Cadence 2023 – Good Symptom Showcase [Hybrid]

Watch in person: Apr. 29 & 30 at 4pm

Watch online: Apr. 27 – May 7, 2023

In-person tickets >

Pay what you can, $5-25

Virtual tickets >

Pay what you can, $5-25

Festival passes >

Pay what you can, $55-85
For NWFF members, $40

All Festival Passes are HYBRID, granting access to both virtual and in-person viewing this year! Non-member passes are priced on a sliding scale; please pay what you can to support our work. Passes exclude workshops and satellite screenings, please register separately.

Click for Accessibility Info

Ticketing, concessions, cinemas, restrooms, and our public edit lab are located on Northwest Film Forum’s ground floor, which is wheelchair accessible. All doors in Northwest Film Forum are non-motorized, and may require staff assistance to open. Our upstairs workshop room is not wheelchair accessible.

The majority of seats in our main cinema are 21″ wide from armrest to armrest; some seats are 19″ wide. We are working on creating the option of removable armrests!

We have a limited number of assistive listening devices available for programs hosted in our larger theater, Cinema 1. These devices are maintained by the Technical Director, and can be requested at the ticketing and concessions counter. Also available at the front desk is a Sensory Kit you can borrow, which includes a Communication Card, noise-reducing headphones, and fidget toys.

The Forum does NOT have assistive devices for the visually impaired, and is not (yet) a scent-free venue. Our commitment to increasing access for our audiences is ongoing, and we welcome all public input on the subject!

If you have additional specific questions about accessibility at our venue, please contact our Patron Services Manager at maria@nwfilmforum.org. Our phone number (206-329-2629) is voicemail-only, but we check it often.

Made possible due to a grant from Seattle Office of Arts & Culture, in partnership with Sensory Access, our Sensory Access document presents a visual and descriptive walk-through of the NWFF space. View it in advance of attending an in-person event at bit.ly/nwffsocialnarrativepdf, in order to prepare yourself for the experience.

🆓 Free Community Tickets 🆓

A number of seats will be held at each show for members of the community for whom ticket cost is an obstacle. If you’d like to attend free of charge, please email María and Paul (maria@nwfilmforum.org, paul@nwfilmforum.org) to let them know which program and showtime you’re interested in!

⚠️ Covid-19 Policies ⚠️

NWFF patrons will be required to wear masks that cover both nose and mouth while in the building. Disposable masks are available at the door for those who need them. We are not currently checking vaccination cards. Recent variants of COVID-19 readily infect and spread between individuals regardless of vaccination status.

Read more about NWFF’s policies regarding cleaning, masks, and capacity limitations here.

About the program:

(~41 min TRT)

Get a sneak preview of films featured in the video exhibition, Good Symptom: A Serial Anthology of Time-Based Disturbances. Troubling the boundaries between cinema and literature, Good Symptom pushes the language and form of poetry, essay, correspondence, autobiography, manifesto, thought pieces and hybrid literary work off the page and onto the screen.

The five Good Symptom selections in this showcase coalesce around their experimental origins–conceived in or inspired by poetry while each tests other realms–from meditative spaces to authorship, from love letters to other unlikely forms as radical interventions in the violence of dominant culture. Find out more and subscribe to the whole 12-installment series forthcoming September 2023 by independent, interdisciplinary press The 3rd Thing.

Header photo credit: Las Marimacha Fragments, dir. Lourdes Figueroa & Peggy Peralta

BUY TICKETS HERE

FAQ: How do I watch in-person?
  • Purchase your ticket through Brown Paper Tickets; come to the show!
  • You can also purchase a ticket on the day of the screening at Northwest Film Forum’s box office (1515 12th Ave, Seattle).
  • If you have purchased a Hybrid or In-Person-Only Festival Pass, we’ll be able to look you up at Will Call by the name you purchased under.
FAQ: How do I watch online?
  • Purchase your ticket through Northwest Film Forum’s Eventive virtual cinema. A free Eventive login is required.
  • From the Eventive virtual catalog page, purchased tickets will appear under “My Content Library” under your user menu (upper-right). From the Eventive festival landing page, they will appear under “My Tickets” on the site’s menu bar (at top).
  • Your confirmation email will also route you back to these pages to watch. (Can’t find it? Check spam!)
  • If all else fails, please contact paul@nwfilmforum.org

Films in this program:

Residue

World premiere!

