Delirium plays in 2021’s Foam to Form short film program

Honorable Mentions for the Northwest Artist Award:

an excerpt of Resilience (Suns)
An intimate, vulnerable performance grounds this powerful piece, which made brilliant use of layering (both visual and audio), repetition, and cacophony to explore the relationship between past and present, and between “history” and the self. an excerpt of Resilience (Suns) reminds us that the history of oppression is at once inextricable from the present, and under ongoing threat of erasure. As the filmmaker probes the limits of words and language to resolve these cycles, we realize that though the piles of books surrounding the performer offer a way in to this history, they may not offer a way out. At the end of the piece, no easy answers are given, but the agony and the anger in the performer’s final silent scream brings the viewer face to face with the fact that these questions can’t be ignored.

(dir. D.K. Pan, poetry by Pol Rosenthal, US, 2021, 5 min, in English, with hardcoded English subtitles)

an excerpt of Resilience (Suns) plays in 2021’s Uncanny Intermingling short film program

Barbed Wire Land
This smart, well-researched piece starts with a seemingly small footnote in the history of Western expansion – the invention of the barbed-wire fence – and finds within it a powerful metaphor for the entire American way of seeing and being in the world. The filmmaker’s multilayered story of place, people, technology, and ideology is brought home by fantastic archival footage, strong and well-paced editing, and a clear-eyed sense of what the country they call Barbed Wire Land, at its core, is all about.

(Olivia Louise, US, 4 min, in English, with no subtitles or captions)

Barbed Wire Land plays in 2021’s Housed but Never Homed short film program

Lairs plays in 2021’s Housed but Never Homed short film program

No Words plays in 2021’s Ink of the Unfamiliar Pen short film program

Honorable Mention for the Collaboration Award:

Delirium
Delirium creatively and humorously conveys the global banality and craziness of this pandemic year.

(dir. Thelma Tunyi & Shanley Fermin, poetry by Tjawangwa Dema, US, 2020, 7 min, in English, with no subtitles or captions)

Delirium plays in 2021’s Foam to Form short film program

3xShapes of Home plays in 2021’s Housed but Never Homed short film program

I dream a queer allegory plays in 2021’s Uncanny Intermingling short film program

Honorable Mention for the Video by Poets Award:

Shea, by NASRA
Effy Adar’s video poem is gorgeous, not only visually but sonically. Here is a poem that strikes a delicate balance between song and spirit while curiously exploring the ways that poetry can be seen, heard, and felt.

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

Shea, by NASRA plays in 2021’s Housed but Never Homed short film program

Dream Delivery plays in 2021’s Uncanny Intermingling short film program

Honorable Mention for the Wild Card Award:

Rotten Fruit
It’s rare for a video poem to elicit a laugh, but the opening of Rotten Fruit did just that. These five stanzas contain more than humour, though. We love the poetic structure of the segments of Lyr Casper’s piece and the original footage, packed with symbolism. Bookended by collaged found audio, this poem questions what is expected. – Chelsea Werner-Jatzke

(Lyr Casper, US, 2020, 7 min, in English, with English intertitles and text)

Rotten Fruit plays in 2021’s Foam to Form short film program

Roland Dahwen is a filmmaker and visual artist. He has been a recipient of the Oregon Media Arts Fellowship, an artist-in-residence at Portland Institute for Contemporary Art’s Creative Exchange Lab, and a finalist for the Seattle Art Museum’s Betty Bowen Award. He has made videos with several poets and writers, including Samiya Bashir (Field Theories), Dao Strom (Traveler’s Ode, Flower Diatribe #1, Love|Object|Treason), and Stacey Tran (Haft-Seen).

Caryn Cline is a Seattle-based filmmaker, curator and educator, originally from the Missouri Ozarks. Her short experimental, animated, found footage and “botanicollage” films have been screened at the Venice Biennale, Alchemy, the San Francisco Exploratorium, Antimatter, Experiments in Cinema, Anthology Film Archives, Analogia, and other festivals and venues. Besides making films, she teaches handmade film techniques, is the Executive Director of the Interbay Cinema Society, and co-founder and co-curator of the Engauge Experimental Film Festival.

Catherine Bresner is the author of the chapbook The Merriam Webster Series; the artist book Everyday Eros (Mount Analogue 2017); and the empty season, which won the Diode Edition Book Prize in 2017. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in the VOLTA, b l u s h, Sixth Finch, The Offing, Heavy Feather Review, Gulf Coast, Passages North, Paperbag and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a Juniper Summer Institute fellowship and the 2019 Cadence Residency through the Northwest Film Forum. Currently, she is the publicist for Wave Books and lives in Seattle, WA.

Nico Vassilakis writes poetry about reading seeing and draws language that focuses on the visual jettisoning of letters from their word position. He has published several books of poetry and text/art. Most recently VOIR DIRE was published by Dusie Books. Vassilakis co-edited The Last Vispo Anthology: Visual Poetry 1998-2008 (Fantagraphics Books) and was a curator of several international visual/concrete poetry exhibitions. He currently lives in Greenville, IL with his wife and animals.

Moss is a literary journal of writing from the Pacific Northwest. Published annually, Moss is dedicated to exploring the intersection of place and creative expression, while exposing the region’s outstanding writers to a broad audience of readers, critics, and publishers. Since its debut issue in the summer of 2014, Moss has received praise for its sharp design, strong editorial hand, and its commitment to supporting new and emerging writers. You can find Moss at independent bookstores across the Northwest, and online at mosslit.com.

Chelsea Werner-Jatzke is a writer exploring the liminal spaces of the literary arts. She is the author of the chapbooks Adventures in Property Management (Sibling Rivalry, 2017) and Thunder Lizard (H_NGM_N, 2016). Her interest in how words are experienced has led to solo work and collaborations with artists across media to create gallery installations, classical music performances, broadsides, karaoke, and video poetry. She is co-founder and director of Till, a literary organization that offers an annual writing residency at Smoke Farm in Arlington, WA and a museum communications professional.

Rana San is an artist, curator, and media maker whose creative practice melds dreamwork, written word, embodied movement, video poetry, and analog photography. She’s interested in the ways we relate to ourselves, each other, our surroundings, the unknown, and the new meanings that are made in spaces where artistic mediums meet. In community, Rana crafts collective experiences that elevate the work of storytellers, artists, and activists using moving image media and contemporary performing arts to cultivate intimacy and incite connection through creative expression. She has developed and produced cultural festivals, museum programs, and intimate creative salons in Seattle, Istanbul, and Barcelona and serves as the Artistic Director at Northwest Film Forum in Seattle, WA where she co-curates year-round programming, including the annual Cadence: Video Poetry Festival.