Cadence: Video Poetry Festival Co-Directors introduce a virtual showcase
Still from winner of Northwest Artist Award: Still Life with Small Objects of Perfect Choking Size by Erin Lynch & Keetje Kuipers
Cadence: Video Poetry Festival
Rana San and Chelsea Werner-Jatzke
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a tight-knit filmmaking community, it felt important to offer a space for this hybrid genre to shine on its own.
More than a film fest
As we dipped our toes in the first year, the festival featured two screenings, a generative workshop, and a panel discussion on the history and definition of video poetry with local poets, scholars, and Tom Konyves, Canadian video poetry pioneer and author of the 2011 Videopoetry: A Manifesto. Year two was an exponential expansion, hosting an artist-in-residence, youth and adult workshops, regional touring packages, and screenings co-curated with local arts organizations and inter-national festivals.
Poetic pivot
NWFF closed the theatre in March to curb the pandemic and it quickly became clear our physical space would remain dark for a while. Committed to engaging audiences and champi-oning media arts through this difficult time when so many artists were losing platforms for exhibition, within days of the closure, the Forum had created a system for online screenings.
Our final film selections for Cadence 2020 and decision to expand to 5 themed screenings along with a street-facing
installation in downtown Seattle took place in the moments preceding the Stay-at-Home order—Chelsea was the last per-son Rana visited in perper-son before quarantine became a reality.
During that meeting we were making final film selections for the festival, originally designed to have three screenings. We were struggling because of the volume of quality work that we loved and wanted to feature but the theater was booked with other films and programs. We discussed the likelihood that the festival would move online and decided to make the decision to go virtual so that we could expand the number of screenings without the constraints of the physical screening space and in this way, represent many more artists who we know are struggling during quarantine. Ultimately Seattle gov-ernor Jay Inslee’s “Stay Home, Stay Healthy” directive meant the festival had to be virtual or canceled. The youth and adult video poetry workshops, as well as the artist-in-residence components of the festival did have to be postponed.
In order to secure permission to present a virtual Cadence, we wrote personal messages asking filmmakers to consider show-casing their work in this new online festival format, leading with the steps we were taking to ensure the integrity of their work. Much to our delight, artists were equally eager to keep the festival alive and present their video poems in this way.
Still from winner of Best in Show Award: Sue Sada Was Here by Cindy Mochizuki
For exhibition, we created private Vimeo showcases for each screening, embedded on the corresponding website listings for viewing. Full priced festival passes were available, while pricing for each individual showcase was $0-25 sliding scale pay-what-you-can to keep it accessible and support NWFF through the closure. Registrants received the link and pass-word 30 min prior to the screening, and the showcases were each active for 24 hours to ensure access across time zones.
Passwords were deactivated at the end of the screening, so in some ways, the experience was similar to that of showing up to a theatrical screening, albeit in our home theatres.
Stay home, staying connected
We’re delighted by the depth of human connection our festival achieved this year despite being confined to a virtual space, which often feels like the antithesis of intimacy. One goal of Cadence: Video Poetry Festival is to further artistic
Capture from Cadence: Video Poetry Festival artist talk
dialogue around the medium, something we were concerned would not take place as deeply this year with our youth and adult workshops and artist residency being postponed. In the end, shifting online actually allowed us to include more of the amazing video poem submissions and, in an extension of Northwest Film Forum’s public series of virtual talks, the festival facilitated a Zoom conversation with 27 of the artists from all over the world.
During Cadence [Online], we connected deeply with peo-ple we never would have otherwise met, received festival feedback written in poetic verse, and sold more festival passes, with more viewers purchasing tickets at the $25 level than the $20 level and audiences tuning in from around the world and across all US time zones. More people were able to watch the screenings than ever before. Five video poetry screen-ings in Seattle may have oversaturated the local audience for this unique medium. But five screenings for the artists, their friends and family, and video poetry enthusiasts from all over the globe to tune in proved to be sought after and truly appreciated.
We are devastated by the worldwide pandemic threatening the wellbeing of so many, and in our search for silver linings, encouraged by our artistic community’s resilience—coming together to further dialogue and deepen alliances through me-dia. The interaction and engagement unique to the constraints of quarantine has been inspiring, but it is the video poems themselves, available to more viewers than ever before, that truly thrill us. Whatever the medium for viewing, Cadence will continue to grow and adapt to support the generation and exhibition of new video poetry in the region and beyond.