Engauge 2025 – In Situ
INDIVIDUAL FILM PROGRAM TICKETS:
- $15 General Admission
- $10 Student/Child/Senior
- $7 NWFF/SIFF/GI/PCNW member
INDIVIDUAL TICKETS TO SPECIAL EVENTS:
(Lori Goldston Performance)
- $18 General Admission
- $13 NWFF/SIFF/GI/PCNW member
FRIDAY DAY PASS:
(two film programs)
- $25 General
- $15 Student/Child/Senior
- $10 NWFF/SIFF/GI/PCNW member
SATURDAY DAY PASS:
(two film programs + one special event)
- $36 General
- $28 Student/Child/Senior
- $20 NWFF/SIFF/GI/PCNW member
FULL FESTIVAL PASSES:
(includes Lori Goldston Performance!)
- $70 General
- $50 Student/Child/Senior
- $35 NWFF/SIFF/GI/PCNW member
On Film
Screening on film!
About
This collection of site-specific films beautifully document, gesture toward and find meaning in urban and rural locations around the globe, demonstrating once again that the constraints of place can be artistically liberating.
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.
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 rajah@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 strongly encouraged 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.
- Purchase your ticket through Brown Paper Tickets; come to the show!
- You can also purchase a ticket on the day of the screening at Northwest Film Forum’s box office (1515 12th Ave, Seattle).
- If you have purchased a Full Festival Pass or Full Day Pass, we’ll be able to look you up at Will Call by the name you purchased under.
Films in this program:
Serene Hues
(Rita Tse | tinted b & w + sound | 16mm to digital | 4:24 | Canada)
“Serene Hues,” hand-processed, solarized, tinted, and toned, is a meditative journey into the tranquility and vibrant beauty of nature. The surprising and unexpected images created through process-driven filmmaking, which is improvisational and interactive, embody the wabi-sabi aesthetic of impermanence, incompleteness, and imperfection, emphasizing the creative process of producing the work.
ice fog sun
(Jeffrey Langille | color + silent | Super 8 to digital | 2:39 | Canada)
Made during a walk along the Yukon River on an extremely cold day in January 2018, all editing for “ice fog sun” was done in-camera, leaving a certain amount to chance, and acknowledging the responses of camera, film, and filmmaker to the conditions of the world in that moment.
Alley
(Defne Kirmizi | b & w + sound | 16mm to digital | 4:34 | Austria/Turkey)
The camera lingers, tracing a quiet alley where people go in and out of frame — glimpsed, reflected, and lost. A game unfolds in this stage, where shifting perspectives turn passersby into unwitting performers. Elsewhere, landscapes are slipping away and rebuilt on a cyclical pattern. A brief syncopation in a daily routine, a fleeting interplay of a place and bodies in motion.
Blooms
(Luke Sieczek | color + silent | 16mm to digital | 4:00 | US)
One Big Eye
(Sobia Ahmad + Benny Shaffer | b & w + sound | 16mm to digital | 18:57 | US)
‘One Big Eye’ is a hand-processed 16mm film shot at Pando, an ancient aspen grove that extends across 106 acres in south-central Utah. Seemingly 47,000 individual trees, it is unified by a single, immense root system, making it a ‘forest of one.’ Believed to be between 16,000 and 80,000 years old, Pando is the largest and heaviest known organism on land. Pando’s invisible root system is a guiding metaphor that emphasizes the interconnectedness between humans and non-human beings, as well as the notion of Oneness described by many spiritual traditions. The footage was processed at home with an eco-friendly, coffee-based developer that leaves unpredictable inscriptions and traces on the film’s emulsion, at times creating visually abstract and speckled images. This materially focused film practice offers an opportunity to rethink ecological entanglements between humans and a more-than-human world.
Fissures
(Mike Rollo | b & w + sound | 16mm to digital | 5:00 | Canada)
An abandoned brick-making factory rests at the edge of the badlands in southern Saskatchewan, where clay hills slowly shift over time, burying the past. Fusing high-contrast black-and-white photography with a poem written and read by poet Amber Goodwyn and a textured soundtrack by composer Andrea-Jane Cornell, “Fissures” is a lyrical examination of an impermanent landscape.
未命名菲林消毒计划/Untitled Film Disinfection Project 1
(Lilan Yang | color + projector sound | 16mm print | 3:25 | China/US)
As Borges once said, “Censorship is the mother of metaphor.” This 16mm structural film explores how state control breeds its own linguistic and visual resistance. Created in response to China’s “zero-COVID” policy—with its harsh lockdowns, relentless testing, and severe restrictions that tragically culminated in the Ürümqi fire—this project treats developed image-less Ektachrome film as an “unclean” object in need of cleansing. By applying chlorine dioxide to film surfaces—following government disinfection guidelines during the pandemic—the work transforms physical material into a metaphor for censorship and information control in mainland China. “Untitled Film Disinfection Project 1” examines the delicate intersection of public health measures, state control, and artistic resistance.
Mist
(Brittany Gravely | b & w + silent | 16mm print | 4:00 | US)
a phenomenon captured in the park, days after the death of a friend
Super, Natural
(Kyath Battie | color + sound | 16mm print | 7:24 | Canada)
Vancouver Island, supernatural by construct and memory, is experienced through landscapes represented by colonial icons, mysterious brilliant fountains, and a curious peacock. A tableaux of sorts, each encounter is singular yet united by stunning and devastated beauty.
Tooborac
(Richard Tuohy | b & w + sound | 16mm print | 9:00 | AUS)
Granite tors (“rock formations”) scattered over 20 square kilometers around Tooborac in central Victoria dance in energetic celebration of their own endurance.