JUNE 20 - 26, Friday - Thursday at 7, 8:15, 9:30pm (plus Sat & Sun at 4, 5:30pm)

JOIN US FOR A PANEL DISCUSSION WITH LOCAL JAPANESE-AMERICANS OPENING NIGHT

PASSING POSTON

Sponsored by KBCS 91.3 FM
(Joe Fox and James Nubile, USA, 2007, BETA-SP, 60 min)

For the over 120,000 Japanese Americans forcibly interned during World War II, the scars from this traumatic time have not fully healed. PASSING POSTON tells the moving and haunting story of four former internees of the Poston Relocation Center. Each person is shadowed by a tragic past, and each struggles in their own painful way to reconcile the trauma of their youth and find their rightful place in this country. In the wake of this painful past Ruth Okimoto returns to the desert of Arizona (on the grounds of the future Colorado River Indian Reservation), where she spent her childhood years behind barbed wire.

JUNE 21 - 22, Saturday - Sunday at 4, 6pm

LOCAL FILMMAKER!

RABBIT IN THE MOON

Sponsored by KBCS 91.3 FM
(Emiko Omori, USA, 1999, 85 min)

RABBIT IN THE MOON uncovers a buried history of internment camps built by the US government for Japanese and Japanese Americans living on the West coast. This new history includes political tensions, social and generational division and the dialectic between resistance and collaboration. Emiko Omori and her older sister, Seattle filmmaker and film critic Chizuko Omori, use archival and recently recovered home movies to confront their own family secrets. They were children when they went to one of the internment camps. Their mother died only a year after the family's release, but silence has surrounded that event. They correspondingly confront the collective quiet among Japanese American about the social antagonisms and insecurities that were born in the camps and still haunt their community life 64 years later.

JULY 12, Saturday at 7pm

LIVE PERFORMANCE!

THE KIDS OF WIDNEY HIGH

The world-renowned Kids of Widney High are a group of young adults with developmental disabilities who write, record and perform their own unique brand of rock music. They have been compared to Daniel Johnston and Wesley Willis. For the first time in their illustrious underground career, the Kids are embarking on a full-fledged multimedia tour up the West Coast in which they will be showcasing their artistic endeavors, which include short films that evoke the "gaze" avant-garde aesthetic of Stan Brakhage, Harry Smith and Jonas Mekas. The Kids will be performing after the screening for all audience members who wish to stay and boogie.

JULY 17, Thursday at 8pm

DIRECTOR IN ATTENDANCE!
THIRD EYE CINEMA PRESENTS

THE PERFECT SHOW: The Films Of Karl Krogstad

“THE PERFECT SHOW is Karl Krogstad’s example of the most direct and unconventional expression possible — and it’s darned close to perfect! The program includes five new short films plus a lot of 'fillers.' The fillers aren’t really films, but the songs of birds. And when these birds sing you can almost smell the tail feathers. The show lasts about one hour and is like a feather that actually falls like a coin, to land on its edge. They are strange.” –Karl Krogstad

AUGUST 8 - 10, Friday - Sunday at 7, 9:15pm (plus Sat & Sun at 4:30pm)

THE TRANSITIONAL ORSON WELLES: LATE WORKS AND ADAPTATIONS
Opening Night Introduction from Seattle Shakespeare Expert Bill Matchett

CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT

Sponsored by Scarecrow Video
(Orson Welles, 35mm, France/Spain/Switzerland, 1966, 113 min)

This is one of the great Shakespearean adaptations and a true "lost classic." It's also the last masterpiece that Orson Welles directed, and, with CITIZEN KANE, MAGNIFICIENT AMBERSONS and TOUCH OF EVIL comprise the quartet of his major cinematic achievements. The film is an inventive re-editing and condensation of of Shakespeare's historical works. Welles assembled scenes from RICHARD II, HENRY IV PARTS I AND 2, HENRY V, and THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR, along with a commentary taken from the chronicles of the Elizabethan historian Holinshed, to create a wholly new work that might alternatively be titled "The Tragedy of Sir John Falstaff." The film focuses on the character of Jack Falstaff, played by Welles in a virtuoso performance. Falstaff's relationship with young Prince Hal (later Henry V) is explored and parallels Welles' own experience with the talents of Hollywood.

"If I wanted to get into heaven on the basis of one movie, that's the one I'd offer up." - Orson Welles on CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT

AUGUST 15 - 16, Friday - Saturday at 8pm

DIRECTOR IN ATTENDANCE!
RECEPTION AFTER FRIDAY SCREENING
THIRD EYE CINEMA PRESENTS

MOCK UP ON MU

(Craig Baldwin, US, 2008, 114 min)

Notorious Bay Area "kino-renegade" Craig Baldwin tops his earlier found-footage operas SPECTRES OF THE SPECTRUM and SONIC OUTLAWS with this highly anticipated new work, a rapid-fire pulp serial–cum–political take on California’s major industries: the military, entertainment and religion. Hitting upon everything from Satanism to Scientology, the Beats to the jets (propulsion, that is), Baldwin revs up his characteristic stock footage remixes with live-action scenes of his own, adding an over-the-top pulp flair to the proceedings. Arising with demonic force from the detritus of the twentieth century, the film surveys “the repurposing of the popular imagination in postwar California,” according to Baldwin, tracing the “simultaneous rise and convergence of New Age religious cults, the military/aerospace industrial complex and modern-day myths from Disney to certain sci-fi overlords.”

Take a workshop with Craig Baldwin!

August 21, Thursday at 8pm

FILM SALOON: ADAPTATIONS & REVISIONS

This evening we call attention to film artists who draw from the creative wellspring of those that have come before them. Cinema has a long history of making visual adaptations to novels, plays, comic books, operas, etc. But muses sometimes speak in tongues! Cinema is also strewn with controversial successes and failures as directors re-imagine their source material to challenge traditional fans and engage with new ones by turning familiar material on its ear.

Tonight, we sit down with some of Seattle's own filmmakers who have chosen to make work based in part or in full on someone else's previous work. Some filmmakers attempt to remain faithful to the original text and illustrate by supplying images to the text (or sounds) from the author. Others choose to reinterpret the source material to fit an alternative or more modern perspective of a well-traveled work. This panel discussion will feature a bevy of local film artists, showing clips of their work and discussing the topic, led by our inimitable moderator, Andy Spletzer. Come with your own opinions and decide for yourself if these artists are walking in the footsteps of greats or merely stomping on graves.