Filmmaker and writer Hannah Villanueva offers a fleeting, nearly silent portrayal of the slow, draining nature of longing. With poetic text-on-screen unfurling like a prayer flag across wintry landscapes, an intimate harvesting of pomegranate seeds, and an exhausted snow angel, the residue of Residue is lush, tender, and inspiring. A world premiere in Good Symptom.

(Hannah Villanueva, 3 min, nonverbal with English hardcoded text)

Another Birth (تولدی دیگر)

World premiere!

Experimental animation artist Rose Ansari renders the work of Forough Farrokhzad (1934 – 1967), noted as the first Iranian poet to promote the culture of women in poetry. Ansari shares, “Expressing her thoughts on discrimination and inequality, Forough described Iranian women’s untold suffering. In a letter dated January 2, 1956, Forough wrote, ‘My wish is for Iranian women to be free and equal to men. I am fully aware that my sisters in this country suffer from men’s injustices, and I use half of my art to articulate their pain and anguish.’ Forough’s poetry symbolizes a woman imprisoned by ancient traditions and seeking the light.”  Ansari’s film, Another Birth, is titled after  Farrokhzad writing, Another Birth, published in 1963.

(director: Rose Ansari, poet: Forough Farrokhzad, Islamic Republic of Iran, 2022, 8 min, in Persian with no subtitles or captions)

** Co-presented with Seattle Arab Film Festival! **

I also knew this

World premiere!

In a subtle fusion of literary ritual, sociological experiment, performance, autobiography, and poetry, I also knew this not only re-thinks the role of authorship but does so right before our eyes. Interdisciplinary writer, artist, and video maker Sarah Rushford delivers an imaginative “video project” that is at once unsettling and inviting. No spoiler alert here, there is a real thrill seeing this work for the first time without knowing exactly what’s happening. A world premiere in Good Symptom.

(Sarah Rushford, US, 2022, 9 min, in English with no subtitles or captions)

Las Marimacha Fragments

World premiere!

In Las Marimacha Fragments Lourdes Figueroa’s sublime love-letter-like poem is voiced by her and coupled with Peggy Peralta’s splendorous visual array of lived moments from their 15-plus years together, mixed with cityscapes, from peopled and hectic to sensuous and serene. Centered in San Francisco, this cinematic homage to love queers the city symphony film genre of the 1920s-30s in a poetic offering to behold and savor again and again. A world premiere in Good Symptom.

(directors: Lourdes Figueroa & Peggy Peralta, US, 15 min, in English & Spanish with hardcoded text)

** Co-presented with Interbay Cinema Society! **

we pilot the blood

World premiere!

Quenton Baker’s we pilot the blood considers the position of blackness and the ongoing afterlife of slavery in this cinematic adaptation of their poem by the same title, crafted from redacted U.S. Senate documents detailing the 1841 revolt of enslaved people aboard the brig Creole. “Quenton Baker’s redactions are Black redactions,” writes scholar Christina Sharpe, “to make documents…speak something that they were never meant to reveal.” Those revelations are intercut in a meditative visual mix with the sea—alive and moving, closeup and tender—and paired with Baker’s transporting vocalization—at once, urgent, slow, visceral, and prophetic. A world premiere in Good Symptom.

(Quenton Baker & Anne de Marcken, US, 2023, 6 min, in English with English hardcoded text)


Back to Festival Home

⚠️ Please note: NWFF patrons will be required to wear masks that cover both nose and mouth while in the building. We are not currently checking vaccination cards.

Cadence Video Poetry Festival, presented by Northwest Film Forum and programmed in collaboration with Seattle author Chelsea Werner-Jatzke and 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.

Festival image credit: corps minéral, dir. Charline Dally @charline_dally Gabrielle Harnois-Blouin


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Northwest Film Forum
1515 12th Ave,

Seattle, WA 98122

206 329 2629


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