FALL 2007
THURS, AUG 30 at 6pm
SPECIAL EVENT
NORTHWEST FILM FORUM AND AIGA-SEATTLE PRESENT:
LIVING TYPOGRAPHY, DYING TYPOGRAPHY:
AN EVENING WITH KYLE COOPER
AN EVENING WITH KYLE COOPER
Tickets $15/NWFF and AIGA members, $20/general
"Live-action director, graphic designer, animator, typographer – Kyle Cooper employs any technique, any materials to attain his goal: to capture the attention of the audience, take it hostage and manipulate its emotions and expectations in order to plunge it in the mood of the motion picture that is going to be shown on the screen." -Cesare Cioni, Future Film Festival, Bologna, Italy. AIGA Seattle and Northwest Film Forum are thrilled to host this premium event with Kyle Cooper, president and founder of Prologue Films. Cooper will present his work, answer questions, and mingle with the crowd. The pre-show reception and seating will begin at 6pm, and the main program will begin at 7pm. Join us for an inspiring evening with this film-industry icon. Seating is limited so get your tickets now!
Read about Kyle Cooper in Wired Magazine
AUGUST 31 - SEPTEMBER 6, Fri - Thurs at 7 & 9:15pm (plus Sat - Sun at 3 & 5pm)
NEW 35MM PRINT
MANHATTAN
Friday 7pm show with introduction by Richard Jameson, former editor of Film Comment and Movietone News
(Woody Allen, USA, 1979, 35mm, 96 min)
Woody Allen finished his first decade of filmmaking with one of his greatest and most deliberately artistic films, an ecstatic love letter to his hometown, Manhattan. Allen's rhapsodic city-symphony is presented here in a new 35mm print that shows off its full black-and-white glory. Isaac Davis (Allen) is torn between two girlfriends: the very young and earnest Tracy (Mariel Hemingway), and indecisive pseudo-intellectual Mary Wilkie (Diane Keaton). During this time, Mary also has an on-off affair with Yale (Michael Murphy, who had just played another philandering husband in AN UNMARRIED WOMAN). To complicate things further, Isaac quits his day job to write a novel, while trying to stop his ex-wife (Meryl Streep) from publishing a tell-all book of their marriage. The film's glorious all-Gershwin score, its breathtakingly elegant black-and-white widescreen cinematography by Gordon Willis (THE GODFATHER), its deeply shaded performances, and its witty, Oscar-nominated screenplay make it a modern masterpiece of cinema that must be experienced on the big screen!
"Materialized out of the void as the one truly great American film of the '70s." -Andrew Sarris, THE VILLAGE VOICE
SEPTEMBER 4, Tues at 8pm
SEARCH AND RESCUE: BERGMAN
Free for members!
In memory of the great Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman, who passed away in July, we are pleased to present a recently unearthed 16mm print of a Swedish-made documentary on the director. Join us for this rarely seen portrait of the master of cinema.
Click here to watch an interview with Bergman
SEPTEMBER 7 - 9 Fri - Sun at 5pm (plus Sat & Sun at 3pm)
DIRECTOR IN ATTENDANCE
DANCE PARTY, USA
(Aaron Katz, USA, 2006, BETA-SP, 66 min)
Like most teenagers, Jessica (Anna Kavan) has trouble connecting with people around her, even her best friend Christie. Then she crosses paths with Gus (Cole Pennsinger), another apathetic seventeen-year-old who spends most of his time bragging to his best friend Bill about his sexual escapades and drug use. Surprisingly, when Gus meets Jessica at the local 4th of July party, he puts his swagger aside and feels comfortable enough to open up to her. Throughout the course of the night, Gus reveals to Jessica his darkest secret. And that's when everything changes . . . Aaron Katz's pitch perfect portrait of modern teen life is as simple as it is effective. Shot on a shoestring budget and boasting great performances from newcomers Anna Kavan and Cole Pensinger, DANCE PARTY, USA is an edgy little treasure worth exploring.
Click here to visit the DANCE PARTY, USA myspace page
"Delving beneath skin level and examining the mind of an 18-next-week boy, DANCE PARTY is challenging, gritty, and true."-Darcie Stevens, AUSTIN CHRONICLE
SEPTEMBER 7 - 9, Fri - Sun at 7 & 9:15pm
DIRECTOR IN ATTENDANCE
QUIET CITY
(Aaron Katz, USA, 2007, BETA-SP, 81 min)
It's not often a film comes along that finds a new way to depict New York City, but QUIET CITY manages to do just that quite beautifully. The New York depicted by director Aaron Katz (DANCE PARTY, USA) is indeed a quiet place, full of listless hours, intriguing strangers, and endless promise. Twenty-one-year-old Jamie (Erin Fisher) has traveled from Atlanta to Brooklyn to hang out with a friend, but Jamie doesn't know her way around town, and her friend's not answering her phone. A chance encounter in a subway station attaches Jamie to Charlie (Cris Lankenau), a shy, soft-spoken New Yorker of the indie-rock set. The two inch closer together as they kill time in diners, art galleries, and hipster parties -- slowly but surely distancing themselves from the lives they led before they met. A hit at this year's South by Southwest festival, Katz's moving indie film confidently captures the small, quiet moments of our life that in retrospect may scream out with major significance. QUIET CITY also expresses a deep belief that today's urban landscape is a place of mystery, and confirms Katz's status as a young director to watch. A point of interest: Joe Swanberg, the director of the SXSW gem HANNAH TAKES THE STAIRS, plays Adam in the comical coleslaw scene.
Click here to visit the QUIET CITY myspace page
"Tender and sad, it is a
fully realized work of mumblecore poetry."-Stephen Holden, NY TIMES
"It's sparse and simple but also colorful and interesting."-FILM THREAT
SEPTEMBER 7 - 13, Fri - Thurs at 7 & 9:15pm
SEATTLE PREMIERE
CZECH DREAM
Sponsored by the UW Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures
(Vit Klusak and Filip Remunda, Czech Republic, 2005, 35mm, 90 min)
Hey, Prague--you got Punk'd! This smash international documentary hit, a darling of festival-goers and critics alike, has a set-up so wickedly delicious it's easy to forget we are witnessing real events as they unfold. Vit and Filip are two smart and wryly humorous Czech film students who decide to create an elaborate ad campaign for an imaginary new "hypermarket." One part prank, two parts sly wink at their post-communist consumerist society, the scheme is so clever that we're on the side of the filmmakers before we know it. Enlisting the aid of the best in the advertising industry, they saturate Prague with brilliant print, radio and TV spots that work the population into frenzy. The much-hyped opening day finds thousands of people standing at a gate looking across an expansive field at a giant, convincing façade. Besides organizing a deception that attracted international media coverage, they also constructed an impressive and logical analysis of a world in which consumption and shopping have become ends in themselves.
Click here to visit CZECH DREAM'S official website
"The Comedy of Capitalism"-Stephen Holden, THE NEW YORK TIMES,
"Plays like JACKASS directed by Lars Von Trier."-BBC
SEPTEMBER 7, Fri at 5pm (date has changed from listing in printed calendar)
FILMMAKER'S SALOON
IS INCEST BEST? MUMBLECORE & AMERICAN INDEPENDENT CINEMA
$3/NWFF members, $5/general
NWFF's quarterly Filmmaker's Saloon is a panel discussion and socializing event for the local film community. At South by Southwest 2005, Mutual Appreciation sound mixer Eric Masunaga half-jokingly coined a name for a mini-movement or scene or school or what-have-you. It's made up of filmmakers around the country who were then working independently, producing microbudgeted slices of twenty-something life, marked by fumbling inarticulate conversation and an exacting clarity in their attention to interpersonal dynamics. During the festival, a group of these filmmakers (Joe Swanberg, Aaron Katz, Bryan Poyser, Andrew Bujalski, Dia Sokol, and the brothers Duplass, among others) entertained themselves arguing over whether the spelling should be "mumblecore"or "mumblecorps."Two years later, these filmmakers are no longer working independently of each other. Their ranks have expanded, and their work is maturing. What's the deal with this mumblecore gang; how is everyone connected within this social/artistic network? Does this interconnectedness yield better films or just an insulated community? Join us for a conversation hitting at the center of one of the most interesting movements in contemporary American cinema.
