FEB 10-16 Fri-Thurs at 7, 9:30pm

Breakfast At Tiffany's

(Blake Edwards, USA, 1961, 35mm, 115 min.)

Based on a novella by Truman Capote, Blake Edwards' romance classic BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S recounts one man's fascination with a pretty, quirky neighbor in his new Manhattan apartment building. Audrey Hepburn, in her prime here, gives a kooky and intoxicating performance as Holly Golightly, by turns a sexy sophisticate and vulnerable sweety. George Axelrod's adaptation of Capote's novel, Hepburn's performance, and the film's art direction all received Oscar nominations, and Henri Mancini's superb music for the film won for best score. While the screen adaptation has more upbeat and romantic turns than Capote's original, TIFFANY'S is touching and surprisingly bold for its time- dreamy Hollywood comedy at its best.

JAN 20-FEB 26

Weathering the Storm: The Enduring Cinema of Mikio Naruse

Sponsored by Scarecrow Video, University of Washington East Asia Center

"A master the equal of Mizoguchi and Ozu." - Film Comment

"Sadly, like the exploited lives of his resilient, imperfect heroines, Naruse's cinema is also a quiet, unrecognized triumph." - SENSES OF CINEMA

Although the recognized equal of Ozu, Mizoguchi, and Kurosawa, master Japanese director Mikio Naruse (1905-1969) has slipped into near obscurity in North America. Revered by Kurosawa, deified in Japan and championed by our own Susan Sontag, Naruse finally gets a North American retrospective, the first in over three decades. Northwest Film Forum is showing ten Naruse masterpieces, most newly struck and restored. We have also commissioned an original Aono Jikken Ensemble score to the two silent films in the program.

Born in 1905 to a poor embroiderer and his wife who both died young, Naruse had to quit school early to earn a living. His intimate knowledge of the restraints of family bonds, class and money made him the great master of the shomen-geiki, a genre focused on lower-middle-class daily life. While his visual style varies, his cinema is consciously actor-oriented and it's the emotional rhythms of his characters that drive his films. Naruse's former assistant Akira Kurosawa compared his favorite director's cinema to "a deep river with a quiet surface disguising a fast-raging current underneath."

For Naruse, the struggles of women formed the centerpiece of life's banquet of sorrow. His former geishas, aging Ginza bar hostesses, destitute widows and single mothers search for happiness despite accumulating evidence of its absence. His films may be "invariably about disappointment," writes critic Phillip Lopate; however, "he himself does not disappoint, no more than does Chekhov, an artist he greatly resembles in stimulating our appetite for larger and more bitter doses of truth."

With sincere thanks to Cinematheque Ontario's extraordinary James Quandt for organizing this twenty-city retrospective and to the Japan Foundation for striking new prints, we are thrilled to offer Seattle audiences a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see the films of the fourth master of the golden age of Japanese cinema.

FEB 15-19

14th Annual Seattle Human Rights Film Festival

Amnesty International presents the premier showcase for feature films, documentaries and shorts focused on human rights as well as social and environmental issues. The festival features films that address violence against women, corporate responsibility, and economic and social human rights. Selected screenings will be followed by panel discussions with noted human rights activists and film producers and directors. This year's festival includes one evening devoted to films produced and/or directed by Northwest artists. Festival passes and single-screening tickets will be available after Jan 5 at www.brownpapertickets.com and at the door. For further information, call 206-782-5206.

FEB 20 Mon at 8pm

Third Eye Cinema

Northwest Film Forum presents Third Eye Cinema, a quarterly series of seminal experimental filmmaking curated by Seattle filmmakers Jon Behrens and Sarah Biagini. This installment features some of the most important, influential experimental films ever made, including Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali's UN CHIEN ANDALOU, Maya Deren's MESHES OF THE AFTERNOON and WITCH'S CRADLE, as well as new films by William Weiss, Joel Schlemowitz and more.

FEB 21 Tues at 8pm

Regular or Super: Views on Mies Van Der Rohe

(Joseph Hillel & Patrick Demers, 2004, BetaSP, 60 min.)

ONE NIGHT ONLY! SEATTLE PREMIERE!

In 1967, at the end of a five-decade career during which he designed more than 70 buildings, architect Mies van der Rohe designed a small gas station near Montreal. His final, simple structure serves as the point of departure for this examination of his entire body of work. Mies began his career in Germany and taught at the famed Bauhaus School of Art and Design in the 1930s. After the school was shut down by the Nazis, he emigrated to Chicago, where he began to refine a distinctive, modernist architectural style using glass and steel to create structures that cleverly integrated surrounding public space. REGULAR OR SUPER features stylish cinematography capturing many classic Mies buildings and includes impressions from such noted architects as Rem Koolhaas, Elizabeth Diller and Phyllis Lambert. Join us for this fascinating introduction to one of the 20th century's most influential architects.

FEB 22, Wed at 8pm

The Greater Circulation

(Antero Alli, USA, 2005, 93 min)

VISITING FILMMAKER

Tethered to the netherworld of ghosts, muses, and dreams, a poet transforms his lament over the tragic death and loss of his friend and fellow artist into an epic work of literature. In 1908 Rainer Maria Rilke wrote his "Requiem For a Friend" over two dream-filled nights at the Hotel Biron in Paris. A hundred years later an experimental theatre group in Berkeley California prepares to stage his "Requiem" as an avante garde performance ritual. Time shifts to and fro as impressions of the contemporary era begin haunting Rilke's night dreams and consequently, inspiring the creative processes of writing his tribute to artist Paula Modersohn-Becker, who unexpectedly died eighteen days after birthing her first child. Part bio-pic and narrative fiction, "The Greater Circulation" is a cinematic treatment of Rilke's powerful prose addressing the central drama of all women who feel torn between sacrificing their lives to their Art or to Motherhood. $8 at the door.

Read the review in Film Threat here

FEB 24-MARCH 2 Fri-Thurs at 7, 9pm

Darwin's Nightmare

(Hubert Sauper, Austria/Belgium/France, 2004, BetaSP, 107min)

SEATTLE PREMIERE!

Feeling more like a sci-fi/horror film than a documentary, DARWIN'S NIGHTMARE is the tale of two relentless killing machines: the Nile Perch which, over the course of a few decades, ate through everything that used to live in Tanzania's Lake Victoria; and the foreign capitalists who introduced that non-native fish in order to sell it to European consumers. Losing out to both of these were the local Tanzanians who once lived off the lake's bounty, and now, literally, are left with bones and rotting carcasses. Ex-Soviet cargo planes come daily to collect the latest catch in exchange for their incoming cargo of Kalashnikovs and ammunitions for the uncounted wars of Africa. This booming multinational industry of food and weapons has created an ungodly globalized alliance on the shores of the world's biggest tropical lake: an army of young fishermen, Indian factory owners, African ministers, EU-commissioners, Russian pilots and Tanzanian prostitutes.

"Harrowing, indispensable...An extraordinary work of visual journalism."-A.O. Scott, NEW YORK TIMES

FEB 25 Sat at 4pm FREE!

Taking the Heat: The First Women Firefighters of New York City

(Anirban Roy, USA, 2005, DVD, 83 min.)

SEATTLE PREMIERE!

Presented by Northwest Film Forum, ITVS, and KCTS Television

Screening followed by panel discussion!

TAKING THE HEAT explores the history of women firefighters in America and the price these women have paid to serve their communities. Free with RSVP email.