Cadence 2025 – their love defies [Hybrid]
Watch online: April 25 – May 4, 2025
In-person tickets > ($20 General Admission / $10 Community Access)
Virtual tickets > (Pay what you can, $5 – 25)
Festival passes > (Pay what you can, $65 – $80 – $95 / 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 include the Festival Preview at Frye Art Museum on April 24.
About the program:
(60 min TRT)
Enter the heart space, where truth and myth collide. One part scorned, one part fickle, and one part everlasting, these video poems test the healthy boundaries and boundless borders of love. This showcase takes many lovers, breaks many hearts, and holds many hands to embrace all the forms of intimacy, from unconditional to unrequited.
Header photo credit: i was never the siren, dir. Moonyeka, Amy Amori Piñon & V Babida
Showcase title credit: Border Dweller Love, dir. Laura Asherman & Anna Flores
BUY TICKETS HERE
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.
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 Director of Exhibition at cole@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.
Northwest Film Forum values being a COVID-safer space for the filmmakers and film lovers who need us to be. From the moment we reopened to the public in September 2021, we required masks. Due to economic pressure, however, a new mask policy took effect on September 20, 2024.
We will continue to require masks at select showtimes – Thursday nights and Saturday and Sunday matinees – but the majority of screenings will now be “masks strongly encouraged.” Please note additional details here, and be sure to read each calendar event thoroughly for policy differences.
- Purchase your ticket; come to the show!
- You can also purchase a ticket on the day of the screening at Northwest Film Forum (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.
- 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 cadencevideopoetry@gmail.com.
Films in this program:
Dawn Serenade
An aubade about two new lovers parting in the morning. A story about connection between people in passing, transient love, and the baggage we carry with us.
(Elle Glasse, US, 2021, 2 min, in English)
You City, You Boyfriend
West Coast Premiere!
Chandrika Narayanan-Mohan performs her poem You City, You Boyfriend, a love letter to the city of Dublin.
(DIR. Mo O’Connell // POEM Chandrika Narayanan-Mohan, Ireland, 2023, 4 min, in English with English subtitles)
Silvana
US Premiere!
When their father dies, three sisters do everything they can to give their mother a new lease on life.
(Arianna Bardesono, Canada, 2023, 5 min, in French with English subtitles and hardcoded French text)
Border Dweller Love
US Premiere!
A poetic animated short following the narrative of a family enduring separation on both sides of a border. Through stop-motion animation and poetry, the film uses land-based artifacts to reflect the desert and the people who withstand harsh distances through rooted traditions of mobility. Each animated image evokes the earth’s imposed complicity in the severance of border-dwelling families, yet also its role in the methods of care and closeness that sustain the rebellion inherent in loving across borders.
(DIR. Laura Asherman, Anna Flores // POEM Anna Flores, US, 2024, 3 min, in English with Spanish subtitles)
LACK (Letting Alone Create Knowing)
World Premiere!
What, other than lack, is housed in loneliness? I’ve learned the answer to the prayer is in the mirror. Found in the silent stillness we begin to remember, again and again. Wisdom arises giving birth to a peace unbound by conditions, and the ache of loneliness alchemizes into the wholeness of alone. Desire persists remaining loyal to the truth of the heart, reminding us we are here.
(Jennifer Moore, US, 2025, 2 min, in English with English subtitles)
The Fine Line (הקו הדק)
US Premiere!
The thin line between danger and safety, between the sea and a safe shore slowly blurs, swirls, and unravels through a spoken word performance recounting a cycle of relational abuse. When is the fine line crossed?
(DIR. Yuval levy, Maya Roni Ella // POEM Yuval Levy, Israel, 2021, 5 min, in Hebrew with English and Hebrew subtitles)
Today, I <3 U _ _ _ _
US Premiere!
An exploration of contemporary perspectives on love and romance, embracing non-traditional relationship structures and celebrating diverse expressions of sexuality and intimacy. Made from high resolution scans of three intaglio prints of 14 frame animated loop, etched on plexiglass.
(Oliver Lewis, US, 2024, 1 min, nonverbal)
The Inheritance
World Premiere!
Reckoning with the inheritance of childhood trauma, a past in ruins, and the possibility of redemption.
(DIR. Sam McCooey Takolander // POEM Maria Kaaren Takolander, Australia, 2024, 6 min, in English)
Anything With a Switch
A short movement study on sapphic longing and obsession.
(Charli Brissey, US, 2024, 5 min, in English)
Reparaciones
West Coast Premiere!
The poetry and images of Reparaciones invoke a cycle of the doing and undoing of fabrics and flesh, of the material and the social. The threads that clothe our bodies and the relations that sustain us resist the ruptures and absorb the shocks that we encounter in all stages of life.
(DIR. Y(E)S aka Yehuda Sharim // POEM Lorena Alvarado, US, 2024, 2 min, in Spanish with English subtitles)
i was never the siren
This film is the first installment of the audio-visual performance work, Harana for the Aswang. Harana is a Filipinx serenade form rooted in courtship and grief rituals. The project reimagines and centralizes the narratives of various shapeshifting, mythological, animist, folkloric, “evil” spirits and creatures in Filipino folklore through the lens of their queer and trans descendants. Re-mything the Siren archetype, this film is in honor of sacred transsexuality and queerness through all timelines, a place for us to be swooned. To be seen in the defiant (im)possibilities of love and all that died in order for it to exist.
(Moonyeka, Amy Amori Piñon, V Babida, US, 2024, 27 min, in English with hardcoded English text)
Back to Festival Home