Panelists include Mark Duplass, Aaron Katz, and Lynn Shelton.
The forum will be moderated by Alex Lipschultz. Alex worked with Andrew Bujalski assisting with distribution and DVD special features for MUTUAL APPRECIATION, with Mark and Jay Duplass coordinating grassroots marketing for THE PUFFY CHAIR, and with Aaron Katz recording sound on QUIET CITY. He is currently the unit publicist on TRUE ADOLESCENTS, a film by Bellingham-native Craig Johnson.
SEPTEMBER 13, Thurs at 7pm
SPECIAL PRESENTATION
YOU'RE LOOKIN' AT COUNTRY
Sponsored by Linda's Tavern, KEXP and Easy Street Records
$10/NWFF members, $12/general
Vintage performance footage from the Golden Era of Country Music and a live performance by singer/songwriter and Sirius Radio "Outlaw Country" DJ Dallas Wayne
Many years ago, a spectacular breed of superhumans came from a magical Neverland beyond the sunset. Armed with musical instruments, finely stitched jewel encrusted clothing and gravity defying hairstyles, their mission was to console and liberate the common man by giving voice to his struggles. While their names sounded homespun - Hank, Webb, Lefty, Ernest, Dolly, Connie, Porter, Buck, Loretta, George, Johnny- their music transcended the earthly emotions, tragedies and triumphs they sang about. Lucky for us, some of their performances were captured in motion picture extravaganzas and television spectaculars. Join us for rarely seen performance footage of Country Music giants in their heyday, narrated by their contemporary acolyte and torchbearer, singer/songwriter and celebrated Sirius Radio "Outlaw Country"DJ, Dallas Wayne. It will be followed by a live performance by Wayne, whose songs will not only take you back to the glory days of country music, but also give you hope for its future. Refreshments available.
"Wayne continues to write songs that better-known players in the world of country music should bow before."-David Greenberger, NO DEPRESSION
"I'm telling you, this old boy should be in the f*cking Country Music Hall of Fame." -Crispin Sartwell, NEW YORK PRESS
SEPTEMBER 14 - 19, Fri - Weds at 7 & 9:15pm
STRANGE CULTURE
Sponsored by ACLU of Washington
(Lynn Herschman Leeson, USA, 2006, BETA-SP, 75min)
Everything changed for conceptual artist Steve Kurtz on the morning of May 11, 2004, when he awoke to discover that his 45-year-old wife, Hope, had died in her sleep. A domestic tragedy turned into a Kafkaesque nightmare. The paramedics he summoned, alarmed by the Petri dishes, scientific equipment and books in his house, reported him to the FBI as a suspected bio-terrorist. The founders of the Critical Art Ensemble, Kurtz and his wife had been working on an installation about the emergence of biotechnology for the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. The live cultures they were using were as harmless as yogurt, but a Hazmat team from Quantico descended on their home, arrested Kurtz, carried away his equipment, computers and papers, and seized his wife's body from the coroner. Lynn Hershman Leeson's unconventional documentary, features Kurtz himself and actors Tilda Swinton, Peter Coyote, Thomas Jay Ryan and Josh Kornbluth. It combines reenactments and interviews to tell a tale of government overreaction that would be comic if it weren't appalling and still unresolved nearly three years later. Though cleared of bio-terrorism, Kurtz still faces federal indictments that could result in a long prison term. Strange Culture is a story not only of post-9/11 paranoia but also of the clash between the "strange culture"of art and dissent and a Justice Department unwilling to admit it has made a mistake.
Aaron Caplan, staff attorney for the ACLU of Washington, will introduce the film and answer questions from the audience after both shows on September 17.
Nominated for Best Documentary at the 2007 Edinburgh Film Festival
SEPTEMBER 14 - 19 Fri - Weds at 7 & 9:15pm (plus Sat – Sun at 3 & 5pm)
SEATTLE PREMIERE
SUMMERCAMP!
(Sarah Price and Bradley Beesley, USA, 2006, 85 min)
The exclamation point says a lot. SUMMERCAMP! starts with all of the excitement and nervous energy that you remember from your first days jumping into these unique, impromptu youth communities. Directors Bradley Beesley (FEARLESS FREAKS, OKIE NOODLING) and Sarah Price (AMERICAN MOVIE, THE YES MEN) set a tone that can only be described as "super fun". But beyond the talent shows, campfires and clowning, dramas unfold. The kids- on vacation not only from parents and school but also from self doubt- are surprisingly honest, articulate and caring. With freewheeling camerawork and a great soundtrack by The Flaming Lips, SUMMERCAMP! captures the precious moments of preteen freedom like no other film, and reminds us that being a kid was fun. There's absolutely no way to walk out of this film without a grin on your face. All ages welcome!
"Pure and heartbreaking, if you don't relate to this film you were never a kid."-CHICAGO TRIBUNE
"The saddest, sweetest, most magical and most deeply affecting movie of the season."-SALON.COM
SEPTEMBER 16, Sun at 3pm
SPECIAL LIVE PRESENTATION
GUSTAFER YELLOWGOLD
Sponsored by KBCS Radio, Seattle International Children's Festival, and Izilla Toys
$10/NWFF members and kids, $12/general
Gustafer Yellowgold is a character from the Sun who befriends otherwise friendless beings such as an eel, a flightless pterodactyl, a crying green bee, and a dragon who makes his home in a fireplace. In this live show, Morgan Taylor's catchy narrative songs engage the audience in a truly different multimedia experience that accompanies animated illustrations of Gustafer and his friends. The PORTLAND PRESS HERALD exclaimed, "Where music met art was a magical little place, and Taylor was terrific in bringing us there."Live shows accompanied by Taylor's music have opened in venues for all ages in New York, as well as on tour in America and Europe, and as an opener for Wilco and The Polyphonic Spree. People of all ages can appreciate and enjoy following Gustafer and his friends on their adventures on Earth. All ages welcome!
Click here to visit the official website
"Beatlesque...very beautiful."-TIME OUT NEW YORK KIDS
"A cross between 'Yellow Submarine' and Dr. Seuss, filtered through the lens of the Lower East Side."-THE NEW YORK TIMES
SEPTEMBER 20, Thurs at 7pm
FREE!
SLIDELUCK POTSHOW
Sponsored by Henry Art Gallery
Everyone loves a slideshow and a family-style potluck; combine them and you've got SLIDELUCK POTSHOW, where members of the visual art, photography, and media communities gather to share and celebrate locally made art in one night. The show's appetizer is a potluck dinner with home-cooked delights brought by the viewers and participants themselves. The main course is a two-act slideshow projected on both of NWFF's screens, consisting of a series of short multimedia presentations by contributors ranging from the very accomplished to the up and coming. Photojournalists, painters, sculptors, comedians, fashion and fine-art photographers - amateur and professional alike - submit their digital slides for consideration. Join us as we fill NWFF with art and community!
