Calendar
Joffrey: Mavericks of American Dance
Introduction by Seattle Weekly dance critic Sandi Kurtz on June 4!
Jun 01 - Jun 07, 2012
(Bob Hercules , USA, 2011, Blu-ray, 94 min)
Joffrey: Mavericks of American Dance tells the story of a groundbreaking cultural treasure. Directed by Bob Hercules, the film documents how The Joffrey revolutionized American ballet by daringly fusing modern dance with traditional technique, combining art with social statement and setting ballets to pop and rock music scores. Weaving a wealth of rare archival footage and photographs along with interviews featuring former and current Joffrey star dancers, this superb work is not to be missed by any dance lover.
Flamingos
Presented by Vertical Pool
Director in Attendance!
Jun 01, 2012
(Antero Alli, 2012, 90 min)
Twin sisters, Beatrice and Zoe, are in love with Ray, a philosopher-bank robber driven by visions of the end the world. Though Beatrice and Ray are married, Ray runs off with free-spirited Zoe and hides out in a motel after a bank heist. Meanwhile, Beatrice files for divorce as two enigmatic entities from the Bardo interzones take interest in their fates in Antero Alli's outlaw romance noir of crime, metaphysics, and amour fou.
Hugo the Hippo
Jun 02 - Jun 03, 2012
(Bill Feigenbaum, Hungary/USA, 1975, 35mm, 86 min)
Animation mavens enthuse about Hugo the Hippo, a widely-bootlegged cult curio from the 1970s about an orphaned hippopotamus and the sweet child who befriends him. This color-drenched film is voiced by the likes of Burl Ives and topped off by pop confections sung by Marie and Jimmy Osmond. Glimpses of the film's funkiness and psychedelic charm can be seen online, but chances to bask in a print of the film on the big screen come around next to never.
The City Dark
Seattle Premiere!
Jun 02 - Jun 07, 2012
(Ian Cheney, USA, 2011, Blu-ray, 83 min)
Until the advent of electricity, humans lived thousands of years with darkness. What are the spiritual and biological consequences of a lack of night? In The City Dark, filmmaker Ian Cheney sets out with a host of scientific experts and philosophers to explore an abundance of planetary changes, from baby sea turtle migration to humankind’s sense of place in the universe.
10,000,000 Views on YouTube and I Still Can’t Get A F%^*!$g Cab!
Jun 03, 2012
In 2007 Len uploaded his first video to YouTube, $250,000 in My Pocket and I Still Can’t Get a F%^*!$g Cab. 5 years and almost 400 videos later, his channel has surpassed 10,000,000 views. Join the filmmaker on a visual odyssey following Len’s wild journey creating and posting online video content over the last decade+.
The Day He Arrives
Jun 08 - Jun 14, 2012
(Hong-Sangsoo, South Korea, 2011, 35mm, 79 min)
The great Korean filmmaker Hong Sangsoo returns with an intimate examination of an artist who’s lacking inspiration. As Seongjun wanders from bar to bar of the course of a day, he meets his ex-girlfriend as well as her look-alike, as time becomes increasingly irrational. This black-andwhite film is the latest from one of South Korea’s most prominent new auteurs.
Small Roads
Seattle Premiere!
Jun 08, 2012
(James Benning, USA, 2011, HD, 103 min)
James Benning has built a body of avant-garde work that explores ideas of identity time and landscape. Small Roads utilizes long takes of Western roads, building a sense of space and rhythm which invites comparisons to filmmakers like Abbas Kiarostami and composers like Phillip Glass. This is a journey to get lost in, a picture of America mapped out by the roads less traveled.
Music-Craft featuring Blondie, The Cure and The Clash
Sponsored by Easy Street Records
Jun 08, 2012
Our ongoing Music-Craft series features rare concert footage from rock musicians. This week, feast your eyes on incredible 1970s and 80s performances from Blondie, The Cure and The Clash.
The Observers
Seattle Premiere!
Jun 09, 2012
(Jacqueline Goss, 2011, USA, 16mm, 69 min)
New Hampshire’s Mt. Washington, weather data has been recorded every hour since 1932. Known for its extremes, the storied mountain becomes the starting point for filmmaker Jaqueline Goss’ new work. Shot without dialogue, it follows a modern-day crew of scientists and the challenges, triumphs and poetry they discover while living at the top of the windiest mountain on earth.
Donna Summer Tribute
35mm screening!
Jun 09 - Jun 10, 2012
Northwest Film Forum hosts a special celebration of and fitting tribute to the great entertainer and popular music icon Donna Summer, who passed away in May this year at age 63. We'll screen Summer in 35mm, in her one and only big-screen role, as Nicole Sims, a feisty, aspiring disco star in the 1978 ensemble saga Thank God Its Friday. Set in the fictional Los Angeles nightclub The Zoo, the film follows several characters over the course of one wild night.
I Have Always Been a Dreamer
Seattle Premiere!
Jun 10, 2012
(Sabine Gruffat, USA, 2012, Blu-ray, 78 min)
This is a tale of two cities: one in an apparently unstoppable state of growth, another in what seems to be a permanent state of decline. Filmed over four years, Sabine Gruffat’s documentary juxtaposes Dubai and Detroit in a film that’s part travelogue and part investigative report, which looks beneath the obvious contrasts and discovers intriguing parallels.
The Pettifogger
Seattle Premiere!
Jun 11, 2012
(Lewis Klahr, USA, 2011, Bluray, 65 min)
Lewis Klahr builds worlds out of artifacts we toss into the wastebasket. Using cutout paper images from vintage comic books, magazines and other cultural detritus, he constructs animated collages commenting on 20th century American culture. Klahr’s first feature-length work tells the story of a Mad Men-era con man and gambler, in a film both postmodern genre thriller and abstract essay on wealth and greed.
