Calendar
Looking For Eric
Aug 27 - Sep 02
(Ken Loach, UK, 2009, 116 min)
Cannes crowd-pleaser Looking for Eric is a tender, life-affirming, and hilarious nod to the possibility of second chances. When down-and-out postal worker Eric Bishop (Steve Evets) reaches the end of his rope—his two layabout stepsons are set on driving him to an early grave, his second marriage is in ruins, and that's just the start of his troubles±he finds some unexpected motivation to turn his life around and win back the love of his life from none other than his idol, the legendary footballer Eric Cantona of Manchester United.
"Genuinely heartwarming" —Seattle Times
"Mixing light magical realism with a more familiar brand of working-class gloom, Loach's warm comic touch elevates the story of an aging man cracking up in plain sight." —Seattle Weekly
Around a Small Mountain
Aug 27 - Sep 02
(Jacques Rivette, France/Italy, 2009, 35mm, 84 min)
The French New Wave titan (and subject of our 2007 retrospective) Jacques Rivette is back with this winning depiction of a chance encounter on a mountain road. Vittorio (Sergio Castellitto) is compelled to tag along with Kate (Jane Birkin) as she returns to the circus community she left years ago.
"Marvelous to contemplate and changing slightly every time you see it." —NY Times
Mamma Roma
Sep 03 - Sep 09
(Pier Paolo Pasolini, Italy, 1962, 35mm, 105 min)
Perhaps Pasolini’s greatest film, Mamma Roma packs an emotional wallop. Anna Magnani’s Mamma is a prostitute who tries to go respectable, bundling her troubled teenaged son off to Rome to tend a produce stand. The return of her pimp thwarts her new life.
Wheedle's Groove
Sponsored by KBCS 91.3 FM and Vera Project
Special guests almost every night!
Sep 03 - Sep 09
(Jennifer Maas, Seattle, 2009, DigiBeta, 87 min)
Seattle, get ready for some Soul searching! Jennifer Maas' Wheedle's Groove provides a look back some thirty years before grunge music put Seattle on the map, when late 1960s groups like Black on White Affair, The Soul Swingers and Cold, Bold & Together filled airwaves and packed clubs every night of the week.
Le Amiche
New 35mm Print
Sep 10 - Sep 15
(Michelangelo Antonioni, Italy, 1955, 35mm, 104 min)
With their two-faced cattiness and cold-blooded sexual manipulation, the women of Antonioni’s Le Amiche make the promiscuous characters of Sex and the City look dull in comparison. Largely overlooked amidst Italian auteur Michelangelo Antonioni’s celebrated oeuvre, it’s among the most entrancing views of love's sweet devastation seen in cinema.
The Family Jams
Seattle Premiere
Sep 10 - Sep 12
(Kevin Barker, USA, 2009, DigiBeta, 81 min)
The freak-folk explosion of the mid-00s was a musical trend that demanded documentation. There was the rare sensation of a group of major artists emerging at the same time, hanging out and collaborating with one another, not minding if their styles overlapped. The Family Jams might be the defining film of that moment.
An Evening with Jacob and David
An evening of performance and video with live music
Sep 11
Jacob Ciocci and David Wightman (Extreme Animals, Paper Rad, You Can't Do That on Television) present a mash-up of live music, video, staged theatrics and global meltdowns. Their newest performance delves into the world of "tween" culture, the vampire fad and the current obsession with the infinite hall of mirrors known as "forever young."
Our Beloved Month of August
Director in attendance!
Sep 14
(Miguel Gomes, 2008, Portugal, 35mm, 150 min)
Ravishingly photographed and brilliantly assembled, Our Beloved Month of August is a travelogue to get lost in, an indigenous film created by tourists. It’s also a window into a fascinating filmmaking process that continues to unravel long after the credits roll.
The Face You Deserve
West Coast Premiere
Sep 15
(Miguel Gomes, Portugal, 2004, 35mm, 108 min)
Gomes' first feature is a beautiful musical comedy. Francisco is a teacher who, while helping with his school's production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, contracts the measles and dreams his own version of the famous fairytale.
Miguel Gomes Shorts
Seattle Premiere
Sep 16
(Miguel Gomes/1999-2006)
A collection of five short films by Miguel Gomes.
The French Project: The New New Wave
Sep 16 - Sep 18
Seattle’s neo-French all-star music collective presents a new show that manages to balance the louche worldview of Gainsbourg, the voiceover musings of Godard and the ambition of a band of people who can barely speak French or hang on to a day job.
Bunny & The Bull
Sep 17 - Sep 23
(Paul King, UK, 2010, 35mm, 101 min)
Written and directed by The Mighty Boosh director Paul King, Bunny and the Bull is one of the most original and charismatic films to come out of Britain in recent years.
