Cadence 2023 – Melting memories [Hybrid]
Watch online: Apr. 27 – May 7, 2023
$14 General Admission
$10 Student/Child/Senior
$7 NWFF and/or Alliance Française Members
Pay what you can, $5-25
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.
About
** Co-presented with Alliance Française de Seattle, Interbay Cinema Society, and Seattle Asian American Film Festival **
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.
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!
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:
(49 min TRT)
Where do we contain our histories? The works in this showcase trace memory from cellular blueprints to handwritten letters to public records and all the spaces in between. Using fragmentation, texture, origami, and surrealism, these video poems examine the grief, friendships, and intergenerational relationships we hold close (or let dissolve).
Header photo credit: You cannot remember your mother’s voice, dir. Lin Li
Showcase title credit: Dickinsonia, dir. Charline Dally
BUY TICKETS HERE
- 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.
- 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:
STRIKE
West Coast premiere!
Reciting over homemade drone footage of her grandparents’ empty home, a poet contemplates the building’s imminent controlled burn, collapsing time through the act of remembering her family.
(director: Peter Johnston, poet: Cindy Hunter Morgan, US, 2022, 2 min, in English with no subtitles or captions)
how to outline grief
World premiere!
The enormous scale of the sea offers a comforting counterpoint to intensely closed, confused feelings of grief. Dance and poetry combine to express both anguish and energy; acceptance and exhaustion.
(director: Kym McDaniel, US, 2023, 6 min, in English & Korean with English subtitles)
** Co-presented with Seattle Asian American Film Festival! **
a letter to Jacklynn
World premiere!
During the lockdown, I wrote a letter to my friend Jacklynn, recalling a meeting we had before the epidemic, and the memories began to emerge with the extended urban traffic line.
(director/poet: Jing Zhu, China, 2022, 3 min, in Chinese with English subtitles)
** Co-presented with Interbay Cinema Society! **
Dickinsonia
World premiere!
Dickinsonia is a 550 million year old oceanic species. As their soft bodies rarely leave fossils, traumas, marked by forgetting and dissociation, also seem to leave very few traces.
(director: Charline Dally, poets: Nicole Brossard & Astrida Neimanis, France & Canada, 2022, 16 min, in English & French with English subtitles)
** Co-presented with Alliance Française de Seattle! **
3,260 Souls
Marrying ethnographic research and archival ephemera with a poetic narrative, this film is an audiovisual exploration of how to feel what has been “lost” to history. Its source material and temporal context – South Seattle’s “Poor Farm” and “Potter’s Field” at the turn of the last century – become an extrapolation from the local to the universal as the film leafs through themes of visibility, marginalization, and the damage wrought by industrial economies.
(director/poet: Elke Victoria Hautala, US, 2022, 4 min, in English with no subtitles or captions)
Together, Laughing
Northwest premiere!
Using 16mm imagery of wilt and decay and archival audio of sick or deceased members of my family, Together, Laughing is a meditation on transience, memory, and the failure of the archive to truly preserve anything at all.
(director/poet: Claire Maske, US, 2022, 3 min, in English with no subtitles or captions)
** Co-presented with Interbay Cinema Society! **
When moon fall, I was me (当月落下时忘记)
A poem which is a breakup letter, a last will and testament, and a final love letter.
(director: Letian Lotte Wang, poet: Xuemeng Simone Zhao, US, 2023, 5 min, in Chinese with English subtitles)
** Co-presented with Seattle Asian American Film Festival! **
Fragments
US premiere!
An (almost) invisible protagonist enters a restaurant and orders pea soup.
(directors: Gigi Perron & Anick Beaulieu, poet: Patrice Desbiens, 2022, 2 min, in French with English subtitles)
** Co-presented with Alliance Française de Seattle! **
(Towards a desert in her eyes)
Shot on 16mm at the filmmaker’s mother’s funeral in a Serbian village, this film finds color, rhythms, and interplays of light and language amid the dim stillness of mourning.
(director/poet: Sabrina Rubakovic, US, 2019, 5 min, in English with hardcoded English text)
** Co-presented with Interbay Cinema Society! **
You cannot remember your mother's voice
World premiere!
A pair of hands folding origami objects learned in childhood embody the reflection on a mother’s voice that can no longer be heard.
(director/poet: Lin Li, United Kingdom, 2020, 4 min, in English with English subtitles)
🏆 Winner of the Wild Card Award at Cadence 2023! 🏆
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
About AFSeattle:
AFSeattle is a dynamic educational and cultural nonprofit organization which has been promoting the French language and Francophone cultures through diverse programs in the Puget Sound area since 1987. It is part of an international network of over 800 Alliances Françaises around the globe. A 501(c)(3) nonprofit incorporated in the state of Washington, it operates in collaboration with many local, regional, and international partners in the cultural, artistic, and educational fields.
With over 700 members and over 1700 enrollments every year, we are one of the leading French language and culture centers in the PNW. Join our community! afseattle.org