Call for Work: Cadence Video Poetry Festival 2025 & Artist-in-Residence Program

8th Annual Cadence Video Poetry Festival, Still Image: “Adhan” (2023) by Kamyar Mohsenin

Now in its eighth year, Cadence Video Poetry Festival is open for submissions from July 1st 2024 through January 15th 2025. The hybrid festival, which features screenings, workshops and discussions on poetry film, will take place in person in Seattle from Apr 25–27 & online Apr 25 – May 4. Selected video poems receive an artist’s payment.

According to Rana San, Co-Director/Co-Curator of the festival, “Participation in Cadence is open to work that is new or old, short or epic, premiere or seasoned traveler. If it combines text and moving image, we want to see it!”

The festival’s description is worth highlighting:

“Video poetry is language as light. As an art form, video poetry is lucid and liminal—on the threshold of the literary and the moving image. It articulates the poetic image visually, rather than metaphorically—it shifts words from page to screen, from ink to light. A video poem makes meaning that would not exist if text was without image, image without text.”

Cadence also puts on a Virtual Poetry Book Fair during each festival, the most recent of which is still available online.  

Cadence Submission Poster (2025)

Additionally, artists can also apply for the Cadence Artist-in-Residence program, which “provides resources and tools for the development of a new video poem to screen at the festival.” Launched in 2019 and open to Seattle-area residents, the program accepts applications from individual artists or collaborative teams. Those selected are granted access to the Northwest Film Forum’s film equipment and editing lab. The deadline for residency applications is December 15, 2024.

An online archive of selected award-winning videopoems from the festival is available on their website for those interested. However, screening the films requires ticket purchase from Northwest Film Forum’s Eventive virtual cinema. Some filmmakers recently selected for Cadence have made their work available on other platforms, such as “Only” (2023) a film by Maxine Flasher-Düzgüneş based on a Rebecca Foust poem, featured previously on Moving Poems.

The annual festival is organized by Chelsea Werner-Jatzke and Rana San and hosted at the independent film and arts nonprofit, Northwest Film Forum, founded in Seattle in 1995.  Cadence has become a fixture on the video poetry festival circuit so send in your work!

Submissions for the 8th Annual Cadence Video Poetry Festival are accepted through Film Freeway.

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