Truth To Fiction: WTO/99
$15 General Admission
$10 Student/Child/Senior
$7 NWFF Member
About
(Ian Bell, 2025, United States, 100 min, in English)
From November 30th to December 3rd 1999, tens of thousands of people occupied the streets of downtown Seattle to make known their concerns about the existence of the World Trade Organization and its impacts on the environment, human rights, and labor in the largest protests against economic globalization the US has ever seen.
The protests brought together people from divergent sections of society—anarchists, environmentalists, labor unions, consumer protection advocates, pro-democracy groups, and even religious organizations.
These protestors gathered in direct action hoping to dissuade world leadership from continued support of the WTO and strived to focus the public’s attention to the kind of future the WTO would bring forth.
Building from a thousand-hour archive, which includes more than 400 hours of never-before-seen footage, WTO’99 reanimates the ideological conflicts that drew thousands to the streets of Seattle in hopes for a better future. The film is an immersive visual artifact of a week that brought 40,000 people together to warn of environmental collapse, the vanishing middle class, and what the full inclusion of China in the World Trade Organization would mean for our collective future. The protesters—seen as a rabble-rousing nuisance at the time, yet appearing prophetic today—were met with extreme violence by a militarized police force, an all-too-fitting way to usher in a new century; one that is now defined by US failure to address climate change and increasing state aggression.
Ticketing, concessions, cinemas, restrooms, and our public edit lab are located on Northwest Film Forum’s ground floor, which is wheelchair accessible. All doors in Northwest Film Forum are non-motorized, and may require staff assistance to open. Our upstairs workshop room is not wheelchair accessible.
The majority of seats in our main cinema are 21″ wide from armrest to armrest; some seats are 19″ wide. We are working on creating the option of removable armrests!
We have a limited number of assistive listening devices available for programs hosted in our larger theater, Cinema 1. These devices are maintained by the Technical Director, and can be requested at the ticketing and concessions counter. Also available at the front desk is a Sensory Kit you can borrow, which includes a Communication Card, noise-reducing headphones, and fidget toys.
The Forum does NOT have assistive devices for the visually impaired, and is not (yet) a scent-free venue. Our commitment to increasing access for our audiences is ongoing, and we welcome all public input on the subject!
If you have additional specific questions about accessibility at our venue, please contact our Patron Services Manager at suji@nwfilmforum.org. Our phone number (206-329-2629) is voicemail-only, but we check it often.
Made possible due to a grant from Seattle Office of Arts & Culture, in partnership with Sensory Access, our Sensory Access document presents a visual and descriptive walk-through of the NWFF space. View it in advance of attending an in-person event at bit.ly/nwffsocialnarrativepdf, in order to prepare yourself for the experience.
NWFF patrons will be required to wear masks that cover both nose and mouth while in the building. Disposable masks are available at the door for those who need them. Recent variants of COVID-19 readily infect and spread between individuals regardless of vaccination status.
Read more about NWFF’s policies regarding cleaning, masks, and capacity limitations here.