Click here to visit the official website
SEPTEMBER 21 - 27, Fri - Thurs at 7 & 9:15pm
NEW 35MM PRINT
MALA NOCHE
(Gus Van Sant, USA, 1985, 35mm, 78 min)
Made on a shoestring budget and shot in black and white, Gus Van Sant's MALA NOCHE remains touching and accessible. It's the love story of a lonely convenience store clerk and the young Mexican immigrant he befriends. Played out in the cheap hotel rooms of Portland's skid row, MALA NOCHE was one of the earliest films to take the gay lifestyle seriously. Even as late as the mid-1980s when this film was made, few film-makers had tackled stories dealing with homosexual romance on such a basic and realistic level. Van Sant brought to the film the special consciousness we would see again in later films such as MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO. Based on the Walt Curtis autobiographical novel of the same name, MALA NOCHE is a story of amour fou. Walt is madly in love with a young illegal Mexican immigrant. However, the object of his unrequited affection does not speak any English and finds Walt strange and undesirable. Walt attempts to create whatever kind of bond he can. The gritty reality of loving someone from another culture and perhaps being used by them is crafts a classic love story.
Click here to visit the official website "This 1985 film's absolute freedom from clichés is genuinely refreshing; looking at it again after Van Sant's subsequent DRUGSTORE COWBOY, I found it every bit as good and in some ways even more impressive than the later film. It shouldn't be missed."-CHICAGO READER
SEPTEMBER 21 - 27, Fri - Thurs at 7 & 9:15pm
SEATTLE THEATRICAL PREMIERE
THE DEVIL CAME ON HORSEBACK
Sponsored by the Amnesty International Human Rights Film Festival
(Annie Sundberg, Ricki Stern, USA, 2007, 35mm, 88 min)
When Brian Steidle took a job as an unarmed observer in the Darfur region of the Sudan, it's safe to say that he had no idea what he was about to encounter. Armed with only a camera, the former Marine captain found himself a helpless observer to genocide. The Arab-controlled government offered active support to the Janjaweed militias, who then carried out systematic torture, rape and murder against local villages and tribes. Journalists couldn't get in, but when Steidle got out, his feelings of outrage and powerlessness drove him to leak his photos to the press. Demonstrating the same humanistic approach and compassionate eye for telling detail as Steidle, filmmakers Annie Sundberg and Ricki Stern (THE TRIALS OF DARYL HUNT) bear witness to tragedy as they follow the photographer from his naive arrival in Sudan through his conscience-driven rise as an activist. As he begins to realize that the Sudanese government is complicit in the genocide, Steidle also must come to terms with his own helplessness as an observer, both in Darfur and at home. Winner of the Lena Sharpe Award, Women in Cinema Persistence of Vision Award and Best Documentary at the Seattle International Film Festival
Click here to visit the official website
"An outstanding film. It's superb, period."-THE NEW YORK TIMES
SEPTEMBER 22 - 23, Sat - Sun at 1 & 4 pm
THE SOUND OF MUSIC
Sponsored by Broadway Market Video
(Robert Wise, USA, 1965, 35mm, 174 min)
Here it is - the ultimate in epic 1960s musical entertainment! Join us for the life, loves, and adventures of Maria, the spirited young lady who signs on as a governess for seven unruly Austrian children, not knowing she will eventually become the matriarch of the Von Trapp Family Singers. In the 42 years that have passed since the film's premiere, none of its magic has dimmed, and generations have grown up with the film's unsurpassed songs, characters, and sweeping cinematography etched in their hearts and minds. Don't miss this chance to see it once again, or introduce your own children to it for the first time, in all its big-screen glory. Appropriate for all ages.
"The movie has almost everything: music, romance, kids, spectacular scenery, religion, sentiment, comedy high and low, and, at the end, intrigue and adventure. -Michael Wilmington, CHICAGO TRIBUNE
SEPTEMBER 28 - 30, Fri - Sun at 7pm
NEW 35MM PRINT
A ZED & TWO NOUGHTS
(Peter Greenaway, UK / Netherlands, 1985, 35mm, 115 min)
Oliver Deuce (Eric Deacon), a successful doctor, experiences a life changing event when his wife is in a car accident. He and his twin brother Oswald, who spends much of his time researching how carcasses decay at the local zoo, become involved with the other driver from the accident, Alba Bewick (Andrea Ferreol). Together they uncover dubious trafficking in zoo property.
SEPTEMBER 28 - 30, Fri - Sun at 9:15pm
NEW 35MM PRINTTHE DRAUGHTMAN'S CONTRACT
(Peter Greenaway, UK, 1982, 35mm, 103 min)
Mrs. Herbert (Janet Suzman) and her husband (Dave Hill) are having some marital difficulties, so Mr. Herbert decides to take a two-week holiday by himself. To surprise him on his return, Mrs. Herbert commissions an artist (Anthony Higgins) to paint twelve portraits of their estate. The artist agrees, but on the condition that Mrs. Herbert lend him the use of her bodily favors for those two weeks. When Mr. Herbert is found dead in his own moat at the end of those two weeks, the artist is the prime suspect, and Mrs. Herbert believes the mystery can be solved by close examination of the paintings. Greenaway's film feels a bit like BLOW-UP, but examines a world far stranger than the one of its setting. It feels as though the film takes place in a parallel universe rather than the 17th century. In English, German & Dutch with English subtitles.
SEPTEMBER 28 - OCTOBER 3, Fri - Weds at 7 & 9:15pm
NORTHWEST PREMIERE
HANNAH TAKES THE STAIRS
(Joe Swanberg, USA, 2007, BETA-SP, 84 Min)
Joe Swanberg (LOL, YOUNG AMERICAN BODIES) is one of the leading voices in a new revolution taking place in front of our eyes; intimate stories of the lives of young people, told using low-budget, often digital filmmaking tools. In HANNAH TAKES THE STAIRS, Swanberg tells the tale of Hannah (Greta Gerwig), a young writer who wants to find a relationship that works. As she works her way through relationship after relationship, Hannah's personal and professional life is thrown into crisis. A charming film featuring wondrously natural performances, HANNAH TAKES THE STAIRS showcases a new kind of intimate, independent filmmaking that is shaping the future of the movies. Swanberg's gifted cast includes a dynamic who's-who of up-and-coming American directors, including Andrew Bujalski (MUTUAL APPRECIATION), Todd Rohal (GUATEMALAN HANDSHAKE ) and Ry Russo-Young (ORPHANS). The film introduces the "mumblecore"crowd to those discerning audiences that have embraced fresh, offbeat visions like Miranda July's ME AND YOU AND EVERYONE WE KNOW.
SEPTEMBER 29, Sat at 4pm
FREE!
ITVS Community Cinema and Northwest Film Forum Present:
PLEASE VOTE FOR ME
(Weijun Chen, China, 2007, DVD, 55 min)
Want to find out how democracy really works? Then head to China, where three eight-year-old students - a charismatic challenger, a ruthless incumbent, and a thoughtful outsider - all campaign for the coveted position of class monitor in a third grade classroom in Wuhan, China. Get ready for hot debates, backstabbing, and secret alliances! Move over Little League! A real sport is coming, and it's called democracy. Admission free with RSVP to vote4me@communitycinema.org or by calling (800) 930-6060.