Annual Meeting
Sep 20
Members, join us as we vote on board members, discuss the state of the organization and local filmmaking, network with other filmmakers & film lovers, and enjoy a drink. This is your chance to guide the direction of Northwest Film Forum, meet the board and staff, and hear about the past year and the year ahead. All members are welcome to attend; members at the WigglyWorld level and above have voting privileges.
End-of-the-Western
Sep 21 - Oct 26
If any genre defines the film medium, it is the Western. The second half of the 20th century saw a continuing dialogue of culminating epic westerns, defining and redefining the genre, announcing its end while struggling to point toward new directions. In this class, we'll try to define the essential features of the western genre, and why it lends itself so appropriately to crisis, apocalyptic finality, and some kind of renewal.
Journey Of the Childmen: The Mighty Boosh on Tour
Sep 22 - Sep 23
(Oliver Ralfe, UK, 2009, DVCAM, 76 min)
The Python-like comedy troupe known as The Mighty Boosh has the cultiest of cult reputations in the U.S. thanks to the Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim, but in the UK, where they’re idolized as national heroes, they sell out large arenas and fight off droves of swooning girls.
First Words: The Birth of Sound Cinema, 1895-1929
Sep 23
(16mm, 90 min)
Al Jolson was not the first to sing on screen, and Mickey Mouse did not star in the first sound cartoon. In reality, sound movies are nearly as old as cinema itself. Travel back in time as this program of rare short films traces the evolution of sound, from the earliest experiments through the transformation of the entire film industry.
One Shot Films
Free!
Sep 24 - Sep 30
Join us in Cinema 2 each night as we showcase our commissions of visiting artists, made through the One-Shot Film program! Visiting filmmakers are asked to shoot a one shot film with no edits. We provide gear, casting, locations and all the energy we can muster.
Naked Proof
Sep 25
(Jamie Hook, USA, 2003, 35mm, 108 min)
In honor of our filmmaking co-founders, Debra Girdwood and Jamie Hook, we are giving Seattle another chance to see the film they wrote together. Proof is a philosophical romantic comedy about a PhD candidate whose questions about truth and life are further confused by the unexpected responsibility to care for a mysterious pregnant woman.
The Mountain, the River and the Road
Sep 25
(Michael Harring, USA, 2008, DigiBeta, 75 min)
An ill-fated road trip leaves Jeff stranded in small town Kernville with the promise that his friend will return shortly. After initial regrets, Jeff’s decision to stay behind to wait is rewarded when he meets local cutie Cat. Growing closer, the couple embarks on adventures that include night sledding, cave exploring and meeting Cat’s family.
Polterchrist
Sep 25
(Brady Hall, Calvin Reeder, USA, 2001)
Co-directed by Brady Hall (June And July) and Calvin Reeder, who was named one of the "25 New Faces in Film" by Filmmaker Magazine in 2007, this B-grade horror movie about Jesus Christ returning as a bloodthirsty zombie was made for a mere $5000. Rough around the edges, sure, but it marked the beginning of one of the city’s finest film collaborations.
Bingo
Sep 26
(John Jeffcoat, 1999, USA, 59 min)
What is America's favorite pastime outside of TV? BINGO! It draws more people than the movies, rock concerts or bowling. As John Jeffcoat (Outsourced) demonstrates in this offbeat documentary, which received support from the Film Forum back in 1997, bingo isn't just for blue-haired old church ladies; it's also for blue-haired drag queens, trendy hipsters, impoverished gambling addicts and everybody in between.
First Aid for Chocking
Sep 26
(Meghan Griffiths, USA, 2003, 99 min)
Set in the director's hometown of Moscow, Idoaho, and funded through our fiscal sponsorship program, First Aid is filled with likeable and familiar characters that don't always make the decisions you'd like them to. The film is a realistic portrait of the entrapments of small towns and family histories.
Money Buys Happiness
Sep 26
(Gregg Lachow, USA, 1999, 35mm, 109 min)
The first film to receive the innovative Start-to-Finish grant, this charming mid-life crisis comedy follows a Seattle couple as they attempt to push a free piano across the city. "This breezy, Seattle-made film is a charming black comedy with touches of poetic realism reminiscent of Godard or Renior." —1999 Seattle Int'l Film Festival
Borrowing Time
Sep 26
(Web Crowell, USA, 2004, DV, 93 min)
Before he received the first Stranger Genius award for film, animator Web Crowell started his first feature Borrowing Time with a little help and love from Northwest Film Forum. Made on a shoestring, this epic about Victorian aliens, Atomic insects and all around outdated technology is a distillation of 1940s serial adventure films, complete with atomic insects, planes on string and the very theft of history itself.
