Northwest Film Forum Showtimes

45365

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 09:22:27 -0800

An elegiac portrait of goings-on in the middle-American town of Sydney, Ohio, 45365 is a celebration of everyday life, mundane and profound. Directors Bill and Ross Turner, using images of their hometown, construct perhaps the world's first rural symphony, a patient, inquisitive and non-judgmental study of community, lives and landscape. The result is a beautifully simple and affecting film, one that is astute and artistic, and at times reminiscent of a William Eggleston photograph or an Edward Hopper painting. A sense of nostalgia naturally emanates from 45365 as a cinematic tribute to home. But so does a sense of the honesty and integrity of its clear-eyed chroniclers, who lift this little town up and out of the Ohio Valley, locating it firmly on the big blue globe.

Winner of the Jury Prize at the 2009 SXSW Film Festival.

“Meticulously balancing cinema-verite intimacy and dreamlike reverie, 45365 fashions a seductive, fascinating tapestry of small-town.” —Variety

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Showdate(s) Mar 12 - Mar 18

Early Work of Alain Resnais

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 08:23:27 -0800

Discover director Alain Resnais’s hard-to-find documentary shorts of the 1950s! Resnais’ early work established him as a filmmaker of inimitable sensibility.

Set to a text by poet Paul Éluard and details of Picasso’s epic antiwar painting, Guernica (Robert Hessens and Alain Resnais, 1950, 35mm, 13 min) is an oddly lyrical call for peace.

Le Chant du Styrène (Chris Marker and Alain Resnais, 1958, DVD, 19 min), a commission from Péchiney Plastics, depicts the making of polystyrene as “a noble material…demanding a great deal of knowledge."

Chris Marker also assisted on Night and Fog (1955, 35mm, 32 mins), one of the first and most haunting film commentaries on the Holocaust.

Toute la mémoire du monde (1956, 16mm, 22 min) is an elegant “portrait” of France’s Bibliothèque Nationale.

Showdate(s) Mar 16 - Mar 17

Soul Nite!

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 08:28:52 -0800

It's back! Curator and host Peter Lucas presents a selection of vintage soul music performance footage on the big screen, cranked up loud. Don’t miss this all-star soul show on screen, including a rarely seen performance from the one and only wicked Wilson Pickett in celebration of his birthday! DJs Greasy and David James will be spinning records for your listening and dancing pleasure, and beverages will be available in the cinema. Moving, grooving, and making noise is encouraged, and a funky good time is inevitable!

Showdate(s) Mar 18

October Country

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 09:30:59 -0800

October Country is a beautifully rendered portrait of an American family struggling for stability while haunted by the ghosts of war, teen pregnancy, foster care and child abuse. This vibrant and intimate documentary examines the forces that unsettle the working poor and the violence that lurks beneath the surface of American life. Winner of the 2009 SILVERDOCS Grand Jury Prize for best US Documentary Feature, this is Michael Palmieri and Donal Mosher’s directing debut.

“Seeping through each gorgeously shot scene is a painful sense of listlessness.” —The Washington Post

“A small and quiet masterpiece of transcendent filmmaking.” —Hammer to Nail

"Feels at once personal and objective, a fascinating hybrid of two important tendencies in the modern documentary" -NY Times

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Showdate(s) Mar 19 - Mar 24