OCTOBER 4 - 11
10TH ANNUAL LOCAL SIGHTINGS FILM FESTIVAL
There's no better way to celebrate 10 years of partying hard with local filmmakers than with this year's hair-raising annual Local Sightings Film Festival! The festival will wow and amaze with its established formula of showcasing a cacophony of the region's most recent mind-enhancing documentaries, eye-tingling narratives, and sensory-smashing experimental creations. While the full schedule will be not available online until September 21, we can tease your taste buds by disclosing our closing night gala presentation, a special live presentation of Guy Maddin's BRAND UPON THE BRAIN! A project brought to life by The Film Company, NWFF and a small army of Seattle cast and crew, this is Guy Maddin at his strangest and naughtiest. Be sure to catch the Local Sightings fever by joining us at our fabulous, and always epic, opening night party and we'll keep all your five senses alive and burning for eight days of cinematic sizzle!
OCTOBER 10 - 15
SEATTLE PREMIERE!
BRAND UPON THE BRAIN!
OCTOBER 10 - 11, Special Live Cinematic Spectacle at the Cinerama (Wed-Thurs at 8pm - Box office opens for day-of-show ticketing and will-call at 7pm) - TICKETS FOR THURSDAY NIGHT AVAILABLE AT THE CINERAMA BOX OFFICE BEGINNING AT 7PM
OCTOBER 12 - 15, 35mm print-run at NWFF (Fri-Mon at 7, 9:15pm) - BUY TICKETS NOW
(Guy Maddin, USA/Canada, 2006, 35mm, 95 min)
Light a path for the risen one, he lives! Surreal, satiric and surprisingly touching, Guy Maddin's remembrance in twelve chapters finally makes it way to Seattle! What better context for BRAND UPON THE BRAIN! than in NWFF's Local Sightings Film Festival? We're pleased to present two live performances at the Cinerama, and four nights of the print at NWFF of perhaps the greatest work of cinema to have ever been produced by and with Seattleites. Maddin doesn't just make movies -- he makes unique, exquisitely beautiful fetish objects for film lovers, harking back to the early, euphoric days of silent cinema. Maddin's tale of horror, lesbianism and a domineering mother works first as camp before it plunges into one of the strangest, and most potent, metaphors for the childhood traumas buried during adulthood, but confronted at the end of a parent's life. Puppy love and adult lust converge in this grainy, humor-ridden "silent movie" that will certainly leave a brand upon your brain.
More about BRAND UPON THE BRAIN!
Click here to visit the official website
OCTOBER 12 – 21
THE 12TH ANNUAL SEATTLE LESBIAN & GAY FILM FESTIVAL
Festival screenings, parties, and receptions are held at various venues around town, including the Northwest Film Forum, the Cinerama Theatre, the Harvard Exit Theatre and the Broadway Performance Hall. The festival is the largest of its kind in the Pacific Northwest, and has garnered national recognition for showcasing extraordinary and award-winning work such as the premieres of TRANSAMERICA and SHORTBUS. Local filmmaking is also highlighted through short film programs and a special Super 8 Film Challenge. This year, the festival will feature more than 70 film programs exhibiting over 165 films and videos from across the globe.
For complete schedule info and to purchase tickets, visit www.seattlequeerfilm.org
OCTOBER 13 - 14, Sat - Sun at 1 & 4 pm
MARY POPPINS
Sponsored by Broadway Market Video
(Robert Stevenson, USA, 1964, 35mm, 139 min)
An impossibly luminous Julie Andrews trills and thrills in Walt Disney's most magical masterpiece of family entertainment. Mary Poppins, of course, is the perfect nanny, who descends by umbrella parachute to rescue a London family from stuffy Edwardian unhappiness. Andrews, who Jack Warner had deigned not photogenic enough to star in the film version of MY FAIR LADY, got her revenge (served with a spoonful of sugar) when she won the Academy Award for this unforgettable Hollywood film debut. Also starring Dick Van Dyke, Glynnis Johns, David Tomlison, and the great Jane Darwell in her last screen performance (as the Bird Lady). Appropriate for all ages.
Recreate MARY POPPINS magic! Check out The Dance of the Penguins kids workshop happening Oct. 5 & 12
"In a way, Mary Poppins is the culmination of Walt's career in that it draws on everything he learned how to do - blending animation and live action, integrating songs with story and of course, not the least, his great eye for talent."-Leonard Maltin
OCTOBER 22, Mon at 7pm
THIRD EYE CINEMA AND NWFF PRESENT:
AN EVENING WITH JAMES BENNING
ONE WAY BOOGIE WOOGIE/27 YEARS LATER
Tickets $8/members, $10/general
(James Benning, USA, 2005, 16mm, 120 min)
In 1977, concerned about the decaying nature of his native Milwaukee, James Benning shot ONE WAY BOOGIE WOOGIE, an hour long film composed of 60 shots of industrial urban landscape: smokestacks, sidewalks, three Volkswagens, people and animals here and there. In characteristic fashion, Benning's apparently simple, static shots are exercises in meticulous artistic composition, and his careful sequencing ensures that the director's playful humor is given full expression. Twenty-seven years later, Benning returned to Milwaukee to shoot "the same film again."The shot-by-shot restaging uses very obviously different stock - the colors are brighter and there's a distinctly modern tone. Buildings are showing their age, or gone completely, and the same is true of the people. Seen together, these two films offer a cogent illustration of how America has changed in the intervening years, fraying in places and gentrified in others. Benning's method and his affinity with his subjects are extraordinary. He completely absorbs the landscape, imbues it with geo-political and cultural relevance, and re-presents it to us in a unique mix of formal rigor and mischievous invention. NWFF is honored to have Benning in attendance to discuss this work.
Click here to visit the Third Eye Cinema website
OCTOBER 23 – 25, Tues – Thurs at 7 & 9:15pm
SEATTLE PREMIERE
ANITA O'DAY: THE LIFE OF A JAZZ SINGER
Co-presented by Northwest Film Forum and the Earshot Jazz Festival
Sponsored by La Spiga, Easy Street Records and kbcs 91.3fm
(Ian McCrudden, Robbie Cavolina, 2007, USA, 90 minutes)
This new film is the first definitive documentary on the life of legendary jazz vocalist Anita O' Day, who passed away last fall. The swing era singer broke race barriers, lived her life boldly and unconventionally, and survived alcoholism, rape, heroin addiction and jail time to become a true jazz icon. In candid interviews with the feisty legend herself, O'Day gives a poignant and often funny account of her jazz odyssey spanning seven decades and 82 albums. The film showcases rare and never before seen footage of O'Day performing with the likes of Gene Krupa, Roy Eldridge, Louis Armstrong and Hoagy Carmichael, as well as interviews with vocalists, arrangers, TV personalities and friends. An intimate and deeply moving tribute to a jazz diva extraordinaire, THE LIFE OF A JAZZ SINGER zips along at the speed of her renowned up-tempo interpretation of "Sweet Georgia Brown."
Click here to see a trailer and visit the official website
"A masterpiece of the medium, the documentary relates her extraordinary life story as a musician with no softened edges and plenty of extended musical passages."- LA WEEKLY
OCT 23 – 25, Tues - Thurs at 7 & 9:15pm
NEWLY RESTORED
NOT AVAILABLE ON DVD
IMAGINE THE SOUND
Co-presented by Northwest Film Forum and the Earshot Jazz Festival
Sponsored by La Spiga, Easy Street Records and kbcs 91.3fm
(Ron Mann, Canada, 1981, BETA-SP, 90 minutes)
The award winning first film from Canadian documentary filmmaker Ron Mann, IMAGINE THE SOUND stands as one of the best documents of free-jazz ever made. More than 25 years ago, Mann teamed up with musician and Coda Magazine editor Bill Smith to profile four artists who were influential in the evolution of jazz into a free-form musical art beginning in the early '60s. The film catches pioneering pianists Cecil Taylor and Paul Bley, tenor saxophonist Archie Shepp, and trumpet player Bill Dixon in dynamic performances and fascinating interviews shedding light on their approaches to music and life and the history of this unique musical genre. An eloquent tribute to unparalleled jazz innovators, IMAGINE THE SOUND has been called "The Last Waltz of jazz films."Long unavailable, we're pleased to present a special engagement of a new digital restoration this rarely seen jazz document.
