Cadence Video Poetry Festival 2023

A tune to contain all your revolt

Expired May 8, 2023 6:59 AM
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13 films in package
How to Tie a Turban
A video poem that links the act of tying a turban to a history of persecution and resilience, from WWI and Jallianwalla Bagh to the Kamagata Maru incident and Quebec’s Bill 21.
Copperhead
Poetry and choreography call us into ourselves, asking us to assess who sets our standards of success, and encouraging us to elevate mutual growth in community as a true marker of prosperity.
Closed captions available
Transcendance
A Black trans woman finds solace within her ancestral practices.
Closed captions available
Fathers' Land (Terra dei Padri)
In this poetic document of deportation, the verses of Fadil Hasin Ash-Shalmani tell the story of the civilians taken from Libya during the country's first years of Italian occupation. Film footage originally produced as propaganda is repurposed, edited to augment his powerful emotional narrative and reclaim the images as evidence.
Petrykivka
Made during the early months of a highly mediated, geographically distant but emotionally resonant war, Petrykivka is a videopoetic reconjuring of acts of resistance and folklore within and across the borders, vicariously witnessing and testifying to the transformative possibilities of hope and imagination.
drummerman blues
A poem about all those men who bang our hearts out, but in a good way?
When it feels hot, that rage against me
This poetry film is about the transition from being a girl to a woman from the perspective of a mother who wants to protect her daughter but at the same time wanting to let her go.
The Voice in Isabel Fleiss's Office
A woman with an unusual malady—cobweb buildup in the throat—receives an even more unusual treatment in this adaptation of a surreal poem by North Carolina writer Virgil Renfroe.
In-Side (A-Dentro)
What happens in-side? Is it my woman's body that thinks?
Closed captions available
The Lamb (Le gigot)
Suspended mid-frame, a sacrificial lamb (of sorts) makes surreal pirouettes in this dramatically embodied poetic composition.
moto baby
A love letter magnifying the intersection of transgender identity, nature, and motorcycles.
Lacrima Da Capo
Every tear can be shed only once. A cyclic contemplation of the inevitability and irreversibility of loss, bracketed by the sign ||: , which signals musicians to repeat a phrase.
POGROM
Responding to a poem by Romanian writer Maria Banuș (1914-1999), a sound artist and a visual artist illustrate a meal tainted by terror. An enveloping, claustrophobic tension descends on a family dinner, distorting the comfort of a domestic ritual. The sounds and smears of graphite and charcoal strokes amplify the dread described in the poem.

Rhythm, rhyme, and rhetoric come to the defense of the sacred, the scared, and the sacrificed. These works exist to rise up, to turn against, to express rage, to make seen through planting seeds, through imagination, through joy, through poetry.

(51 min TRT)

Click here for in-person tickets to this program: Apr. 29 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, American Romanian Cultural Society, Interbay Cinema Society, Seattle Arab Film Festival, and South Sound Experimental Film Festival **

This poetry film is about the transition from being a girl to a woman from the perspective of a mother who wants to protect her daughter but at the same time wanting to let her go. Rebecca Goss' poem 'When it feels hot, that rage against me' won the Sylvia Plath Prize in April 2022. For the Sylvia Plath Literary Festival in October 2022 it has been made into a poetry film by Helmie Stil from poetrycinema and The Poetry Society.

  • Year
    2022
  • Runtime
    2 minutes
  • Language
    English, with English subtitles
  • Country
    United Kingdom
  • Premiere
    US Premiere
  • Note
    Poet: Rebecca Goss
  • Director
    Helmie Stil
  • Producer
    Helmie Stil
  • Cast
    Pien Pelgrom, Ava Hartelman
  • Cinematographer
    Nils Post
  • Editor
    Helmie Stil
  • Composer
    Lennert Busch
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