The phrase “foam to form” appears in two video poems in this program, both made in 2020 – one generated by eight University of Washington Bothell students, and the other by an Austrian artist. Incidentally, both creative teams were working in response to “Lethe,” a poem by Botswana-based writer Tjawangwa Dema. This synchronicity, as well as the very different outcomes of the two pieces, exemplifies the theme of this screening: something taking shape out of frothing emotions, divine conception, nascent nostalgia, or organic material. Every piece you’ll see is an excellent example of formal exploration in video poetry.

Rotten Fruit is an audiovisual poem exploring time, gender, origins, transformation, and self-actualization.

Rotten Fruit

"Rotten Fruit" is an audiovisual poem exploring time, gender, origins, transformation, and self-actualization.

A dream of the combined afterlife of one thousand trees. A sensual, stream of consciousness assemblage of scraps. Tiny triangles of paper mediate.

Knot Waking

A dream of the combined afterlife of one thousand trees.

The child king learns to walk in the universe. His environment falls as he rises.

Mad! (Fou!)

The child king learns to walk in the universe. His environment falls as he rises.

This short animated film explores the relationship between visual and spoken worlds, when they unite, or when they take separate ways. Words become rivers, water is their letters.

This short animated film explores the relationship between visual and spoken worlds, when they unite, or when they take separate ways.

Backwards God tells the story of how man made God in his image. The film interweaves elements of ecology and spirituality to retell the book of Genesis through a womanist lens.

Backwards God

"Backwards God" tells the story of how man made God in his image.

This poetry film details the last 12 years of an artist living a solitary life. Knowingly or unknowingly, he is facing the reality of death. The experience of acute pain, loneliness and helplessness brings him to a different realm. A goddess – his mother, lover, or God herself – arrives to transform his final rest into a new and eternal birth.

Final rest

This poetry film portrays an artist's moments of death: before, during and/or after. Life doesn't end with death. Moments of death are moments of revelation. Man and Woman complete the circle of death. Last sleep becomes first sleep.

🏆 Cadence 2021 <a href="https://nwfilmforum.org/news/presenting-the-award-winners-of-cadence-video-poetry-festival-2021" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">award-winner</a>! 🏆 Delirium is a vivid and surreal rendition of the poem “Lethe” by Tjawangwa Dema. By utilizing original collage artwork and animation techniques, intertwined with live-action videography, the viewer is guided through the eroding reality of a character with a cognitive affliction. The story-book style of collage and artwork invoke feelings of nostalgia and provide visual metaphoric representations of memory, reality and loss. The class of film students at University of Washington Bothell that created the film interpreted “Lethe” as a descriptive expression of the complex, intense process of making sense of memories and realities. Sometimes these experiences stay rooted, like the ginkgo on the bank, and others erode into the current. Delirium&nbsp;was created collaboratively, under the condition of COVID-19 quarantine and with the supervision and mentorship of filmmaker Masahiro Sugano.

Delirium

“Delirium” is a short film based on the poem “Lethe” by Tjawangwa Dema that utilizes original collage artwork and animation techniques, intertwined with live-action videography, to express the mutable reality of a character with a cognitive affliction.

A Scale for Hurt utilizes digital video, Super8 film and found footage to curate a nostalgic collage, juxtaposing the fragile transience of childhood with the monumental span of the geologic eras. The film explores limitations in our ability to perceive the vastness of time, contrasted with the smallness of our own lives, as well as highlighting the delicate interplay between humanity and the natural world. A Scale for Hurt is based on the poem by New York writer Leena Soman Navani. It is an international collaboration with Chinese-Australian filmmaker Julia Ngeow, starring young actress Pippa Dauven, filmed in Perth, Western Australia.

A Scale for Hurt

"A Scale for Hurt" explores the question: How can we comprehend a scale that is so much bigger than ourselves – a scale that is far too big to feel?

Part of an ongoing collaboration across space and time, nothing comes close breathes life into a summer scene, exploring the protective power of love between friends. Bodies travel through the poem and we witness collisions: looks against bodies, words into bodies into words. The world of the poem is as sinister as it is delightful, and pleasure blooms in the generative space of togetherness, finding its expression on screen. The interplay of Karpinski’s poetics and Tabori’s movement generates a shape-shifting dialogue across disciplines and platforms. Original text of "nothing comes close" forthcoming in Rogue Agent, May 2021.

nothing comes close

Part of an ongoing collaboration across space and time, “nothing comes close” breathes life into a summer scene, exploring the protective power of love between friends. Original text of "nothing comes close" forthcoming in Rogue Agent, May 2021.

“Vast and worthless,” “an ocean with no past,” are a couple of descriptions of the prairies by early European explorers. This inability of newcomers to “see” the prairies engendered efforts to “improve” the land, to redirect its vitality into the production of commodities. One such effort, farming, took phenomenal hold. By 1913 a million people had settled on the prairies, reined in by Ottawa’s grid system of land division that not only disregarded harmonizing with the natural terrain but also displaced both Indigenous and Métis peoples from their traditional homes. Currently, Saskatchewan is undergoing another crisis of place: farming has given way to agribusiness, and as farm sizes increase, land and community suffer. A drive beyond Saskatchewan’s cities will take you past abandoned farmyards even as the most vulnerable prairie terrain is pressed into cultivation. Winter Sleep offers affective critique of the agroindustry in prairie Canada. The poem and film, in conversation, ask viewers to reckon with the devastating socio-environmental impact of agribusiness, a clarifying task in re-conceiving new horizons for being here.

Winter Sleep

This poem and film, in conversation, ask viewers to reckon with the devastating socio-environmental impact of agribusiness, a clarifying task in re-conceiving new horizons.

Foam to Form

Sliding Scale

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** All film programs in the 2021 festival will take place online between Apr. 16–25. ** Cadence: Video Poetry Festival is a series of screenings, workshops, and discussions on the genre of video poetry, taking place annually during National Poetry Month. Cadence approaches video poetry as a literary genre presented as visual media, cultivating new meaning from the combination of text and moving image. In 2021, Cadence's fourth year, the festival will feature 60 artist teams from around the world. It remains the Pacific Northwest's only festival dedicated to video poetry.