The Drifting States of Denis Cote

The Drifting States of Denis Cote

Director in attendance!

French-Canadian director Denis Côté became one of North America's most promising filmmakers after roaring onto the international film scene with his first feature, Drifting States, in 2005. With six features, his ouevre creates a sublimely minimal, genre-blending, hybridized offering that combines low-budget ingenuity with daring formal experimentation. Often concerned with the universal resonance and meaning of intimate relationships between marginal and marginalized characters, Côté’s work is consistently inventive, incorporating digital image-making technologies into the forms of his films, as well as having his characters use these devices in their daily lives.

Côté’s work pursues filmic familiars then side steps genre and formal conventions to divert the audience in directions that prove incredibly rewarding. His cinema is heart-wrenching, funny and redemptive—qualities that certainly make it masterful.

Series Passes available: $20 Members / $35 General


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Special support provided by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences 
Support for the project provided in part by the National Endowment for the Arts

 

Drifting States

Seattle Premiere!

Nov 11, 2011

(Denis Côté, 2005, Canada, 35mm, 91 min)

Côté’s first film already displays the documentary realist aesthetic, interest in the margins of society, and conceptual rigor that have come to characterize his body of work. After euthanizing his terminally ill mother, Christian (Christian LeBlanc) leaves Montreal and becomes a garbage collector in a remote town on James Bay.

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Curling

Seattle Premiere!

Saturday 7pm show free for members; preceded by a members-only reception with the director at 5:30pm

Nov 11 - Nov 17, 2011

(Denis Côté, 2010, Canada, 35mm, 96 min)

Côté takes a more conventional turn in Curling than in his previous films, going through three producers and several script drafts to come up with a film that he, himself, describes as “more mature.” Several aspects are still classic Côté: the focus on setting, the stark realism, and the sense of dread that builds throughout this subdued thriller.

"Four 1/2 stars: A beguiling, unusual film about secrets...Enticingly different." —Seattle Times

"SW Pick: Canadian director Denis Côté has an interest in individuals with "one foot outside of society," he says, as is evident in the new Curling, a crisp portrait of a solitary Québécois man and his cloistered preteen daughter." —Seattle Weekly

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Our Private Lives

Seattle Premiere!
Free for members!

Nov 12, 2011

(Denis Côté, 2007, Canada, 35mm, 82 min)

Three years before Catfish, Denis Côté was already exploring that most modern of romances: The online affair. Our Private Lives tells the story of a Bulgarian couple (played by real-life Bulgarian couple Anastassia Liutova and Penko Gospodinov) who decide to meet in person for the first time after a lengthy Internet liaison.

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All That She Wants

Seattle Premiere!

Nov 13, 2011

(Denis Côté, 2008, Canada, 35mm, 105 min)

Côté took home the Golden Leopard from Locarno Film Festival for the exquisitely constructed All That She Wants. True to form, he turns the camera on characters at the margins—broken families in a nameless country. Composed in breathtaking black and white, All That She Wantsis a collection of images and relationships creating more than a conventional narrative. 

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Carcasses

Nov 14, 2011

(Denis Côté, 2009, Canada, 35mm, 72 min)

Carcasses is one of the most original Canadian movies in recent years. It opens as a documentary portrait of Jean-Paul Colmor, the unabashedly eccentric owner of a massive junkyard in rural Quebec containing just about every conceivable object, as well as the dilapidated carcasses of thousands of cars. This gnarled, rusted landscape proves to be as fascinating as Colmor himself, especially when his kingdom has some equally surprising visitors.

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