Northwest Film Forum

Northwest Film Forum is proud to collaborate on this unique city-wide event, which runs from July 1-3. Please visit this site for full information. 
 


Seattle has been called a “picaresque city” because its geography is so episodic, an archipelago of hills divided by water and dominated by scenic vistas that stun us into forgetting. Z the peripatetic bike-cop hero of Police Beat is content to drift across this fragmented sequence of views, witnessing the petty humiliations and violent assaults that trigger 911 calls to the police. He is polite, but always looking outward, his mind on the mountains, somewhere west or east of here, and his absent girlfriend, gone camping with another man. 

 


What kind of city is this? It cannot be mapped, so it must be filmed. In Police Beat, Seattle’s fractured landscapes are remixed and made sensible by Z’s path through them. At this screening of Police Beat, the film’s screenwriter, Charles Mudede, will speak with urban theorist Thomas Sieverts, author of Zwischenstadt, and writer Matthew Stadler about the new shapes of cities and the ways that film can make them legible.

Tickets $7 at the door
 
Matthew Stadler reflects on Police Beat further