Northwest Film Forum

Each month, PANDEMIC turns Northwest Film Forum’s cinema into a virtual examination room, as two cultural curators poke and prod viral blights from across the interwebz.

As we’ve all experienced, viral videos infect the minds of millions with the frenzy of a water-skiing squirrel. Symptoms: debilitation and loss of productivity—much like hoof and mouth disease. Through examining infection vectors, this live video dialog takes us through vast internet archives, to examine the latest strains of you-tuberculosis.

This month, meme-machines Adam Sekuler and Lauren Berliner guide us on a quest to answer the nebulous koan of cloud life—yes, you can haz cheeseburger. . .but can you digest it?

WARNING: Content is highly contagious 

ABOUT LAUREN BERLINER
Lauren Berliner is an Assistant Professor of Media and Communication and Cultural Studies at University of Washington Bothell where she teaches courses on participatory media culture and critical media literacy. She is a co-curator of The Festival of (In)Appropriation and has screened her documentary and experimental films around the world. For the past decade she has directed video production workshops with girls and queer youth, and is currently working on a book that investigates the relationship between amateur digital media production practices, empowerment, and pedagogy. 

ABOUT ADAM SEKULER
Former Northwest Film Forum Program Director (2006 – 2013), Adam Sekuler is a filmmaker and curator who specializes in regional and international thematic film series, director retrospectives, and film festivals. Among the films that have benefitted from his expertise are Lisandro Alonso’s Liverpool, Pedro Costa’s Ne Change Rien, Albert Serra’s Birdsong, and Oliver Laxe’s You Are All Captains. Previously the programmer for the nation’s first and only dedicated nonfiction theater, The Bell Auditorium, he is also co-founder of Search and Rescue, an ongoing effort to present and preserve discarded archives of 16mm films.