Calendar
Aurora
Oct 07 - Oct 13, 2011
(Cristi Puiu, 2010, Romania, 35mm, 181 min)
Aurora unfolds with deliberate slowness, employing dialogue and performances as mundane as they are deadpan. Viorel is a disillusioned single father driven to serial murder by sheer frustration with his everyday life. As this uncannily calm killer wanders the streets, Puiu works with time, his favorite narrative device, to fashion an exercise in enduring unease and an intentional study of boring violence.
Battle for Brooklyn
Oct 07 - Oct 13, 2011
(Michael Galinsky, Suki Hawley, 2010, USA, DigiBeta, 93 min)
A David and Goliath story about urban development in Brooklyn’s Prospect Heights. At once public and intimate, Battle for Brooklyn chronicles eight years in the life of Daniel Goldstein, the graphic-designer-turned-activist whose refusal to leave his apartment became the last obstacle to mega-developer Forest City Ratner’s Atlantic Yards project.
Jane's Journey
JANE GOODAL IN ATTENDANCE OCTOBER 12!
Oct 07 - Oct 13, 2011
(Lorenz Knauer, Germany, 2010, 35mm, 107min)
It would be hard to name anyone who has had more of an impact in the realm of animal research and wildlife conservation than Jane Goodall, whose forty-five year study of wild chimpanzees in Africa is legendary. In Jane's Journey, we travel with her across several continents, from her childhood home in England, to the Gombe National Park in Tanzania where she began her groundbreaking research and where she still returns every year to enjoy the company of the chimpanzees. Featuring a wide range of interviews and spectacular footage from her own private collection (including her years in Gombe), Jane's Journey is an inspiring portrait of the private person behind the world-famous icon.
Detroit Wild City
Oct 08 - Oct 09, 2011
(Florent Tillon, 2010, USA/France, HD, 80 min)
Falcons nest in its abandoned skyscrapers. Weeds sprout through broken sidewalks. Blighted apartment buildings fester with vermin. Hundreds of stray pit bulls roam the streets. These are images from Florent Tillon’s documentary about the life, death, and rebirth of "Motor City."
The Pruitt-Igoe Myth
Oct 08 - Oct 09, 2011
(Chad Freidrichs, 2011, USA, DigiBeta, 79min)
Pruitt-Igoe is a low-cost housing project in St. Louis, MO. Built in the 1950s and ’60s, it has attained legendary status as a failure of modernism, public housing, and government funded programs in general. But is that the whole story? Documentarian Chris Freidrichs asks what more we can learn from Pruitt-Igoe other than “public housing doesn’t work." The Pruitt-Igoe Myth is a detailed and moving documentary exploring the public housing site’s history, from initial success to full demolition twenty years later. The story takes a wide-angle look at post-war American history but refracts it through the hopes, trials and disappointments of the buildings’ residents, some of whom are interviewed.
Peter Falk Tribute & Double Feature!
Preservation funded by the Film Foundation
Oct 14, 2011
Peter Falk was a man whose range and skill were unparalleled in his generation. He was a gutsy experimenter and improviser, doing mesmerizing work as part of the Cassavetes Repertory Company. We honor this late giant with a double feature of two films he starred in by Cassavetes, Husbands and Woman Under The Influence. In Husbands Falk is off to London, where he and two pals (Cassavetes and Ben Gazzara) try to shake things up. In A Woman Under the Influence, Falk demonstrated a vulnerability that marked this as one of the more ambitious movies of his career.
This is a double feature bill. Tickets are $12 general and $9 members. A 20-minute intermission will follow the screening of Husbands.
Happy Hour Saloon
Oct 20, 2011
Film lovers and film makers: Come out for our monthly Third Thursday Happy Hour Saloon on Thursday, July 21 in our lobby. Enjoy a glass of wine or a beer and good conversation with fellow filmmakers and film lovers. From 5:00-6:30, all drinks are $1 off (which makes beer $3, house wine $4 and wine specials $6).
Color Me Obsessed
Seattle Premiere! Director In Attendance Friday & Saturday!
Oct 21 - Oct 23, 2011
(Gorman Bechard, 2011, USA, DigiBeta, 123 min)
Gorman Bechard’s newest film is a strange animal: A documentary whose subject never actually appears. Bechard has been a diehard fan of 1980s rock icons, The Replacements, for nearly thirty years—Color Me Obsessed is a movie about that fandom.
Octubre
Seattle Premiere!
Oct 21 - Oct 27, 2011
(Daniel Vega Vidal, 2010, Peru/Venezuela/Spain, 35mm, 83 min)
Winner of Un Certain Regard at Cannes 2010, brothers Daniel and Diego Vega Vidal’s first feature film shows an unlikely collection of down-and-out Peruvians thrown by chance into a quirky familial arrangement.
"An assured first feature by Peruvian brothers Daniel and Diego Vega, Octubre is a laconic and humorous exploration of a potentially redemptive male midlife crisis...The movie's real miracle is that, however precious its premise, this slow-burning not-quite- heartwarmer never succumbs to cuteness." —Seattle Weekly
Wolf Summer
Presented in Collaboration with KidFlix Global
Oct 22, 2011
(Peter Norlund, 2003, Norway, DVD, 83 minutes)
This film, a multiple award winner on the festival circuit, tells the story of a determined young girl who must overcome incredible obstacles to save a wild wounded wolf and her pup from hunters. Along the way, she discovers the real meaning of bravery and compassion.
Alternatives to Hollywood
Oct 24 - Dec 05, 2011
We will consider different filmmaking styles or “languages," alternative stories, and how outside the Hollywood system filmmakers have explored images, worlds, ideas and concerns that parallel writing, painting and other art movements of the past century. We will look at and discuss films by such great filmmakes as Vittorio de Sica, Jean-Luc Godard, Robert Bresson, Ross McElwee, Jim Jarmusch, Won Kar-Wai, Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Claire Denis, Gus Van Sant and Richard Linklater.
