Cadence Video Poetry Festival 2023

Melting memories

Expired May 8, 2023 6:59 AM
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10 films in package
STRIKE
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.
how to outline grief
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.
a letter to Jacklynn
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.
Dickinsonia
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.
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.
Together, Laughing
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.
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.
Fragments
An (almost) invisible protagonist enters a restaurant and orders pea soup.
Closed captions available
(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.
You cannot remember your mother's voice
A pair of hands folding origami objects learned in childhood embody the reflection on a mother's voice that can no longer be heard.

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).

(49 min TRT)

Click here for in-person tickets to this program: Apr. 30 at 7pm


Virtual tickets are pay-what-you-can, $5–25. Click "Unlock Now" above to select the price you are most comfortable with.


Cadence 2023 will be held both virtually and in-person. Festival Passes are HYBRID, granting access to both virtual and in-person viewing, and are available here.


** Co-presented with Alliance Française de Seattle, Interbay Cinema Society, and Seattle Asian American Film Festival **

A poem which is a breakup letter, a last will and testament, and a final love letter.


** Co-presented with Seattle Asian American Film Festival! **

  • Year
    2023
  • Runtime
    5 minutes
  • Language
    Chinese, with English subtitles
  • Country
    United States
  • Note
    Poet: Xuemeng Simone Zhao
  • Director
    Letian Lotte Wang
  • Producer
    Wenting Zhang
  • Cast
    Zequn Natalie Ma, Weixuan Riku Wu
  • Cinematographer
    Qi Gui Si
  • Music
    David Celeste
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