Calendar
The Best of the Seattle Children's Film Festival
Special Mother's Day event!
May 08, 2011
(Various, Various, DVD, 60 min)
Cuddle up in our cozy cinema and celebrate celebrate Mother's Day with a look back at six year's worth of award-winning short film from Children's Film Festival Seattle. This very special program features animated, live action and documentary films that will make you laugh, tug at your heartstrings, and take you on a sweet ride through a wide world of moving images.
Good Times, Wonderful Times
May 06 - May 08, 2011
(Lionel Rogosin, Great Britain/USA, 1966, DigiBeta, 73 min)
With profound humanity and striking images, Rogosin’s third film may be considered a pivotal work in his filmmaking. Inspired by a deep sense of the danger of nuclear annihilation and the horrors of war, Rogosin traveled the world to gather rare footage in the early 1960s. Brilliantly contrasting these images in all their brute power with a posh dinner party in London, it is a powerful orchestration of moral issues that leaves each viewer face to face with his own responsibilities.
"This is Rogosin’s masterpiece, a radical piece of cinematic decoupage that implicates the attendees of a posh London cocktail party in a century of slaughter." —Seattle Post Globe
Come Back, Africa
New 35mm Print!
May 06 - May 12, 2011
(Lionel Rogosin, USA, 1960, 35mm, 90 min)
Combining documentary and fiction elements, and filmed clandestinely in the streets of Johannesburg, Come Back Africa creates an intimate portrait of the inhuman and violent Apartheid system. The film follows an itinerant Zulu family (including the debut of African singer Miriam Makeba) struggling to survive the quotidian racist indignities of life in the big city slums. A raw, immediate and excoriating political exposé, the film allies its outrage with narrative poignancy to produce an early, influential instance of the hybrid "docudrama" format.
"An invaluable document of life in a South African township in the late 1950’s. The street scenes are marvelous, with do-wop groups performing Elvis Presley songs while police keep a sharp eye out for some infraction of the law so they can break up the merriment. There are many scenes that allow the people to be themselves, and on these occasions the audiences becomes a privileged eavesdropper on a world about which little was known." —Seattle Post Globe
Kubrick Masterpieces
May 03 - Jun 14, 2011
From Killer's Kiss to Eyes Wide Shut, Stanley Kubrick made something provocatively and controversially new out of every film project he touched. We'll start with Kubrick's genre-defining caper film The Killingand his powerful anti-war film Paths of Glory, identifying certain continuing themes, techniques, and image patterns.
Cluny Brown
New 35mm Print! *Please note updated showtimes
Not available on DVD
May 13 - May 19, 2011
(Ernst Lubitsch, USA, 1946, 35mm, 100 min)
Combining elegance and wit, Lubitsch’s last film, set in 1938 London, is one of his most engaging romantic comedies. Tempering its character's sexually-charged emotions with stylized finesse, Lubitsch and his screenwriters gently skewer the English upper class, as well as class in general, frequently portraying them as out of touch and frivolous.
Vis-a-Vis Society: Hello, Again, Hello
Special reception after opening night performance on May 12
May 12 - May 14, 2011
The Vis-à-Vis Society debut their newest statistical musical extravaganza, “Hello, Again, Hello.” Investigating topics such as group dynamics of contagious loneliness and bioluminescence, car crashes and the time step, Phone Booth/Photo Booth Uplift Effect (PBUE) and peppy pants, the Vis-à-Vis Society will conduct live poetic research during the show, as well as present findings from the field.
STIFF Nights Presents: Roll Out Cowboy
May 15, 2011
(Elizabeth Lawrence, USA, 2010, DV, 75 min)
Join us as we inaugurate a new quarterly screening series (co-presented with the Seattle Truly Independent Film Festival (STIFF)) with this fabulously outrageous cowboy hip-hop documentary. Roll out Cowboy’s Chris Sand is the face of the dying American West. Except for one thing—he raps. The Woody Guthrie protégé looks like a cowboy, talks like a cowboy, but writes songs like LL Cool J.
The Sublime is Now!: Films by Jeanne Liotta
May 16, 2011
This selection of work employs various media to explore landscape, abstraction, the cosmos, history, science, virtual and natural philosophy. "Hymns to the void, the stars in their courses, the earth under your feet wobbles and drifts." —Jeanne Liotta
Very Young Girls
May 18, 2011
(David Schisgall, Nina Alvarez, 2007, USA, DVD, 83 min)
Sex trafficking is a huge problem in U.S., and Seattle has more problems than we realize. We hear about the global crisis of human trafficking, but did you know it is happening in our own backyard? It is a crisis that will take thousands to help fight it as the solutions are very complex. This event and fundraiser will help educate, inspire and tangibly support programs that emphasize at least one of the "4Ps:" protection, prosecution, provision & prevention.