Click here to visit the website
"Essential viewing and listening for free-jazz devotees."–Jonathan Rosenbaum, CHICAGO READER
OCTOBER 26, Fri at 7 & 9:15pm
NOT AVAILABLE ON VIDEO
STOLEN DESIRE
(Shohei Imamura, Japan, 1958, 35mm, 92 min)
STOLEN DESIRE is a pitch-perfect film noir about a gang of thieves who return to a formerly bombed out neighborhood to retrieve their buried stash of illegal morphine. But a pharmacy has been built on the burial site and they wind up renting the house across the street and tunneling into the pharmacy basement to steal back their money. STOLEN DESIRE is very dark but very funny.
OCTOBER 26 – NOVEMBER 1, Fri – Thurs at 7 & 9:15pm
NEW 35MM PRINT
NOT ON VIDEO
LET'S GET LOST
Co-presented by Northwest Film Forum and the Earshot Jazz Festival
Sponsored by La Spiga, Easy Street Records and kbcs 91.3fm
(Bruce Weber, USA, 1988, 35mm, 119 min)
In the 1950s, Chet Baker's jazz trumpeting, edgy, intimate crooning and pretty boy good looks epitomized West Coast "cool."When famed photographer Bruce Weber caught up with him three decades later, time and drug addiction had ravaged his life and angelic beauty with deep valleys and crevasses. LET'S GET LOST artfully intercuts gorgeous black and white footage of the gaunt latter-day Baker, with images of the young jazz trumpeter in iconic 1950s early television and film appearances and photographs by William Claxton. Shot by Weber and cinematographer Jeff Preiss during what would turn out to be Baker's final year, the film also includes interviews with friends, family, lovers and associates. This transfixing, bittersweet portrait of the jazz legend won the Critics' Prize at the Venice Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award. Nearly 20 years since its premiere and nearly 15 since it has been seen in any medium, we're pleased to present a brand new 35mm print of a recent restoration done by Weber himself.
"Jazz music and film have rarely been spun together more evocatively."–Stephen Holden, NEW YORK TIMES
"It's the music doc as film noir, with a vampirish city-of-night gleam that suits the subject and his darkly romantic sound."-Jim Ridley, THE VILLAGE VOICE
OCTOBER 27, Sat at 4pm
FREE!
ITVS Community Cinema AND NWFF PRESENT
MISS NAVAJO
(Billy Luther, 2007, USA, DVD, 60 min)
How many beauty contestants can say "I competed in a pageant where I butchered a sheep?"Crystal Frazier can. Follow this timid, self-proclaimed tomboy as she makes bread, weaves a rug, and sweats her way through a language quiz -- and that's just the first day on her quest to become the new "Miss Navajo." Admission free with RSVP to navajo@communitycinema.org or by calling (800) 930-6060.
OCTOBER 27 at 5pm
SELECTED SHORTS
Tickets available at the box office the night of show only
An evening of eclectic and entertaining films from the University of
Washington Libraries Special Collections historical film archive
presented by the Visual Materials Curator, Nicolette Bromberg.
These short films are from the 1930s through the 1970s and include
glimpses of the famous (Pablo Picasso) and the unknown (Farmer
Jones). Some of the films, such as the 1946 film, "Spain in Exile"
and a home movie made by a Japanese-American in the 1930s, have
direct parallels to today's events. The films are a mix of the
serious and the strange and include such titles as, "Say It Loud, I'm
Black and I'm Proud" (ca. 1970), "Old Yankee Peanut Butter" (1950s),
"Evergreen Empire" (1939), "Pffft" (ca. 1955), "Mrs. Hazard's
House" (ca. 1960s) and others. Most of these films are rare or one of
a kind and have not been available for public viewing. They were
recently preserved by the University of Washington Libraries as part
of an ongoing effort to save our visual history and to make it
accessible to the public and are presented as part of UNESCO's World
Day for Audiovisual Heritage.
More information
OCTOBER 27, Sat at 8 and 9:15pm
NOT AVAILABLE ON VIDEO
NISHI GINZA STATION
(Shohei Imamura, 1958, Japan, 35mm, 52 min)
NISHI GINZA STATION will remind audiences of Jacques Demy and Frank Tashlin. The control of the Nikkatsu studio over the project was total; they commissioned a showcase film for hot singer Frank Nagai. Imamura pleaded tone deafness, but the studio retorted that he could make whatever film he wanted as long as the popular title song was repeated three times. A drugstore owner is seized by tropical island daydreams so vivid that he loses control of himself in public. His wife, fearing that he'll be unfaithful to her, asks another woman to look after him while she's away. The new couple wind up on a small boat in a storm, and soon think they've been blown all the way to his tropical isle. A wry comment on how thoroughly civilization has tamed our most libidinous fantasies, NISHI GINZA STATION is "the unexpected discovery" of the Imamura retrospective!
OCTOBER 28, Sun at 7 & 9:15pm
NOT AVAILABLE ON VIDEO
MY SECOND BROTHER
(Shohei Imamura, 1958, Japan, 35mm, 92 min)
Based on a best-selling diary of a ten-year-old girl this film follows the travails of four brothers and sisters and the people around them in a poor mining town with both a fresh and energetic eye. Winner of the Japanese Minister of Education Award.
OCTOBER 29, Mon at 7 & 9:15pm
NOT AVAILABLE ON VIDEO
PIGS AND BATTLESHIPS
(Shohei Imamura, 1961, Japan, 35mm, 108 min)
The story of a young gang living outside of the U. S. naval base at Yokosuka, PIGS AND BATTLESHIPS follows their failed attempts to raise pigs on the trash thrown out by the military. The film descends into hilarious scenes of the small time gangster's plans being thwarted, and the resulting infighting. Ultimately a political satire, the film is not so much critical of the American occupiers as the Japanese who grow wealthy off their presence in Asia.
"An expansive, loopy film of extravagant set pieces and distinctive dark humor."-J. Hoberman, THE VILLAGE VOICE
Cast member Cliff Harington to introduce the 7pm
screening
OCTOBER 30, Tues at 7 & 9:15pm
INSECT WOMAN
(Shohei Imamura, 1963, Japan, 35mm, 123 min)
Tome, a uneducated farming woman, leaves near-poverty and small town incest for Tokyo. She soon becomes first a factory worker and then a prostitute. After WWII, she attempts to work her way into the position of a madam, but is unsuccessful. While she commits many acts that are traditionally considered immoral, Imamura is more concerned with portraying the woman, played by a 40-year-old prostitute, as a survivor.
OCTOBER 31, Weds at 6:30 & 9:15pm
NOT AVAILABLE ON VIDEO
INTENTIONS OF MURDER
(Shohei Imamura, 1964, Japan, 35mm, 150 min)
A large housewife, Sadako is married to a boring, weak willed tyrant, who treats her like a servant. When he is out of town, a burglar rapes the heroine. Instead of following the traditional Japanese code and committing suicide, she is made more assertive by the violent act. When the rapist returns, she first consents, and then plans to kill him. INTENTIONS OF A MURDER is an amazing, moralistic tale exploring the place of women in Japanese society.
