Calendar
Screen Off
Video art happy hour at 7pm
Screen Off at 8pm
Guest curator Vera Petukhova
May 22, 2014
What is the difference between video art and experimental film Surprisingly, Yahoo does not have the definitive answer, perhaps because trying to confine these two cinematic 'forms' to fixed terms is as fraught as the historical relationship between film and video. In this Screen Off, we explore the intertwined historical trajectories of experimental film and video art, and expose the tensions that have emerged from attempts to define the two forms.
Navajo Film Themselves
6pm Lobby Reception
7pm Screening
Co-presented with Longhouse Media
May 23, 2014
(Al Clah, Johnny Nelson, Susie Benally, Mike Anderson, Alta Kahn, Johnny Nelson, Maxine Tsosie, Mary Jane Tsosie, 1966, 144 min)
Sol Worth, John Adair and Richard Chalfen traveled to Pine Springs, Arizona in the summer of 1966, where they taught a group of Navajo students to use cameras in the production of documentary films. The resulting film project is known as Navajo Film Themselves (sometimes mistakenly called Through Navajo Eyes), which is the title of the book that Worth and Adair later wrote.
Navajo Star Wars
Free screening!
Co-presented with Longhouse Media
May 02 - May 24, 2014
Seventy voice actors speaking 5 Navajo dialects enact Star Wars: A New Hope, in the first major theatrical movie to be dubbed into a Native language.
Navajo Paradisio
Co-presented with Longhouse Media
May 24, 2014
(85 min)
The Navajo Nation has produced some of the most exciting and successful Native filmmakers of the past decade. Join us for a program of short films, and talk with the artists who made them.
Miss Navajo
Co-presented with Longhouse Media
May 25, 2014
(Billy Luther, 53 min)
As winners of Miss Navajo Nation, women are challenged to take on the great responsibility of becoming community leaders who are fluent in the Navajo language and knowledgeable about their culture and history. Conceived as a "celebration of womanhood" by filmmaker Billy Luther—whose mother, Sarah Johnson Luther, was Miss Navajo Nation 1966—this documentary is a different take on what it means to be beautiful.
Agents of Convergence
Co-presented with Imagos Films Guest speaker Don Thacker
May 27, 2014
Members Only: June + July Season Launch Party
Free event for Northwest Film Forum members!
May 29, 2014
Northwest Film Forum members: join us on May 29 for a celebration of our new June/July season, summer drinks, and Beneath the Pirate Bay, a free discussion with visiting artist Nicolas Maigret and professor James Coupe from the University of Washington.
The Pirate Cinema
Seattle premiere!
Join us for post-show discussions with the artist!
May 29 - May 31, 2014
The hidden activity and geography of real-time peer-to-peer file sharing via BitTorrent is revealed in The Pirate Cinema, a live installation by digital artist Nicolas Maigret. In Maigret’s monitoring room, omnipresent telecommunications surveillance gains a global face, as the artist plunders the core of restless activity online, revealing how visual media is consumed and disseminated across the globe.
Alphaville
May 30 - Jun 05, 2014
(Jean-Luc Godard, France, 1965, DCP, 99 min)
Ostensibly a sci-fi genre exercise about a nightmarish future, Alphaville is unmistakably about Now. And Now isn’t a very pretty place in this nocturnal, intellectually rigorous, bleak satire of the ‘60s at their exact mid-point. As always, Godard makes a virtue out of his budgetary limitations, taking the aspects of contemporary Paris he finds de-humanizing and making “special effects” out of them (making the nightmare that much more present and real).
Contempt
Special pre-screening introduction from Lyall Bush on May 30!
May 30 - Jun 03, 2014
(Jean-Luc Godard, France, 1963, DCP, 102 min)
Godard is on an almost 60 year exploration into the heart of cinema, and Contempt is his standard bearer of films about filmmaking. At its heart it is a mystery, examining why a wife (Brigitte Bardot) suddenly falls out of love with her husband (Michel Piccoli).
Le Petit Soldat
Jun 01 - Jun 05, 2014
(Jean-Luc Godard, France, 1963, 35mm, 88 min)
A tale of star-crossed lovers disconnected by ideology (He is a Right Wing terrorist, She is a Left-Wing terrorist), Le Petit Soldat is Godard’s first and best study of the strange bedfellows of love and politics.
Ping Pong Summer
Jun 06 - Jun 12, 2014
(Michael Tully, USA, 2014, DCP, 92 min)
Sun-soaked with nostalgia and reminiscent of candy-colored 1980s gems like The Karate Kid, Ping Pong Summer follows the exploits of 13-year-old Radford “Rad” Miracle (Marcello Conte) on his family vacation on the Delaware coast. A kind-hearted, goofy and gangly outcast, he makes pals with a fellow dweeb, swoons over a blue eye-shadowed crush and, through the power of ping pong and hip hop, takes on the resident duo of bullies.
Clerks
Jun 06 - Jun 07, 2014
(Kevin Smith, USA, 1994, 88 min)
It may not be Navy Seals or Happy Scrappy Hero Pup, but the touchstone slacker comedy Clerks celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. Featuring the screen debuts of Jay and Silent Bob, the 90’s most notorious convenient store drug dealers, Clerks chronicles the crude daily hijinks (ruses, one might say) of store clerk Dante and video rental man Randall. The gang’s all here, and they haven’t aged a day: which is to say, they’ll never grow up.
