two communities together on common ground.

Homeless

Homeless

(dir. Josta Hopps, poetry by WAYout Poets, Sierra Leone, 2020, 5 min, in English, with no subtitles or captions)
US premiere!

Seventeen homeless, WAYout poets from the streets of Freetown, Sierra Leone came together to write and produce this film.

Barbed Wire Land

Barbed Wire Land

(Olivia Louise, US, 2020, 4 min, in English, with English closed captions)
US premiere!

Archival video provides the visuals for this video meditation on the invention of barbed wire.

AmeriKKKa

AmeriKKKa

(Carmia Imani, US, 2020, 5 min, in English, with English intertitles and closed captions)

AmeriKKKa is a poetry film designed to shed light on the institutional and systemic oppression that African-Americans face in the United States.

These Homes: Ghazals at the Ends of America

These Homes: Ghazals at the Ends of America

(dir. Victor Xia, poetry by Victor Xia, Minnie Zhang, Alfred Yu, Stella Li & Celine Choi, US, 2020, 7 min, in English, with hardcoded English subtitles)

Using foreign yet familiar lenses of form and image, five teenage second-generation Asian American writers splice Street View imagery of their locales into Arabic ghazal lyric poems that meditate on distance and identity.

Lairs

Lairs

(dir. Emma Penaz Eisner, poetry by Jane Penaz Eisner, US, 2020, 2 min, in English, with no subtitles or captions)

Lairs, layers, liars: In this poetry film, hatred insidiously supplants a couple’s love.

🏆 Cadence 2021 award-winner! 🏆

Towers in the Park

Towers in the Park

(A.R. Canzano, US, 2020, 6 min, in English, with hardcoded English subtitles)
World premiere!

A researcher sets out to study architecture in archives from Prague to Zagreb to Stockholm, but finds something else.

I Dream of Water

I Dream of Water

(Edward Gunawan, US, 2021, 2 min, in English, with no subtitles or captions)
World premiere!

Writer-filmmaker Edward Gunawan conveys the confining isolation of life under pandemic quarantine in this cine-poem.

3xShapes of Home

3xShapes of Home

(Elisabeth Brun, Norway, 2020, 7 min, in English, with English closed captions)
West coast premiere!

3xShapes of Home is a hybrid essay film, structural experiment, and visual poem that explores formally distinct camera and editing approaches to a filmmaker’s home village of Strengelvåg, Norway.

🏆 Cadence 2021 award-winner! 🏆

Shea, by NASRA

Shea, by NASRA

(dir. Effy Adar, poetry by Nasra Adem, Canada, 2021, 3 min, in English, with English closed captions)
US premiere!

A family displaced by greed searches for a new home in a foreign place. As they explore they discover pieces of themselves; old and new. Shea, by NASRA celebrates what has always remained in Black/African peoples: an innate sense of home, luxury and interconnectedness.


Back to Festival Catalog:

Cadence: Video Poetry Festival 2021 Index

Cadence: Video Poetry Festival is an annual series of screenings, workshops, and discussions on the genre of video poetry, held during National Poetry Month. The festival approaches video poetry as a literary genre that is presented as visual media, cultivating new meaning from the combination of text and moving image.

In its fourth year, the 2021 festival features 80 artists from throughout the world. Cadence is the Pacific Northwest’s only festival dedicated to the form of video poetry.

Feature film:

Short film programs:

Live collaborations:


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Northwest Film Forum
1515 12th Ave,

Seattle, WA 98122

206 329 2629


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