There are names for homes that are not on any maps. The complexity of calling a place home while struggling to find acceptance there permeates these video poems. As many of us are spending more time where we dwell than ever before, the gratitude we might feel for our home is colored by a feeling of entrapment. At the same time, the comfort, safety, and services of shelter are by no means guaranteed. This screening is for the displaced, the vulnerable, and the shut-ins crawling out of their skin; for those whose struggle to define and redefine a concept of home for themselves is continual.

Poet Zêdan Xelef recounts the drudgery of everyday life in Chamishko, a camp in Northern Iraq that now hosts over 5,000 Êzîdî families who survived the Islamic State's ruthless genocide.

A Barcode Scanner

Shot on location at the Chamishko IDP Camp in Northern Iraq, "A Barcode Scanner" reflects the harsh day-to-day realities of the Êzîdîs who survived the Islamic State's genocidal campaign against them.

With Whom Shall We Live? illustrates the dangers of history continuing to repeat itself. Using the parallel struggles of Black Americans and Asian Americans, this visual poem anchors the two communities together on common ground.

With Whom Shall We Live?

“With Whom Shall We Live?” illustrates the dangers of history continuing to repeat itself. Using the parallel struggles of Black Americans and Asian Americans, this visual poem anchors the two communities together on common ground.

17 homeless, WAYout poets from the streets of Freetown, Sierra Leone came together to write and produce this film.

Homeless

17 homeless, WAYout poets from the streets of Freetown, Sierra Leone came together to write and produce this film.

Archival video provides the visuals for this video meditation on the invention of barbed wire.

Barbed Wire Land

Archival video provides the visuals for this video meditation on the invention of barbed wire.

AmeriKKKa is an experimental poetry film designed to shed light on the harsh realities that African-Americans face in the United States. For centuries, Black people have been criminalized and brutalized for the color of their skin. The issue has not been fixed, but merely reformed into modern-day slavery. Through this film, Black people begin to reclaim their power over the labels that are placed upon them. AmeriKKKa honors and pays tribute to the many Black Americans who have been killed by an inherently racist justice system, and encourages all people to speak up for what is right. Anyone’s silence in the face of blatant racism and discrimination is compliance.

AmeriKKKa

"AmeriKKKa" is a poetry film designed to shed light on the institutional and systemic oppression that African-Americans face in the United States.

During a period of isolation, five young Asian-American poets across the United States explore their respective locales through the ghazal, a form of Arabic lyric poetry. Written words are read over Street View images of each poet's hometown as These Homes: Ghazals at the Ends of America deals with the negotiation of distance through foreign eyes, and the contradictions and common ground of our identities, what we leave behind, and what we continue to hold onto. In this meditation, the artists leave their words along America's highways, across parking lots, suburbs and coasts; spaces for entry and departure, acceptance and desertion. With a ghazal each, the five chapters are:I. YEARNING by Alfred Yu (俞瑞德) from Elk Grove, CAII. HUNGER by Stella Li (李静怡) from West Windsor, NJIII. ASSIMILATION by Victor Xia (夏谱春秋) from Seattle, WAIV. MEMORY by Celine Choi (최세린) from College Station, TXV. FLIGHT by Minnie Zhang (张明妮) from Richmond, VA

These Homes: Ghazals at the Ends of America

Using foreign yet familiar lenses of form and image, five teenage second-generation Asian American writers splice Street View imagery of their locales into Arabic ghazal lyric poems that meditate on distance and identity.

Lairs Intro - Adaptation/Ekphrasis Award

🏆 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>! 🏆 Lairs, layers, liars: In this poetry film, hatred insidiously supplants a couple's love.

Lairs

Lairs, layers, liars: In this poetry film, hatred insidiously supplants a couple's love.

A researcher sets out to study architecture in archives from Prague to Zagreb to Stockholm, but finds something else.

Towers in the Park

A researcher sets out to study architecture in archives from Prague to Zagreb to Stockholm, but finds something else.

Writer-filmmaker Edward Gunawan conveys the confining isolation of life under pandemic quarantine in this cine-poem.

I Dream of Water

Writer-filmmaker Edward Gunawan conveys the confining isolation of life under pandemic quarantine in this cine-poem.

3xShapes of Home Intro - Poetry by Video Artists Award

🏆 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>! 🏆 3xShapes of Home is a hybrid essay film, structural experiment, and visual poem. In it, the filmmaker revisits her place of origin, the small village of Strengelvåg in Norway's Arctic North. For two years, she explored the ways that Strengelvåg's surrounding mountains, oceans and built environments imprinted in her modes of thinking and sense of place. Her photographic exploration applies three distinct configurations of film techniques to test her subjective relationship to place against the agency of the camera, and to the subjective reference points of regional fauna. We hear her voice-over shift from poetic, to analytical, playful, and numb, as new perspectives on her village are created through the formal operations of the moving image.

3xShapes of Home

"3xShapes of Home" is a hybrid essay film, structural experiment, and visual poem that explores formally distinct camera and editing approaches to a filmmaker's home village of Strengelvåg, Norway.

A family displaced by greed searches for a new home in a foreign place. As they explore they discover pieces of themselves; old and new. Shea, by NASRA celebrates what has always remained in Black/African peoples: an innate sense of home, luxury and interconnectedness.

Shea, by NASRA

A family displaced by greed searches for a new home in a foreign place. As they explore they discover pieces of themselves; old and new. "Shea, by NASRA" celebrates what has always remained in Black/African peoples: an innate sense of home, luxury and interconnectedness.

Housed But Never Homed

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.