Thompson on Hollywood: Seattle Edition
Jun 07, 2014
Hollywood enjoyed a highly successful year in 2012 both commercially (undeniably) and critically (arguably). Studios and independents grossed nearly $11 billion—but what changed in just one year? At this talk and book signing in Seattle, veteran film blogger Anne Thompson will encourage the audience to drink and consider the madness of movie-making, in an unbridled, open forum conversation with Warren Etheredge.
Salome
Co-presented with Three Dollar Bill Cinema!
Hosted by Mark Mitchell!
Live piano accompaniment by Jess Wamre (from the band Butcher)!
Happy hour at 6:30pm
Screening at 7:30pm
Jun 12, 2014
(Charles Bryant, Alla Nazimova, United States, 1922, 72 min)
Allah Nazimova stars in the Oscar Wilde-scripted story of Salome, a silent film classic that shows the infamous and salacious dance done in exchange for the head of John the Baptist. Valentino’s wife, Natacha Rambova (the former Miss Winifred Shaughnessy of Salt Lake City, Utah) robs Aubrey Beardsley blind, and brings his drawings to wonderful life in dramatic black and white. Her costumes for this work are nothing short of magical, and the pearl wig haunts one’s dreams.
Lucky Them
Sponsored by KEXP 90.3! Extended by popular demand! Join us for a post-screening Q&A with director Megan Griffiths following the Thursday, June 26 screening!
Jun 13 - Jun 26, 2014
(Megan Griffiths, USA, 2013, DCP, 97 min)
Northwest Film Forum board member, local film hero and Stranger Genius award winner Megan Griffiths presents her first set-in-Seattle feature with Lucky Them, starring Toni Collette, as Ellie, a jaded rock journalist. Assigned to investigate the disappearance of an enigmatic Seattle rock hero—who just so happens to have been the love of her life—Ellie is faced with the challenge of reconciling the past and moving forward.
Capitol Hill Community Garage Sale
Open to the public! 9am – 4pm at Cal Anderson Park!
Jun 14, 2014
Join Northwest Film Forum at the free Capitol Hill Community Garage Sale, June 14 from 9am – 4pm at Cal Anderson Park! Looking for new or old film equipment, gear and parts for your next repair job, installation piece or funny home movie? We have a treasure trove of material, stored in our venue for years, and now finally being sold (at bargain prices) to a good home.
Let’s Meet Onscreen: Siren Launch Party
Happy hour + app launch party! Lucky Them director Megan Griffiths in attendance!
Free event!
Jun 14, 2014
Free event!
Celebrate moving images as a platform to let personalities shine on Siren, the homegrown dating app created in Seattle by local artist Susie J. Lee. Siren is about those unexpected moments that make us smile: it's time to charm someone's pants off. Join us and get an exclusive sneak peek at Siren before its official iTunes launch! Download the app, learn how it works and play over drinks in the lobby before catching an opening weekend screening of local filmmaker Megan Griffith’s Lucky Them.
Make it a date and get your ticket for Lucky Them at the box office during the event. The first 30 tickets will be sold at our members price ($6), a discount of $5 off the general admissions price!
Father’s Day Flicks and Making Movies With Dad
11am "Best of the Fest Animation" film screening
12:30pm Pizza in our lobby!
1pm Tabletop Moviemaking Workshop
Jun 15, 2014
Bring dad to Northwest Film Forum on Father's Day for a one-of-a-kind film experience! First, we'll see a one-hour selection of favorite films from Children's Film Festival Seattle 2014, and then break for yummy pizza in the lobby. After that, dads and kids can make their own movies with Seattle filmmaker Brick Maier, whose workshops blend the old-fashioned methods of puppet theater—diorama and paper collaged backgrounds—with newfangled digital tools.
Myra Breckinridge
Co-presented with Three Dollar Bill Cinema!
Hosted by Mark Mitchell and Ro Yoon!
Happy hour at 6:30pm
Screening at 7:30pm
Jun 19, 2014
(Michael Sarne, United States, 1970, 94 min)
This wild and X-rated adaptation of Gore Vidal's scintillating novel is a cult film like no other. Raquel Welch portrays the extraordinary title character, in one killer outfit after another, thanks to the genius of Theadora Van Runkle (best known for her costumes for The Great Gatsby and Bonnie and Clyde).
Framing Pictures
Free event!
Feb 28 - Jul 20, 2014
Join us for a free, lively monthly discussion led by long-time Seattle film critics (and occasional guests) who have much to say on the subject of cinephilia past, present and future. The July conversation includes former Film Comment editor Richard Jameson, Everett Herald/KUOW critic Robert Horton and Bruce Reid.
Manakamana
Jun 20 - Jun 26, 2014
(Stephanie Spray and Pacho Velez, Nepal/USA, 2013, 118 min)
A formal accomplishment as grand as the heights of the mountains it climbs, this ethnographic documentary is set entirely on a cable car that transports pilgrims through the mountains of Nepal towards their destination: the famous Manakamana Temple.