Cadence 2024 – We are looking for our shape [Hybrid]

Watch in person: Apr. 20 at 4:30pm

Watch online: Apr. 19–28, 2024

In-person tickets >

$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

All Festival Passes are HYBRID, granting access to both virtual and in-person viewing! 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 suji@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 limited number of seats may be available 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 cadencevideopoetry@gmail.com to let us 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.

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

About the program:

(73 min TRT)

Simultaneously the products of our lineage, environment, and interactions, we miraculously retain our individual edges. How can we integrate all our identities as essential to the whole? How does miming past generations feed our future selves? How will we transcend fantasies to build a castle of our own? Through a translator, an immigrant, a tourist, a voicemail, a fairytale, and others, these video poems ask: how, and how often, do we (re)make ourselves?

Header photo & showcase title credit: Les corps aqueux, dir. Filémon Brault-Archambeault

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 Festival Pass, we’ll 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:

Chinatown Diptych

West Coast premiere!

American poet Jenny Xie performs her poem “Chinatown Diptych” while roaming the scenes and textures of New York City’s Chinatown.

(director: Jean Coleman, poet: Jenny Xie, US, 2021, 3 min, in English with no subtitles or captions)

leafmold

World premiere!

Spun from chambered secrets and texts read under the full moon, this essay film / experimental documentary / video poem about gender decay explores contradictions of masculinity and the feminine threshold.

(Benja Thompson, US, 2024, 7 min, in English with English subtitles and hardcoded English text)

Wolf Lake - Bachinsky version

In a dramatized narrative written and told by Canadian poet Elizabeth Bachinsky, a young woman speaks of her ordeal at Wolf Lake. The Coast Mountains of British Columbia make a lush backdrop to her harrowing story of violence and betrayal. Wolf Lake is from Elizabeth Bachinsky’s excellent collection Home of Sudden Service, Nightwood Editions, 2006.

(director: Michael V. Smith, poet: Elizabeth Bachinsky, Canada, 2006, 5 min, in English with English captions)

A house, a body, a wildish thing

World premiere!

A house, a body, a wildish thing serves as an invitation to participate in sensory recollection and investigation of duality in the human experience, by leaning into the curious and whimsical.

Generated during the 2024 Cadence Artist Residency.

(Livia Glascock, United States, 2024, 6 min, in English with animated English text and captions)

Key

World premiere!

Seven year old Eve runs away with the bejeweled key to the King’s castle, only to get lost – but with the help of a strange guiding force, she finds that she can build a castle of her own.

(James E. Kenward, United Kingdom & Germany, 2023, 7 min, in English with English captions)

The river (Ріка)

US premiere!

A lyrical reflection by a Ukrainian woman who finds herself on the riverbank and remembers her home and her family on the other side. The river is about realizing oneself in a new space, feeling the spirit of ancestors, and rethinking the experience of the ongoing war.

(director: Svitlana Rudiuk, poet: Olena Pashuk (Kytsan), Ukraine, 2023, 2 min, in Ukrainian with hardcoded English subtitles)

Desert Poems

World premiere!

Desert Poems is a film built around a poem by Sami Miranda that speaks to objects left in the desert by migrants crossing into the US.

(directors: Sami Miranda & Ellie Walton, poet: Sami Miranda, US, 2024, 2 min, in English with hardcoded English subtitles)

 

Les corps aqueux

US premiere!
CW: Nudity

Les corps aqueux is an experimental film that explores gender identity outside the binary. By constructing a theatrical space comprised of designed sets, staged radio interviews, found footage vignettes, and overlays, it explores the relationship between the body and the self. Inside that space, uncertainty is finally allowed to exist.

(Filémon Brault-Archambeault, Canada, 2023, 5 min, in English & French with English subtitles)

💙 MICHAEL V. SMITH Honorable Mention 💙

Postcard home from English Bay - Chainsmoking Seagulls

Just a normal day at English Bay.

(Zak Zastera, Canada, 2023, 2 min, in English with hardcoded English text)

How to Make an ASMR Dumpling

This film invites immigrants with Asian heritage to join an immersive ASMR cooking show in which participants make dumplings together. It is part of an ongoing project called “From Scratch: Tasting the Tenderness in Food Production,” whose aim is to bring awareness to the often diminished labor of immigrants, as well as provide space for healing from the trauma of the global pandemic.

(Yixuan Pan, US, 2023, 3 min, in English with English intertitles)

💙 CONCEPTUAL BAR SUR Honorable Mention 💙

Identity Portraits

Northwest premiere!

Three short portrait films that weave together spoken word and visual form to reflect the identity, joy, and power of individuals from the transgender and nonbinary community.

(director: Sasha Marie Speer, poets: Jaden Smith, Nancy Azcona & Andy Sánchez, US, 2023, 7 min, in English & Spanish with hardcoded English subtitles)

Her Plot of Blue Sky

West Coast Premiere!

Centering a group of women who reside in a care home in a small market town of Sefrou, Morocco, Her Plot of Blue Sky is a record of one of the days the women were seen using the cameras. Woven into their narratives is Rachida Madani’s poem, “Tales of a Severed Head.”

(director: Kamila Kuc, poets: Kamila Kuc, Rachida Madani & Fatima Ezerkawi, United Kingdom, 2022, 23 min, in English & Arabic with hardcoded English subtitles)


Back to Festival Home

Cadence Video Poetry Festival, presented by Northwest Film Forum and 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.

⚠️ 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.


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Northwest Film Forum
1515 12th Ave,

Seattle, WA 98122

206 329 2629


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