Buffalo Bill's Defunct
Sep 27
(Matt Wilkins, USA, 2004, DV, 84 min)
Bill, the aging patriarch of a semi-rural Washington family, is hell-bent on tearing down his barn with a hundred foot cable and a winch. His family watches in horror and fascination as the man they love drifts away from them. The third feature produced through WigglyWorld's Start-to-Finish grant program was made by acclaimed Seattle filmmaker Matt Wilkins.
Sweet Crude
Sep 27
(Sandy Cioffi, USA, 2009, DigiBeta, 90 min)
We're pleased to once again share this urgent film which chronicles the history of non-violent protest, and the members of a new insurgency, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) who are demanding an end to the environmental degradation (equivalent to 50 Exxon Valdez spills) and a share of the $700 billion oil profits.
Hedda Gabler
Sep 28
(Paul Willis, USA, 2004, DV, 73 min)
A woman in a small Central Washington town struggles against a new marriage and is forced to reckon with a life that falls short of her ideals. The fourth feature made through the Film Forum's Start-to-Finish grant program, Hedda is a daring, urgent update of the Norwegian masterpiece.
Cthulhu
Sep 28
(Daniel Gildark, USA, 2007, DigiBeta, 120 min)
Cogswell's feature film Cthulu,directed by Daniel Gildark, is a contemporary adaptation of HP Lovecraft's mythos, was shot throughout the Pacific Northwest. It received support from our fiscal sponsorship program and also reunited much of the crew from Police Beat, including cinematographer Sean Kirby, production designer Etta Lilienthal and producer Alexis Ferris.
Police Beat
Sep 29
(Robinson Devor, USA, 2005, DigiBeta, 80 min)
Hailed by Art Forumas one of the top ten films of 2005, and proclaimed "the best film of Sundance" by Village Voice critic Dennis Lim, Police Beat follows Z, a young policeman hailing from Senegal, patrols the streets of Seattle by bike, but his thoughts are far, far away. By using his diary and reports as the foundation of the film, this crime movie that has more in common with the early works of Jean-Luc Godard than Michael Mann.
The Gits
Sep 29
(Kerri O'Kane, 2008, DigiBeta, 80 min)
In the pre-Film Forum years, Seattle was known for its thriving Grunge scene. The Gits were the resident musical underdogs with the unparalleled vocal power of front woman Mia Zapata they set the bar for indie rock in the Pacific Northwest. That was until tragedy struck in 1993 with Ziapata's murder right in the heart of Capitol Hill.
We Go Way Back
Sep 30
(Lynn Shelton, 2006, USA, 35mm, 80 min)
Winner of both Best Narrative Feature and Best Cinematography at Slamdance, We Go Way Backwas Lynn Shelton's entry into the festival world that brought her later to Humpday fame. On her 23rd birthday, Kate (Amber Hubert) opens a letter that she wrote as a precocious adolescent to her imaginary grown-up self. The letter asks, "Are you happy?"
Brand Upon the Brain!
Sep 30
(Guy Maddin, USA/Canada, 2006, 35mm, 95 min)
Back in 2004 Guy Maddin came to town for a Northwest Film Forum retrospective. As part of his stay we hooked him up with the non-profit film studio The Film Company, who were renting space from us and coordinating productions through our WigglyWorld Studios. When we asked him to produce a short film, he used the opportunity to change the way films are experienced!
Local Sightings Film Festival
Oct 01 - Oct 06
Local Sightings is Northwest Film Forum's premier showcase of Northwest filmmaking. The festival, which happens at Film Forum theaters in Seattle, features great prizes, filmmaker parties, archival Northwest films and an impressive national film industry jury looking for strong Northwest work.
Party like it's 1995!
Oct 01
Join us for our 15th Anniversary Bash and Local Sightings Opening Night Party. Come dressed like it's the year of our founding, 1995, and dance the night away to tunes from that bygone era.
A Cottage on Dartmoor
Oct 04
(Anthony Asquith, UK, 1929, 87 min)
Hitchcock wasn't the only silent-era British director to make audiences claw their seats in suspense; Anthony Asquith, later known for classics like The Importance of Being Ernest, whips up a psycho-noir to make the Master smile.
Sweethearts of the Prison Rodeo
Oct 08 - Oct 10
(Bradley Beesley, 2010, USA, HD, 90 min)
Since 1940, the Oklahoma State Penitentiary has held an annual "Prison Rodeo." Part Wild West show and part coliseum-esque spectacle, it’s one of the last of its kind—a relic of the American penal system. Sweethearts of the Prison Rodeo goes behind prison walls to follow convict cowgirls on their journey to the 2007 Oklahoma State Penitentiary Rodeo.