5-Minute Remake Film Challenge Screenings
May 19, 2011
Brevity is a form of wit they way, so this quarter we dared the intrepid filmmaker to recreate their favorite film in just five minutes. Like making a good stew or beer, filmmakers took the finest ingredients from the original, then reinterpreted, remixed, or reinvented them so that the final work tastes like a small serving with all the right flavors.
Battleship Potemkin
Newly Restored 35mm Print!
May 20 - May 26, 2011
(Sergei Eisenstein, USSR, 1925, 35mm, 70 min)
Considered by many to be the most important piece of propaganda in the history of film, The Battleship Potemkin is an influential landmark in 20th-century cinema, as well as arguably Eisenstein's greatest work. A revolutionary film in every sense, it tells the story of the 1905 mutiny on the Russian ship Prince Potemkin, pride of the Tsar's navy. The film was banned in many countries, including Nazi Germany, Britain and France, and even the US.
“Which is the best picture I have ever seen? My answer is always Potemkin.”—Billy Wilder
“The best film in the world.” —Charlie Chaplin
I am Secretly an Important Man
May 20, 2011
(Peter Sillen, Seattle, 2010, DigiBeta, 85 min)
After a hugely successful run of Peter Sillen's Jesse Bernstein documentary last fall, we've decided to screen the film one more time prior to the DVD release! Join us for this essential portrait of the "Godfather of Grunge," a man who undulates like a spoken-word performance
My Perestroika
Seattle Premiere!
May 27 - Jun 02, 2011
(Robin Hessman, 2010, USA/UK/Russia, DigiBeta, 88 min)
What happens when the ideals you've been taught to uphold come crumbling down, and the usual propaganda no longer inspires? Like a Russian version of Michael Apted's 42 Up, My Perestroika makes the political personal and follows five classmates (Borya, Lyuba, Andrei, Olga and Ruslan) who came of age during the collapse of the Soviet Union. Raised on communist ideals as children, the classmates must adjust to a post-Soviet reality as adults.
To Dream of Falling Upwards
May 27, 2011
(Antero Ali, 2011, USA, 120 min)
Berkeley underground filmmaker Antero Alli's ninth feature explores corruption and hilarity behind the closed doors of an occult order. The elder Magus of the Thelemic Temple of Horus passed away and Jack Mason, a sex magickian cultivated to advance the lineage, loses it all when the elder Magus' son unexpectedly inherits everything. Jack plots deadly revenge and falls into a dizzying maze of underworld encounters with professional psychopaths, desert brujas, and a twist of fate he never saw coming.
Foreign Parts
Trees Tropique director Alex Fattal in attendance!
May 31, 2011
(Verena Paravel, J.P. Sniadecki, 2010, USA/France, 81 min)
In few corners of the United States is the gulf between rich and poor more dramatic than in Willets Point, a small neighborhood in Queens, New York. An award-winner at the Locarno Film Festival, Foreign Parts chronicles the citizens of this fascinating microcosm. It takes us right into the heart of a hazardous, hardscrabble community perilously threatened by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's ambitious "gentrification" plans. It's a necessary, topical and touching film.
Screens with
Trees Tropiques
(Alex Fattal, 2009, Brazil, Blu-ray, 30 min)
This innovative and thought-provoking documentary subtly explores ethical issues when deforestation and ethnography intersect. The film incisively poses the question: Who has the right to cut—both trees and film footage?
Barbara Ireland DVD Release Party
Sponsored by Easy Street Records
Jun 01, 2011
Seattle singer Barbara Ireland’s first career was as an award-winning film director, with films that have often been compared to David Lynch and Federico Fellini. We are happy to announce that she is releasing a DVD collection of her strangest and most mesmerizing short films—and the Film Forum is hosting the release party! Have you ever wondered what the famous Twin Peaks and Carnivale dwarf, Michael Anderson, was doing before his big television break? Come watch Ireland’s film Secrets to find out! The evening will begin with a wine and cheese reception and, true to form, Ireland says she has other "secret plans" to make this an event you won’t want to miss!
STIFF
Jun 03 - Jun 10
As film festivals across the country strive to raise their profile, many often pass over inventive, risk-taking films to make room for a sneak preview of the newest Hollywood film before its worldwide release. Somebody needs to help these TRUE independent gems find an audience on the lookout for the unusual! Seattle's True Independent Film Festival is held at multiple venues throughout Seattle. It is a celebration of offbeat independent film from the Northwest and the rest of the world. This year our favorite STIFF picks include the latest from legendary filmmaker Jon Jost’s Images of A Lost City, the darkly comic anti-heroic New York set The Crab and Kevin Jerome Everson’s dry cleaning portrait Quality Control. You can view the full schedule at www.trueindependent.org.