The Greenhorns
Part of Fresh Starts, Central Co-op’s Food Day event
Free with RSVP!
Oct 24, 2011
One of the greatest food challenges our country faces is the aging agricultural community—40 percent of U.S. farmers are 55 or older. However, driven by a variety of reasons, such as the uncertain economy, love of nature, social justice and patriotism, a new generation of farmers is returning to the land. The Greenhorns is their story.
D.W. Griffith's Intolerance
Co-Presented by The Sprocket Society
Oct 25, 2011
(D.W. Griffith, 1916, USA, 16mm, 176 min. plus intermission)
Legendary, widely lauded and yet rarely seen, Griffith's monumental follow-up to Birth of a Nation redefined film storytelling and introduced the giant epic to American audiences. Intolerance weaves parallel tales in four historical epochs to show “…how hatred and intolerance, through all the ages, have battled against love and charity.”
Annual Member Meeting
Oct 26, 2011
Members, join us as we vote on board members, discuss the state of the organization and local filmmaking, network with other filmmakers & film lovers, and enjoy a drink.
This is your chance to guide the direction of Northwest Film Forum, meet the board and staff (and new board members) and hear about the past year and the year ahead. All members are welcome to attend. If you would like to suggest a change to the bylaws or make a nomination for the board of directors, please contact Executive Director Lyall Bush at 206-329-2629 or [email protected]
Ocean
Seattle Premiere!
Oct 26, 2011
(Charles Atlas, 2011, USA, HD, 100min)
In September 2008 Merce Cunningham staged Ocean, one of the most ambitious works of his legendary 60-year career, within a massive Minnesota granite quarry. Renowned filmmaker and longtime Cunningham collaborator Charles Atlas was there, using five cameras to document this uniquely epic production.
One Way Boogie Woogie/27 Years Later
Sponsored by MOHAI Co-Presented By Third Eye Cinema and MOHAI
Oct 27, 2011
(James Benning, USA, 2005, 16mm, 120 min)
In conjunction with MOHAI’s exhibition "Now & Then," we revive one of experimental cinema’s finest. In 1977, concerned about the decaying nature of his native Milwaukee, James Benning shot One Way Boogie Woogie, an hour long film composed of 60 shots of industrial urban landscape: smokestacks, sidewalks, three Volkswagens, people and animals here and there.
Ne Change Rien
Seattle Premiere!
Oct 28 - Nov 03, 2011
(Pedro Costa, 2009, Portugal/France, 35mm, 100 min)
Pedro Costa’s ninth film is a bit of a change of pace for the director, who traditionally concentrates on the marginalized and underserved communities of Lisbon. Retaining the distinctive low-light visual style of his previous films, he turns his camera on French chanteuse-actress Jeanne Balibar, in a dreamlike meditation on the process of creating music.
"The cinematography is stunning and beyond atmospheric. The music is highly intelligent. Balibar as Balibar is undeniably charismatic...She's nothing less than the muse of cinema." —Seattle Weekly
"Nothing much happens in Ne Change Rien, but we never lose interest in the images on the screen. We powerfully feel these black-and-white moments of Jeanne Balibar smoking and singing." —The Stranger
And I Ride, And I Ride
*Please note: we are showing a French language version with NO subtitles
Oct 28 - Oct 30, 2011
(Frank Vialle, France, 2009, DigiBeta, 105 min)
A snapshot of virtuoso guitarist Rodolphe Burger and his native Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines valley. And I Ride, And I Ride is a profile in mirrors as seen through the attitude of music.
Inni
Additional encore screenings at Northwest Film Forum scheduled by popular demand!
Oct 29 - Nov 15, 2011
(Vincent Morisset, 2001, Canada, HD, 75min)
Inni is Sigur Ros second live film following 2007's hugely-celebrated Heima. Whereas that film positioned the enigmatic group in the context of their Icelandic homeland, providing geographical, social and historical perspectives on their otherworldly music, with uplifting results, Inni focusses purely on the band's performance, which is artfully and intimately captured by French-Canadian director Vincent Morisset (Arcade Fire's Miroir Noir).
The Oregonian
Oct 29 - Nov 12, 2011
(Calvin Lee Reeder, Washington, 81 min)
Using surrealism, 70s shock horror cinema and Throbbing Gristle’s mandate, “entertainment through pain,” as a starting point, director Calvin Lee Reeder has made a road trip film that deprives its audience of every conventional expectation in a movie-going experience. The Oregonian re-imagines our dreary, forested Northwest landscape as a purgatory from an old-time religion, complete with its own symbolism, a cast of arch-angels and at least 59 levels of hell.
In My Mind
Seattle Premiere!
Nov 01, 2011
(Gary Hawkins, USA, 2010, DigiBeta, 100min)
In My Mind compares and contrasts two great concerts separated by half a century but united by the power of jazz. In 2009, award-winning pianist Jason Moran paid tribute to one of his own heroes, Thelonious Monk.
Black February
Seattle Premiere!
Nov 02, 2011
(Vipal Monga, 2010, USA, DigiBeta, 59 min)
Black February chronicles an unprecedented series of concerts performed in New York City by legendary jazz composer and conductor Lawrence D. ‘Butch’ Morris. Butch put on the series in February 2005 to celebrate 20 years of Conduction, his revolutionary technique for leading live improvisations.
Improvised Music & Experimental Film
Co-Presented with Third Eye Cinema
Nov 03, 2011
The Monktail Creative Music Concern and the Film Forum present an evening of live collaborative media experiments. Some of the area's most talented musicians will play in and alongside a number of pioneering short films by Northwest filmmakers.