Calendar
45365
Seattle Premiere
Mar 12 - Mar 18, 2010
(Bill Ross, Turner Ross, USA, 2009, DigiBeta, 93 min)
An elegiac portrait of goings-on in the middle-American town of Sydney, Ohio, 45365 is a celebration of everyday life, mundane and profound. Directors Bill and Ross Turner, using images of their hometown, construct perhaps the world's first rural symphony, a patient, inquisitive and non-judgmental study of community, lives and landscape.
"Captures small town American life in striking cinema verité style that peels away the layers...to reveal a deeper shared experience. Gorgeous" -Seattle PostGlobe
Early Work of Alain Resnais
Sponsored by JTNews and Alliance Francaise de Seattle
Mar 16 - Mar 17, 2010
(Alain Resnais, France, 1950-56, various formats, 86 min)
Discover director Alain Resnais’s hard-to-find documentary shorts of the 1950s! Resnais’ early work established him as a filmmaker of inimitable sensibility.
Soul Nite!
Sponsored by KBCS 91.3FM (DOORS at 7:30PM)
Mar 18, 2010
It's back! Curator and host Peter Lucas presents a selection of vintage soul music performance footage on the big screen, cranked up loud. Don’t miss this all-star soul show on screen, including a rarely seen performance from the one and only wicked Wilson Pickett in celebration of his birthday!
October Country
Directors In Attendance Friday and Saturday!
Mar 19 - Mar 24, 2010
(Michael Palmieri, Donal Mosher, USA, 2009, DigiBeta, 80 min)
October Country is a beautifully rendered portrait of an American family struggling for stability while haunted by the ghosts of war, teen pregnancy, foster care and child abuse. This vibrant and intimate documentary examines the forces that unsettle the working poor and the violence that lurks beneath the surface of American life.
"The Stranger Suggests: ...There is love in this family, but the violence, American violence, overwhelms and crushes it. It's a documentary with an amazing ending." -The Stranger
Indigenous Showcase Featuring Artists from South of the Border
Co-presented by Longhouse Media and National Geographic All Roads Film Project
Mar 20, 2010
(Mexico, 2008, 74 min, Spanish and Quechua with English subtitles)
This Indigenous Showcase features 2501 Migrants: A Journey, directed by Yolanda Cruz, and Danzak, by Gabriella Yepes.
LET'S DO IT! A night of sex worker made media
Sponsored by the Central Co-op Panel discussion and special guests in attendance
Mar 20, 2010
(Various, 80 min)
From the Sangli district in the rural south of India to the life of a New York City callboy, sex workers reach out through film and video to share their experiences. LET'S DO IT! is a night of experimental and documentary shorts dedicated to human rights and advocacy for sex workers across the globe.
too
Mar 25 - Mar 27, 2010
Choreographed and directed by Amy O'Neal, "too" is an ecstatic interplay of live and recorded movement by dancers O’Neal and Ellie Sandstrom. The duo interacts with strangers, friends, acquaintances and family in dance of physical extremes. Drawing inspiration from the rural/urban divide, karaoke, and Japanese love hotels, "too" ruminates on the increasing challenges of human contact in a fractured and complex technological age.
"Recommended: O'Neal's work combines funky moves with structural precision; Sandstrom is as sensual as she is scary. This is definitely one of those times when you come to see the artists, no matter what they're doing—or whom they're watching." -Seattle Weekly
Warsaw Bridge
20th Anniversary
Mar 28 - Apr 01, 2010
(Pere Portabella, Spain, 1990, 35mm, 85 min)
A thoroughly engrossing collage of images and surreal sequences woven together by only a loose plot, Warsaw Bridge is one of intermittent filmmaker Pere Portabella’s (Silence Before Bach) masterpieces.
"Portabella's film is made just for people who can never get enough of the essence of cinema, which is, of course, photography." -The Stranger
"A loosely plotted and beautifully filmed movie with an exquisitely surreal touch as delightful to the senses as it is challenging to the intellect." -Seattle MetBlog
Jeonju Digital Project 2009
Mar 29 - Mar 30, 2010
(Hong Sang-Soo, Naomi Kawase, Lav Diaz; various countries, 2009, DigiBeta, 108 min)
A kind of Northwest Film Forum brethren on the other side of the Pacific, South Korea’s Jeonju Digital Project, initiated in 2000 by the Jeonju International Festival (South Korea), commissions three filmmakers to make a digital short. This year’s selections come from some of the best filmmakers in recent time.
"From frustrated love to tearful reconciliation to sinister criminal plotting, the Digital Project vividly captures life and many of its complexities. Make room on your schedule to see it." -NW Asian Weekly
Still Bill
Seattle Premiere Sponsored by KBCS 91.3FM and Jive Time Records
Mar 31, 2010
(Alex Vlack and Damani Baker, USA, 2009, Beta-SP, 82 min)
Soul music legend Bill Withers was an undersized, asthmatic, stuttering child from the small town of Slab Fork, West Virginia. It wasn’t until his mid-30s that the instant success of his song “Ain’t No Sunshine” would catapult the unlikely pop star into fame. This intimate documentary highlights his career, catches up with the reclusive, low-key singer at home and captures his first musical endeavors in decades.
Lourdes
Seattle Premiere
Apr 02 - Apr 08, 2010
(Jessica Hausner, Austria/France/Germany, 2009, 35mm, 96 min)
Isolated, wheelchair-bound Christine (Sylvie Testud) wants a way to meet people, so she pretends to be pious to take advantage of opportunities for travel with pilgrimage groups. The film’s focus isn’t so much religion, but competing human capacities for openness and jealousy, and our ultimate underlying fragility.