"A strange and fascinating film . . . an authentic shocker."-THE NEW YORK TIMES
NOVEMBER 1, Thurs at 6:30 & 9:15pm
THE PORNOGRAPHERS
(Shohei Imamura, 1966, Japan, 35mm, 128 min)
Translated directly from the Japanese as "The Pornographer- An Introduction to Anthropology,"Imamura's manic, seedy masterpiece is a painfully funny rise of an Osaka pornographer. Shooting guerrilla style porn films and setting up a home film lab, the man finds a mission in life - to make and distribute huge quantities of low budget "blue"film. Not content, he tries to produce a perfect woman for his customers - a life sized latex doll. Shot on location with many non-traditional actors, Imamura was again given the chance to explore the unspoken, unseen side of working class Japanese life.
NOVEMBER 2, Fri at 6:30 & 9:15pm
NOT AVAILABLE ON VIDEO
A MAN VANISHES
(Shohei Imamura, 1967, Japan, 35mm, 130 min)
"An actor can become a real-life subject, and a real-life subject can become an actor"- Shohei Imamura In one of the most intricate collisions of narrative fiction and documentary, Imamura attempts to find one of the many Japanese who simply disappear in their overcrowded society. A man's fiancée searches for him, and a hidden camera records her life. She becomes enamored with a detective, who happens to be an actor in the film. A MAN VANISHES is a truly strange mixture of Imamura's fascinations with anthropology and voyeurism.
NOVEMBER 2 - 8 , Fri – Thurs at 6:30 & 9:15pm (plus Sat – Sun at 4pm)
NEW 35MM PRINT
VENGEANCE IS MINE
(Shohei Imamura, 1979, Japan, 35mm, 140 min)
Based on the true story of Iwao Enokizu and his murderous rampage which sparked a 78-day nationwide manhunt, Shohei Imamura's disturbing gem VENGEANCE IS MINE won every major award in Japan in 1979. Imamura uncovers the seedy underbelly of civilized Japanese society. Iwao, a day-laborer and smalltime con-artist, embarks on a psychopathic spree of rape and murder after killing two of his co-workers. Eluding the police and public, Japan's infamous "King of Criminals"passes himself off as a Kyoto University professor, only to become entangled with an innkeeper and her perverted mother. More than just a true-crime case, VENGEANCE IS MINE bares mankind's snarling id.
NOVEMBER 3, Sat at 6 & 9:15pm
NOT AVAILABLE ON VIDEO
PROFOUND DESIRE OF THE GODS
(Shohei Imamura, 1968, Japan, 35mm, 172 min)
Imamura's first color masterpiece, this epic portrait of the near-primitive and incestuous lives of the inhabitants of one of Japan's Southern Islands is Imamura's most powerful and disturbing work, and easily one of the ten greatest (and most unforgettable) films of all time.
NOVEMBER 4, Sun at 6, 7:30, & 9:15pm
NOT AVAILABLE ON VIDEO
THE MAKING OF A PROSTITUTE
(Shohei Imamura, 1968, Japan, 16mm, 70 min)
"Perhaps the most brilliant and feeling of Imamura's fine documentaries"(Joan Mellen), THE MAKING OF A PROSTITUTE explores a little-known aspect of 20th-century Japanese history: the thousands of Japanese women who were sold into prostitution and sent abroad to service Japanese soldiers during the country's military expansion into Southeast Asia. Badly treated and abused, many of these women were not welcomed back by their families, and remained unrepatriated after the war. The film focuses on one particular Karayuki-san, a forgotten 73-year-old living in poverty in Malaysia. She takes Imamura on a tour of the prostitute quarter where she had arrived as a slave 54 years earlier, and reflects on the sad, often unspeakable events of her life.
"Perhaps the most brilliant and feeling of Imamura's fine documentaries."-Joan Mellen, THE WAVES AT GENJI'S DOOR
NOVEMBER 6, Tues at 7:30pm
SPECIAL SCREENING AT SEATTLE ART MUSEUM
WHY NOT?
(Shohei Imamura, 1981, Japan, 35mm, 151 min)
In Imamura's 1981 film WHY NOT? a group of colorful nineteenth-century characters experience the collapse of the Tokugawa period and the beginnings of Japan's 300-year policy of isolation. The film is set in Edo (Tokyo) in 1867. Genji, having returned from America, tries to convince his reluctant wife, Ine, to sail back with him to "the land of golden opportunity."Swirling around this story is an exuberant carnival of activity: silk factory workers rebel, a clan plots the downfall of the Tokugawa shogunate, and exciting new possibilities beckon as ancient traditions collapse. WHY NOT? glows with zest for life while also serving as the director's meditation on whether too much change can result in spectacular folly.
"Masterpiece. . . . A delirious exercise in sex, crime and weirdness . . . with an appalling, visionary beauty"-J. Hoberman, THE VILLAGE VOICE
NOVEMBER 7, Weds at 6:30 & 9:15pm
THE BALLAD OF NARAYAMA
(Shohei Imamura, 1983, Japan, 35mm, 130 min)
THE BALLAD OF NARAYAMA is a brutal and haunting, yet ultimately poignant meditation on the nature of existence. Shichiro Fukazawa's novel about the legend of people over the age of 70, taken to the mountains on their children's shoulders and left there to die, has always fascinated Imamura, who said that he wanted to shoot an entire film version on location when he was still an assistant director. Winner of the Palme d'Or at Cannes.
"A truly great film . . . A masterpiece of Japanese cinema to stand beside UGETSU, TOKYO STORY or THE SEVEN SAMURAI."-Michael Wilmington
"Imamura realizes this vision with shocking humor and immediacy, and then challenges us to say whether this fictitious community is more or less humane than ours. Awe-inspiring."-TIME OUT LONDON
NOVEMBER 8, Thurs at 6:30 & 9:15pm
NOT AVAILABLE ON VIDEO
ZEGEN
(Shohei Imamura, 1987, Japan, 35mm, 124 min)
This satire of colonialism, starring Ken Ogata, is about a hairdresser who is sent to Manchuria to spy on the Russians, where he becomes the kingpin of a string of brothels throughout Southeast Asia. Iheiji Muraoka contributes to the government's Asian ambitions by selling women overseas. Imamura "wanted to depict Meiji nationalism going recklessly out of control"-- an ironic commentary on the hopelessly insular outlook of the Japanese national character that remains to this present day.
"Of Imamura's late films, Zegen is the most like his early masterworks: epic, energetic, sexually impudent, and grotesquely funny. A satire about colonialism, commerce, and carnality"-James Quandt, Cinematheque Ontario
NOVEMBER 9, Fri at 6:30 & 9:15pm
BLACK RAIN
(Shohei Imamura, 1989, Japan, 35mm, 122 min)
Adapted from a novel by Masuji Ibuse, this film follows the lives of three survivors of the US nuclear attack on Hiroshima. While the opening scenes deal with the horrible aftermath immediately following the bomb's detonation, the bulk of the film unfolds in the drama of everyday life five years later. The film follows Yasuko (Yoshiko Tanaka), her uncle Shigematsu (Kazuo Kitamura) and aunt Shigeko (Etsuko Ichihara), who are suffering from the slow death of radiation sickness. Imamura has chosen to portray the post-war discrimination against the 370,000 bomb survivors by showing its effects on the three protagonists as they struggle to live their lives traditionally. This is most evident in their repeated failures to find a husband willing to marry Yasuko, who is stigmatized for her exposure to "black rain,"a mix of radioactive ash and precipitation caused by the explosion.
