i was never the siren | their love defies | Cadence Video Poetry Festival 2025

Available in 18d 19h 17m 29s

Available April 25, 2025 7:01 AM UTC

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Enter the heart space, where truth and myth collide. One part scorned, one part fickle, and one part everlasting, these video poems test the healthy boundaries and boundless borders of love. This showcase takes many lovers, breaks many hearts, and holds many hands to embrace all the forms of intimacy, from unconditional to unrequited.

(60 min TRT)

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Cadence 2025 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.

Header photo credit: i was never the siren, dir. Moonyeka, Amy Amori Piñon & V Babida

Showcase title credit: Border Dweller Love, dir. Laura Asherman & Anna Flores

This film is the first installment of the audio-visual performance work, Harana for the Aswang. Harana is a Filipinx serenade form rooted in courtship and grief rituals. The project reimagines and centralizes the narratives of various shapeshifting, mythological, animist, folkloric, “evil” spirits and creatures in Filipino folklore through the lens of their queer and trans descendants. Re-mything the Siren archetype, this film is in honor of sacred transsexuality and queerness through all timelines, a place for us to be swooned. To be seen in the defiant (im)possibilities of love and all that died in order for it to exist.

Year
2024
Runtime
27 minutes
Language
English
Country
United States
Subtitle Language
with hardcoded English text

Director
Moonyeka, Amy Amori Piñon, V Babida
Cast
Gabriel Colón, kai alviar horton, Moonyeka, Olivia Stevens, sam Choi, Theo Moon
Cinematographer
Amy Amori Piñon
Editor
Amy Amori Piñon, V Babida
Composer
karinyo

11 films in package

Dawn Seranade

An aubade about two new lovers parting in the morning. A story about connection between people in passing, transient love, and the baggage we carry with us.

You City, You Boyfriend

Chandrika Narayanan-Mohan performs her poem "You City, You Boyfriend," a love letter to the city of Dublin.

Silvana

When their father dies, three sisters do everything they can to give their mother a new lease on life.

Border Dweller Love

A poetic animated short following the narrative of a family enduring separation on both sides of a border.

LACK (Letting Alone Create Knowing)

What, other than lack, is housed in loneliness? I've learned the answer to the prayer is in the mirror.

The Fine Line (הקו הדק)

The thin line between danger and safety, between the sea and a safe shore slowly blurs, swirls, and unravels through a spoken word performance recounting a cycle of relational abuse. When is the fine line crossed?

Today, I <3 U _ _ _ _

An exploration of contemporary perspectives on love and romance, embracing non-traditional relationship structures and celebrating diverse expressions of sexuality and intimacy.

The Inheritance

Reckoning with the inheritance of childhood trauma, a past in ruins, and the possibility of redemption.

Anything With a Switch

A short movement study on sapphic longing and obsession.

Reparaciones

The poetry and images of "Reparaciones" invoke a cycle of the doing and undoing of fabrics and flesh, of the material and the social.

i was never the siren

This interdisciplinary film challenges and re-myths the Siren archetype, creating a polyphonic experience of voice, aspects of harana, poetic-intimacy, wrath, and states of kilig.