"In a film rich with provocative questions, [director] Hausner audaciously examines the ambivalent nature of miracles...a fascinating study of faith, skepticism and the complex ways in which human behavior collides with the mysteries of the great unknown." -Seattle Times
"Jessica Hausner’s film invites us on a disconcerting descent into the gloom of ancient superstitions that, in some parts of the world, prevail to this day." -Seattle PostGlobe
The Ukrainian Time Machine
Director In Attendance!
Apr 02, 2010
(Naomi Uman, Ukraine/USA, 2008-09, 16mm, 55 min)
These poetic documentary films combine personal, experimental and non-fiction approaches to capturing life in the Ukrainian town of Uman. Director Naomi Uman draws upon her personal experience, living with her subjects for a long time to become integrated into a family or community.
Fortune and Men's Eyes
Not Available On DVD!
Apr 03, 2010
(John Herbert, 1970)
In the isolated world of a men’s prison, sex is currency, power, and the only escape. A baby-faced new inmate learns all this and more the hard way in this gritty and often graphic drama. Featuring a must-see performance by Michael Greer (THE GAY DECEIVERS) as “Queenie.”
Éric Rohmer, preuve à l’appui
Apr 04, 2010
(André S. Labarthe, France, 1994, Beta-SP, 115 min)
To honor and celebrate the life of Eric Rohmer, who passed away this January, we screen this two-part interview in which Rohmer develops some of the ideas underlying how he sees and makes films. Come out to toast Eric Rohmer, the grandfather of the French New Wave, on what would have been his 90th birthday.
Blood Into Wine
Vineyard partner Eric Glomski in attendance April 4!
Apr 01 - Apr 04, 2010
(Ryan Page & Christopher Pomerenke, USA, 2010, DVD, 110 min)
Take a look inside the life of one of rock music’s most mysterious figures. Maynard James Keenan is known as the front man for Tool, A Perfect Circle and Puscifer. In the mid—1990’s, on a whim, the reclusive rock star left Los Angeles and moved to an Arizona ghost town (population 300). A wine enthusiast, Keenan began to envision a world class wine region on the Verde Valley’s craggy slopes and with wine mentor Eric Glomski.
The Man From London
Sponsored by the University of Washington Ellison Center, the UW Center for Western European Studies and the Hungarian American Association of Washington
Apr 05 - Apr 08, 2010
(Béla Tarr, Ágnes Hranitzky, France/Germany/Hungary, 2007, 35mm, 132 min)
Hungarian auteur Béla Tarr’s latest film features an international all-star cast, including Tilda Swinton. Based on the 1934 French language thriller L'Homme de Londres, Tarr tells the story of an impoverished railway switchman who, after witnessing and interrupting a crime, discovers a suitcase of English banknotes.
"Tarr not only deconstructs and re-contextualizes the crime picture of the forties, but introduces and integrates the language of post-modern cinema into the equation." -Seattle PostGlobe
Chastity
BadMovieArt Approved!
Apr 08, 2010
(Alessio de Paola, 1969)
Long before she became an Academy Award-worthy actress, gay icon Cher starred in this campy road movie as a lost and lonely girl looking for love in all the wrong places. She winds up working in a Mexican brothel, where the lesbian madam in charge wants Chastity to become more than just an employee.
My Son My Son What Have Ye Done
Held over by popular demand! (*Please note updated showtimes)
Apr 09 - Apr 22, 2010
(Werner Herzog, USA, 2009, 35mm, 91 min)
A cinematic cocktail combo, the wholly creative marriage of German agitator Werner Herzog and absurdist David Lynch. Jammed with ostrich farms, Peruvian jungles, and a staging of Sophocles’ Oresteia, this surreal take on reality is the perfect mix of the synthetic with the natural, the iconoclastic and the expected leaving us as always with these two auteurs, queasily involved.
"A resonant, moving film of pleasant contrasts and contradictions that feels as claustrophobic as a madman's skull and as wide as the sky above a mountaintop. Just go see it." -The Stranger
"a giddy hybrid of [Lynch & Herzog's] creative sensibilities" -Seattle Times
Optical Poetry: Oskar Fischinger Retrospective
Program presented in association with Center for Visual Music and The Fischinger Archive
Apr 09, 2010
(Oskar Fischinger, Germany/USA, 1926-47, 35mm, 70 min)
German-born painter and filmmaker Oskar Fischinger (1900-1967) was an enormously influential artist of the 20th century. His abstract animations- made between the 1920s and 40s- greatly expanded the possibilities of the medium of film, presenting a range of inventive, visual and temporal techniques and pioneering a new form of audio-visual art.
Seeing Sound: The Films of Mary Ellen Bute
Apr 10, 2010
(Mary Ellen Bute, USA, 1934-52, 16mm, 70 min)
American filmmaker Mary Ellen Bute (1906-1983) is an important and often overlooked pioneer of visual music and electronic art. Beginning in the 1930s, Bute produced short films that translated music (often classical music including Bach and Shostakovich) into choreographed shapes, ever-changing lights and shadows, brilliant colorful forms, and elegant design.
The Magnificent Tati
Apr 11, 2010
(Michael House, USA, 2009, Digital, 60 min)
Detailing just how far reaching the career of France’s greatest comic auteur Jacques Tati was, this compelling new documentary explores Tati’s career rom his roots in the Parisian music-halls of the ‘30s to his rise and ultimate fall from grace after the release of his masterpiece Playtime.
Jordan Belson: Films Sacred and Profane
Program presented in association with Center for Visual Music
Apr 11, 2010
(Jordan Belson, USA, 1959-2005, 16mm/DigiBeta, 70 min)
Filmmaker and artist Jordan Belson has created some of the most moving, ethereal works of visual music. After seeing the films of Oskar Fischinger, Norman McLaren and Hans Richter, he was inspired to make what he called "cinematic paintings