"A masterwork . . . flawless . . . a profound chiller."-Vincent Canby, THE NEW YORK TIMES
Introduction to 6:30pm screening by University of Washington Assistant Professor of Modern Japanese Literature Ted Mack.
NOVEMBER 9 - 15, Fri - Thurs at 7 & 9:15pm
NORTHWEST PREMIERE
QUIXOTIC (HONOR DE CAVALLERIA)
(Albert Serra, Spain, 2006, 35mm, 110 min)
Following its premiere in the Director's Fortnight at Cannes 2006, QUIXOTIC has gone on to garner critical acclaim across the globe for its Beckett-tinged, pure cinematic distillation of Don Quixote. It follows Quixote and Sancho as they set off in search of adventures. At the heart of their journey is their relationship – affectionate, desperate, and solitary – which unwinds slowly against the natural beauty of the Catalan countryside. This painterly film debut is reminiscent of Ozu, Olmi, Bresson and Pasolini, and the ideas and approach of Godard, Rocha and Paradzhanov. Exquisitely crafted and acted by non-professionals, this is a defiantly experimental slice of auteur cinema. "Despite consciously being situated in a genealogy of art filmmaking that includes heavyweights like Ozu, Bresson, Pasolini…even recently Sokurov, Serra's made a supremely odd and unpredictable work of art that stands on its own – because of the emotional relationship that develops over the course of the film."-Mark Peranson, FIPRESCI
NOVEMBER 10, Sat at 4pm
FREE!
ITVS Community Cinema and Northwest Film Forum Present:
An Excerpt From
AN
UNREASONABLE MAN
For over 40 years, Ralph Nader has worked tirelessly as a consumer advocate, building a legislative record to rival that of any contemporary president. Yet today, many consider him merely an egomaniac and a "spoiler." AN UNREASONABLE MAN takes an unsparing look at one of the most important and controversial political figures our time. We are screening a one hour excerpt of the film with a panel discussion following. To RSVP, please email unreasonable@communitycinema.org or call 1-800-930-6060 and press 3.
NOVEMBER 10, Sat at 4:30 & 9:15pm
THE EEL
(Shohei Imamura, 1997, Japan, 35mm, 117 min)
A man, acting on an anonymous tip, finds his wife in bed with another man. In a fit of rage he stabs her to death. Eight years later, after being released from prison, he moves to a small, lakeside town and opens a barbershop. In the corner of the shop is an aquarium housing his companion from his prison stay, his pet eel - the only living thing he will talk to. Eventually, the town's eccentric characters accept the man and happily make his barbershop their meeting place, while he, desperate to forget his past, guards against any attraction he may feel for women. One day he happens upon a young woman unconscious after a suicide attempt. Once recovered, she comes to work for him in the shop. She would like to know him more intimately, but he remains reluctant. He soon learns, however, that she has a past every bit as painful as his own.
"[Imamura] marshals a small cast of vivid characters that enable him not only to bare the passions that seethe beneath the orderly surface and apparent conformity of Japanese life, but also to ponder emotions and issues that know no nationality."–THE NEW YORK TIMES
NOVEMBER 10, Sat at 7pm
DIRECTOR IN ATTENDANCE
THIRD EYE CINEMA AND NWFF PRESENT
IN THE KINGDOM OF SHADOWS:
Two Stereoscopic Films by Zoe Beloff
SHADOW LAND OR LIGHT FROM THE OTHER SIDE (2000, USA, 16mm, 32 min)
CHARMING AUGUSTINE (USA, 16mm, 40 min)
These films explore the prehistory of cinema, not simply from the point of view of technology, but from a psychic perspective, how the projection of images grew out of the desire to manifest the unconscious. SHADOW LAND OR LIGHT FROM THE OTHER SIDE is based on the 1897 autobiography of Elizabeth d'Esperance, an English medium who could conjure up full body apparitions. CHARMING AUGUSTINE is inspired by series of photographs and texts on hysteria published by the great insane asylum in Paris in the 1880s under the title of the "Iconographie Photographique de la Salpetriere." Zoe's work will be screened with a unique dual 16mm projector system, and stereoscopic 3-d glasses will be provided.
"To conjure up a time just prior to the invention of cinema I shot the films in a stereoscopic format to suggest a different direction that cinema might have taken. Ultimately what I wish to convey is a fragile, spectral, what if a moment in time when the moving image was on the brink of existence in a form not yet standardized."-Zoe Beloff
Take a class in 3-D filmmaking with Zoe Beloff! More info here
Click here to visit Zoe Beloff's website
Click here to visit the Third Eye Cinema website
NOVEMBER 11, Sun at 6:30 & 9:15pm
DR. AKAGI
(Shohei Imamura, 1998, Japan, 35mm, 129 min)
DR. AKAGI is an eccentric black comedy and a humanistic portrait of pre-Hiroshima Japan that bubbles over with doses of savage wit, kinky sexuality and apocalyptic uncertainty. Set on a small Japanese island in the waning days of World War II, the film tells the story of one man's obsession to retain his decency and stamp out deadly disease. Akagi is an eccentric iconoclast whose determination to cure a hepatitis epidemic has earned him the nickname "Dr. Liver."From the fringes of Japan's militaristic society, Akagi gathers a motley crew of helpers: a dissolute monk, a nihilistic morphine-addict surgeon, a young ex-prostitute, and a wounded Dutch soldier. Together they round up a fresh corpse, a powerful microscope and movie lamp to assist Akagi in his determined and quixotic effort to locate the disease causing microbes.
br />"Brilliant! Brimming with humanity and humor tied to a darker, violent... sexually kinky undercurrent."-Thelma Adams, THE NEW YORK POST
NOVEMBER 12, Mon at 6:30 & 9:15pm
WARM WATER UNDER A RED BRIDGE
(Shohei Imamura, 2001, Japan, 35mm, 120 min)
A combination of Keaton-esque whimsy, improvised mythology and Imamura's own facility with the underbelly of life, WARM WATER is a quirky, charming film about rebirth, renewal and a raucous cheering for the power of the feminine. Starring Koji Yakusho, star of THE EEL, Imamura's twentieth film is about a middle-aged man whose wife has left him. He then travels to a far-off village in search of a golden Buddha. What he finds instead is a woman with a strange case of kleptomania and a propensity for expressing pleasure with a shower of – well -- on the big screen it comes across like fireworks.
"May well be Imamura's funniest film; it is also one of his most accomplished…A complex and risky work carried off with an effortlessness that comes only from wisdom and experience."-Kevin Thomas, LOS ANGELES TIMES
NOVEMBER 14, Wed at 8pm
FILMMAKER IN ATTENDANCE
THIRD EYE CINEMA AND NWFF PRESENT
THE FILMS OF MICHAEL ROBINSON or
"Learning To Love Again, With Fear At It's Side…."
(Michael Robinson, USA, 16mm & video, 75min)
Winner of the Most Promising Filmmaker Award at this year's Ann Arbor Film Festival, Michael Robinson shapes sound, image and text to create films and videos that both indulge in and interrogate the nature of heartbreak and beauty. Like a daring and adept tightrope walker, the filmmaker juxtaposes landscape and poetry, memory and television, pop songs and melodrama in an exquisite contemplation of sublime experience. The program will include YOU DON'T BRING ME FLOWERS, conjuring the obsolete romanticism of a collection of National Geographic landscapes from the 60s and 70s, viewed at their literal seams; THE GENERAL RETURNS FROM ONE PLACE TO ANOTHER, based on a Frank O'Hara monologue, a spellbinding yet deeply skeptical meditation on the nature of the beautiful; AND WE ALL SHINE ON, an otherworldly broadcast, revealing hidden demons via layered landscapes and karaoke; LIGHT IS WAITING, a very special episode of TV's Full House, devouring itself from the inside out; as well as two brand new works.