Enter the Void
Oct 08 - Oct 14
(Gaspar Noe, France, 2009, 35mm, 156 min)
Sleep Furiously
Oct 09 - Oct 14
(Gideon Koppel, UK, 2008, 35mm, 94 min)
Beggars of Life
Oct 11
(William A. Wellman, USA, 1928, 100 min)
A year after picking up Hollywood's first Oscar for Wings, legendary director William Wellman turned to this rollicking saga of hobos on the lam. After killing her treacherous step-father, a girl (played here by the magnificent Louise Brooks in what was probably her finest Hollywood feature), tries to escape the country with the handsome but rag tag tramp, played by Wallace Beery.
Ghost Bird
Director in attendance!
Oct 15
(Scott Crocker, 2009, USA, DigiBeta, 85 min)
This is the true story of an extinct giant woodpecker, a small town in Arkansas hoping to reverse its misfortunes and the tireless odyssey of bird watchers and scientists searching for the holy grail of birds, the elusive ivory-billed woodpecker.
Styx: Kilroy Was Here
Screening introduced by Western Bridge’s Eric Fredrickson
Oct 15
In 1983, Styx returned to the record charts with Kilroy Was Here, the most ambitious of the band's concept albums, which focused on a renegade leading a rebellion in a totalitarian future by bringing rock and roll to the people. This rock classic is a half-amusing, half-menacing parable of technology, the rock culture and modern demagoguery. In other words its just plain awesome!
Underworld
Oct 18
(Josef von Sternberg, USA, 1927, 80 min)
Underworld was the film that launched Josef von Sternberg's very successful career. Working for the first time at a major Hollywood studio, Sternberg exploited his mastery at visual texture, conjuring extravagant effects of light and shadow with translucence and opacity, while casting a lustrous and laded halo around Feathers - the moll who is the lynchpin in a cruel love triangle with George Bancroft's mobster heavy and an alcoholic former lawyer.
I Am Secretly an Important Man
Oct 22 - Oct 28
(Peter Sillen, 2010, USA, DigiBeta, 85 min)
Peter Sillen's documentary portrait of the guru of grunge, Steven (Jesse) Bernstein, undulates like a spoken-word performance. Known in the Seattle art and music scene as one of the most influential voices of the late twentieth century, Bernstein was a poet and performance artist who recorded with Sub Pop Records and inspired Kurt Cobain, Oliver Stone and many other writers, filmmakers, and grunge and punk musicians.
The Anchorage
Oct 22 - Oct 28
(Anders Edström & CW Winter, USA/Sweden, 2009, 35mm, 87 min)
Winner of the Filmmakers of the Present Award at the Locarno Film Festival, The Anchorage begins with an elderly woman about to take an early morning swim in the cold waters off the Stockholm Islands, where she lives alone except for the occasional visit from her daughter. But the sudden appearance of a deer hunter disturbs her peaceful and quiet life.
Vengeance
Oct 22 - Oct 23
(Johnny To, Hong Kong, 2009, 35mm, 108 min)
This fast-paced thriller offers neo-noir fans and newcomers a genre-busting gem complete with a hit man turned chef, a family man moonlighting as an assassin, and an androgynous detective.
Regeneration
Oct 25
(Raoul Walsh, USA, 1915, 72 min)
Raoul Walsh's Regeneration was the first gangster film ever made, and it also belongs to a period in which the feature-length film was just coming into existence and was still in the process of discovering its own rules. Based on the autobiography of a turn-of-the-century gangster, Walsh gives us a powerful slum melodrama produced on location in the lower east side of New York City, with a gaggle of authentic low-life types performing alongside professional actors.
Howl
Oct 29 - Nov 04
(Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman, USA, 2010, 35mm, 90 min)
The beats are alive and well thanks to a soaring performance by James Franco in Howl, a mesmerizing channeling of Allen Ginsberg, set in 1957 San Francisco as his poetic masterpiece is put on trial.
Ornette: Made In America
Oct 29 - Oct 30
(Shirley Clark, USA, 1985, 35mm, 80 min)
Shirley Clarke was one of the key figures of the American independent film movement, with the films The Connection (1961) and The Cool World (1963) building her reputation. Both had strong jazz elements, and for her final film Clarke returned to the jazz scene, making this brilliant music documentary featuring the legendary Ornette Coleman, a toweringly innovative yet humble figure.
