N-E-X D-O-C-S

N-E-X D-O-C-S

JUNE 8-14, FRIDAY-THURSDAY

This week-long celebration of exciting new directions in documentary film brings together new work from innovative American practitioners in the craft of documentary filmmaking. We showcase artists who are stretching the aesthetics of documentaries, in an opportunity for discerning cinephiles to explore the boundaries between the world we see and the world we make.

 

 

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Small Roads

Seattle Premiere!

Jun 08, 2012

(James Benning, USA, 2011, HD, 103 min)

James Benning has built a body of avant-garde work that explores ideas of identity time and landscape. Small Roads utilizes long takes of Western roads, building a sense of space and rhythm which invites comparisons to filmmakers like Abbas Kiarostami and composers like Phillip Glass. This is a journey to get lost in, a picture of America mapped out by the roads less traveled. 

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The Observers

Seattle Premiere! 

Jun 09, 2012

(Jacqueline Goss, 2011, USA, 16mm, 69 min)

New Hampshire’s Mt. Washington, weather data has been recorded every hour since 1932. Known for its extremes, the storied mountain becomes the starting point for filmmaker Jaqueline Goss’ new work. Shot without dialogue, it follows a modern-day crew of scientists and the challenges, triumphs and poetry they discover while living at the top of the windiest mountain on earth. 

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I Have Always Been a Dreamer

Seattle Premiere!

Jun 10, 2012

(Sabine Gruffat, USA, 2012, Blu-ray, 78 min)

This is a tale of two cities: one in an apparently unstoppable state of growth, another in what seems to be a permanent state of decline. Filmed over four years, Sabine Gruffat’s documentary juxtaposes Dubai and Detroit in a film that’s part travelogue and part investigative report, which looks beneath the obvious contrasts and discovers intriguing parallels. 

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The Pettifogger

Seattle Premiere! 

Jun 11, 2012

(Lewis Klahr, USA, 2011, Bluray, 65 min)

Lewis Klahr builds worlds out of artifacts we toss into the wastebasket. Using cutout paper images from vintage comic books, magazines and other cultural detritus, he constructs animated collages commenting on 20th century American culture. Klahr’s first feature-length work tells the story of a Mad Men-era con man and gambler, in a film both postmodern genre thriller and abstract essay on wealth and greed. 

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The Narcissus Flowers of Katsura-shima

Director In Attendance!
Seattle Premiere!

Jun 12, 2012

(Jon Jost, 2011, USA/Japan, Blu-ray, 74 min)

A year after Japan’s major earthquake and tsunami, art about the event is beginning to emerge. The Narcissus Flowers of Katsura-shima, a documentary by American film artist Jon Jost, takes an oblique, even elegiac approach. Combining shots of island landscapes, poetry and interviews with residents, the film is a compelling portrait of a place and the people who make their home there.

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Charismatic Megafauna

Director In Attendance!
Live score by Lori Goldston, Dylan Carlson, Jessika Kenney and Greg Campbell!

Jun 13, 2012

(Vanessa Renwick, 2011, USA, Blu-ray, 48 min)

Vanessa Renwick’s unconventional documentaries explore habitat and landscape, urban and the wild. Charismatic Megafauna utilizes 16mm Renwick filmed in her youth on Chicago’s streets, where she lived and traveled with a wolf-dog hybrid, as well as footage shot in the nineties, documenting the process of reintroducing wolves to the American West. Images of Renwick’s dog and of biologists interacting with wolves raise questions of our responsibilities toward and expectations of the natural world.

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Dissonance

Director in Attendance!
Seattle Premiere!

Jun 14, 2012

(Jon Jost, 2011, USA, Blu-ray, 62 min)

Using techniques of collage, split-screen and unconventional editing, in Dissonance, Jon Jost has constructed a poetic meditation on life and the way we live it. His stream-of conscious sequences of images and sounds are reminiscent of the work of Chris Marker, particularly the still-influential Sans Soleil (1983). "It offers no conclusions," Jost says. "I only know it needs to be seen big." 

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