Click here to visit the Third Eye Cinema website
"Bracingly smart and a pleasure to behold, his films offer a consideration of the valence of beauty and the chance of sincerity."-Carl Bogner, Woodland Pattern Film & Video Series
NOVEMBER 15, Thu at 8pm
SPECIAL PRESENTATION
SOUL NITE!
Sponsored by Easy Street Records
NWFF and Emerald City Soul Club co-present an evening of funky soul music on vinyl and on the big screen!
We're happy to announce a new quarterly program celebrating great soul music! Teaming up with the good folks of the Emerald City Soul Club, our SOUL NITE gatherings will transport us back in time with selections of electrifying performance footage from vintage film and television, DJ sets and drinks. This first installment brings to the screen rare mid-60s performances by such soul greats as Otis Redding, Ike and Tina Turner, Joe Tex, The Bar-Kays, and many others. Emerald City DJs will spin crackly grooves on vinyl and refreshments will be available before and after the screening. Join us as we crank up the volume and experience unforgettable voices, grooves and dance moves from the golden age of soul. Dancing in the aisles encouraged!
NOVEMBER 16 - 21, Fri - Thurs at 7 & 9:15pm
U.S. THEATRICAL PREMIERE
THE HOLY MODAL ROUNDERS: BOUND TO LOSE
Director Sam Douglas in attendance for Friday & Saturday screenings
(Sam Wainwright Douglas & Paul Lovelace, USA, 2006, BETA-SP, 87 min)
Part folkie, part insane, and totally drugged, fiddler Peter Stampfel and guitarist Steve Weber were an integral part of the notorious Fugs before forming their own unique psych folk group, the Holy Modal Rounders, in the early 1960s. While their weird lyrics, irreverent approach to folk music and freewheeling lifestyles kept them from achieving fame, these eccentric outsiders have drawn a small but dedicated following of luminaries and lunatics for decades. BOUND TO LOSE explores Stampfel and Weber's stormy friendship and recounts the unique, alternately amusing and heartbreaking forty-year history of these true American originals, from their beginnings in New York's Greenwich Village folk scene, to the relocation of much of the band to Portland in the 1970s, to a recent unpredictable 40th anniversary reunion. The film includes interviews with Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg of the Fugs; actor-playwright Sam Shepard, who served as drummer for the band from 1966-69; Dennis Hopper, who gave the band its greatest mainstream visibility by including their song "If You Want to be a Bird"on the EASY RIDER soundtrack; Ira Kaplan of Yo La Tengo and many others. More than just a chronicle of an obscure band, BOUND TO LOSE is a raucous celebration of a lost American subculture.
More on THE HOLY MODAL ROUNDERS
"Charged with alternating currents of affection, exuberance and ineffable melancholy… an intriguing overview of the cult-fave combo."–Joe Leydon, VARIETY
NOVEMBER 17 - 18, Sat - Sun at 1 & 4 pm
NEWLY RESTORED 35MM PRINT
OLIVER!
Sponsored by Broadway Market Video
(Carol Reed, UK, 1968, 35mm, 153 min)
Hard times never looked so good as they did in this glossy screen adaptation of Lionel Bart's hit musical, based on Charles Dicken's classic novel. OLIVER! was the last musical film of the 20th century (and only G-rated film ever) to win an Academy Award for Best Picture. It also won a Best Director award for Carol Reed as well as four other Oscars. Mark Lester plays the young waif, who runs away from an orphanage only to fall in with a group of pick-pocketing hoodlums, including Bill Sikes (Oliver Reed) and Fagin (Ron Moody). Still, this is a Dickens tale, and lurking underneath the glitzy exterior of this production is a story filled hungry orphans, ruthless thieves, opportunistic undertakers, fallen women, and one very murderous villain. The payoff (beyond the beauty of the film itself) is the timeless message: Outcasts have souls, too - magnificent, deserving, tender and conflicted souls that are worthy of saving both by individual acts of kindness and a responsive, compassionate society.
Appropriate for ages 7 and up. Parents should use their discretion as the story contains violence.
"Not for a moment are the children in the cast treated as children. They're equal participants in the great adventure, and they have to fend for themselves or bloody well get out of the way. This isn't a watered-down lollypop. It's got bite and malice along with the romance and humor."-Roger Ebert
NOVEMBER 19, Mon at 8pm
CITY SYMPHONY FILM CHALLENGE
With all the new development happening in Seattle, there's no better time to document this cultural, architectural, and social change going on! The City has inspired filmmakers from the beginnings of cinema. This quarter's film challenge asks Seattle filmmakers to create their own city symphony, a genre with roots that go back to the everyday images recorded by Auguste and Louis Lumière in the 1890s and came into being with MANHATTA in 1921. City Symphonies are motion pictures that capture the spirit and uniqueness of a city by assembling images of everyday life in that city. Use the city to explore ideas of reflection, space, rhythm and transformation.
Rules: Films must be no longer than 5 minutes. Formats accepted are Super-8, 16mm and DVD. Please include the title, filmmaker's name and contact information with submission. The project is open to all levels of skills and experience. Submissions are due November 1. Deliver them to Northwest Film Forum, c/o Adam Sekuler, 1515 12th Ave, Seattle, WA 98122. For more information, contact adams@nwfilmforum.org. Films will be screened on November 19 at 8pm.
NOVEMBER 23 - 29, Fri - Thurs at 7 & 9:15pm (plus Sat & Sun at 4:30pm)
NEW 35MM PRINT
THE LANDLORD
(Hal Ashby, USA, 1970, 35mm, 114 min)
The debut feature from Hal Ashby (HAROLD AND MAUDE) satirically tackles race relations and gentrification with Beau Bridges as a rich kid who buys a tenement in Brooklyn planning to evict the occupants and use the building for himself. To the horror of his mother (Lee Grant), he soon grows fond of the characters living there, finds love (with Diana Sands and Marki Bey) and grows to understand the plight of those less fortunate than he. This slyly subversive look at race and class in America is one of the major rediscoveries of the season. United Artists gambled $2 million on Ashby (who won an Oscar for Best Achievement in Film Editing for Norman Jewison's IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT), as director of this trenchant—and timely—comedy. Even 37 years later, THE LANDLORD still feels daring, both stylistically and politically.
"A wondrously wise, sad and hilarious comedy. Leaves an almost eerie tonic effect of truth and laughter, with some of the sharpest, funniest dialogue in a long time."–THE NEW YORK TIMES
"There's something really great about it, and it's a film that I'd kind of fallen in love with. There's something unique about the softness of the colors, about the way you can light things well but they're not overly sharp and vivid. There's just something more human about them, a more poetic way of capturing reality."-Alexander Payne
NOVEMBER 27, Tues at 8pm
SEARCH AND RESCUE
Search And Rescue continues to partner with others who are actively working to preserve, protect, and defend endangered 16mm film. This quarter, we dig into the vaults of our experimental film partner, Third Eye Cinema, to uncover some discarded treasures . This cinematic lagan is the raw American history. Who's to say that educational films are any less valuable than Hollywood's most venerated classics? Time is winnowing the welter of junk into a manageable shape, forming a dam against fading memory. We once again sift through the relics to share the past and imagine the future!