Ed Thigpen: Master of Time, Rhythm and Taste
Nov 01 - Nov 03
(Don McGlynn, USA/Denmark, 2009, Beta-SP, 91 min)
Apart from being an incredible musician with a rare feel for music, the drummer Ed Thigpen, who passed away this year, was also a human being with a fascinating personal history. This multifaceted portrait film, tells the story of Thigpen, whose work (on no less than 900 albums) has included collaborations with Oscar Peterson, Ray Brown, Herbie Hancock and Ella Fitzgerald.
Hitchcock Masterpieces
Nov 02 - Dec 07
As a detailed investigation into one of cinema's landmark directors, this class will look at films from three periods of Hitchcock's remarkable career: The 39 Steps and The Lady Vanishes, which crowned his early British period; Notorious, which culminated his American work of the 1940s; and his astonishing succession of classics from 1956 through 1964, Vertigo, North By Northwest, Psycho, and The Birds.
Do it Again
Nov 04
(Robert Patton Spruill, USA, 2010, DigiBeta, 90 min)
Every serious music fan has a favorite band—but it’s a very rare fan that single-handedly attempts to reunite that band years after they’ve packed it in. In order to conquer his midlife crisis, the committed pop journalist Geoff Edgers’ dream is to bring back together The Kinks.
Carlos
Seattle premiere!
Nov 05 - Nov 07
(Olivier Assayas, 2010, France, HD, 333 min)
A daring and amazing biography of a still-living figure, delving into international politics, terrorism, history, religion, sex and much more. Assayas handles all the issues with staggering dexterity, intelligence and skill. The film is nothing short of a must see! Shown in three parts.
Nightfall
Nov 05 - Nov 11
(Jacques Tourneur, USA/France, 1956, 35mm, 78 min)
This 1957 noir masterpiece by Jacques Tourneur stars Aldo Ray as a man fleeing a private investigator and Anne Bancroft as the barroom acquaintance who agrees to help him. Ray plays an artist whose life goes permanently haywire when fate interrupts a winter hunting trip. From then on it’s life on the run, complete with dozens of double-crosses, psychotic killers on his trail, lots of flashbacks, and a young Anne Bancroft decked out in sequins and lace.
Breakaway: Films by Bruce Conner
Co-presented by The Film Forum and Third Eye Cinema
Nov 11
(16mm and DigiBeta, 92 min)
We are proud to present a sampling of Bruce Conner’s greatest films, celebrating what would have been his 77th birthday. A painter, sculptor and collagist, Conner is perhaps best remembered as among the most important—and delightful—experimental filmmakers of the late 20th century.
Boxing Gym
Nov 12 - Nov 18
(Fredrick Wiseman, USA, 2010, HD, 91 min)
Boxing is a sport of contradictions. It can be bloody, hurtful and cruel, but at the same time it requires dedication, discipline, focus, a grueling work ethic, sacrifice, conditioning and ferocious demands on the body and mind. It’s no wonder then that pioneering verité filmmaker Fredrick Wiseman (La Danse) turns his lens on the subject.
Making Faces: Metal Type in the 21st Century
Nov 12 - Nov 13
(Richard Kegler, USA/France, 2005, 16mm, 103 min)
This fascinating design documentary captures the personality and work process of the late Canadian graphic artist Jim Rimmer (1931-2010). In 2008, P22 type foundry commissioned Rimmer to create a new type design (Stern) that became the first-ever simultaneous release of a digital font and hand-set metal font.
Colony
Nov 19 - Nov 24
(Carter Gunn and Ross McDonnell, Ireland, 2009, DigiBeta, 87min)
The Seppi family has recently set up an apiary business in the lush orchards of California. Yet the outlook for their business isn’t good: all across America bees are vanishing. This gorgeously shot film contemplates the tiny but powerful industry at the heart of modern farming, and how its failure could mean the collapse of food production as we know it.
Empathy
Nov 19
(Amie Siegel, 2003, USA, 35mm, 92 min)
The postmodern Empathy explores the practice of psychoanalysis, reversing its traditional power structure, and putting psychoanalysts on the couch. It’s much more than a traditional documentary, with interviews of practicing psychoanalysts dispersed throughout, resulting in an ultimate collapse of the genres of fiction, screen test and documentary.
DDR/DDR
Nov 20
(Amie Siegel, 2008, USA, HD, 135 min)
Alice Gosti's Spaghetti CO.: Something Just Happened 1:19pm
Dec 15 - Dec 17
Investigating the relationship among individuals and families with food, choreographer and food-lover Alice Gosti makes a beautiful multimedia feast for our senses, sitting at a table eating a large bowl of spaghetti rather than talking, eating rather than answering questions, stuffing her mouth instead of enjoying food and company.