Caris' Peace
Special introduction by producer and comedian Lewis Black! Director Gaylen Ross in attendance!
Jun 11, 2012
(Gaylen Ross, 2012, USA, Blu-ray, 76 min)
What is an actress without memory? Caris Corfman was a brilliant young performer who graduated from the Yale School of Drama with luminaries including Lewis Black, Kate Burton and Mark Linn-Baker. As a rising star, she played opposite Tim Curry and Ian McKellen in the Broadway hit play Amadeus.
Suddenly, a brain tumor caused the loss of her short-term memory. Caris’ Peace is the story of this courageous woman’s triumphant and deeply moving return, against all odds, to the New York stage.
The Narcissus Flowers of Katsura-shima
Director In Attendance!
Seattle Premiere!
Jun 12, 2012
(Jon Jost, 2011, USA/Japan, Blu-ray, 74 min)
A year after Japan’s major earthquake and tsunami, art about the event is beginning to emerge. The Narcissus Flowers of Katsura-shima, a documentary by American film artist Jon Jost, takes an oblique, even elegiac approach. Combining shots of island landscapes, poetry and interviews with residents, the film is a compelling portrait of a place and the people who make their home there.
Charismatic Megafauna
Director In Attendance!
Live score by Lori Goldston, Dylan Carlson, Jessika Kenney and Greg Campbell!
Jun 13, 2012
(Vanessa Renwick, 2011, USA, Blu-ray, 48 min)
Vanessa Renwick’s unconventional documentaries explore habitat and landscape, urban and the wild. Charismatic Megafauna utilizes 16mm Renwick filmed in her youth on Chicago’s streets, where she lived and traveled with a wolf-dog hybrid, as well as footage shot in the nineties, documenting the process of reintroducing wolves to the American West. Images of Renwick’s dog and of biologists interacting with wolves raise questions of our responsibilities toward and expectations of the natural world.
The Little Match Girl
With live accompaniment by Cricket & Snail!
Jun 14, 2012
(Jean Renoir, Jean Tédesco, France, 1928, 40 min)
Join us for a special screening of Jean Renoir’s silent movie classic, accompanied by an original music score performed live by violin/accordion duo Cricket and Snail (James and Lucie Carlson). The screening is preceded by 30-minutes of live French, klezmer, classical and Celtic music.
Dissonance
Director in Attendance!
Seattle Premiere!
Jun 14, 2012
(Jon Jost, 2011, USA, Blu-ray, 62 min)
Using techniques of collage, split-screen and unconventional editing, in Dissonance, Jon Jost has constructed a poetic meditation on life and the way we live it. His stream-of conscious sequences of images and sounds are reminiscent of the work of Chris Marker, particularly the still-influential Sans Soleil (1983). "It offers no conclusions," Jost says. "I only know it needs to be seen big."
Framing Pictures
Free!
Jan 13 - Jun 15, 2012
Join us for a monthly discussion with three longtime Seattle film critics (and occasional guest commentators) who have much to say on the subject of cinephilia past, present and future. The conversation includes former Film Comment editor Richard Jameson, Everett Herald/KUOW critic Robert Horton and MSN.com critic Kathleen Murphy.
Goodbye First Love
Seattle Premiere!
Jun 15 - Jun 21, 2012
(Mia Hansen-Love, France, 2011, 35mm, 110 min)
Goodbye First Love is a teenage romance directed with the knowing wisdom of a veteran. The film tenderly observes Camille, from stomach butterflies through heartache, as she grows from fifteen-year old girl to woman. The film’s setting gracefully traces the emotional churnings of its protagonist, showing the lasting effects of a first relationship.
Alice
Jun 15, 2012
(Jan Svankmajer, Czechoslovakia, 1989, 35mm, 86 min)
The first of Svankmajer’s feature films, Alice surprised viewers with the surrealist storytelling that would become his hallmark. Svankmajer’s ability to create scenes both gothic and funny is the perfect fit for documenting a child’s adventures in Wonderland. In his adaptation, a little girl emerges from the rabbit hole as a doll and discovers a world with a changing landscape.
Stories From Junk Puppet Land and StopMotion Celebration
Jun 16, 2012
(Live 40 min show followed by a 20 min program of stop-motion animated films)
The Australian aborigines of the Kimberley region use the term “Yorro Yorro” to refer to the life in rocks, trees and all inanimate objects. The Zambini Brothers Puppet Company believes this concept applies to everyday items and in this imaginative live show, they use discarded objects to animate a series of multi-cultural stories. Stories From Junk Puppet Land is followed by a collection of stop-motion animated films that use yarn and other tactile materials. Recommended for all ages.
Faust
Jun 16, 2012
(Jan Svankmajer, Czech Republic, 1995, 35mm, 97 min)
A gentleman exits the subway and chances upon an enigmatic map, following it to a theatre where puppets act out Goethe’s Faust with hilariously grotesque emphasis. The cast includes clay sculptures and marionettes carved by Svankmajer himself. Be prepared for armies of insects and tirades in demonic tongues, in the strangest and slimiest adaptation of Faust to date.
Svankmajer Shorts
Jun 17, 2012
(Jan Svankmajer, Czech Republic, Various Years, 35mm, 153 min)
Fans of Jan Svankmajer’s feature films won’t want to miss this collection of his early shorts. Come see the animated films that first showcased Svankmajer’s bizarre and unparalleled breadth of imagination.
Conspirators of Pleasure
Jun 18, 2012
(Jan Svankmajer, Czech Republic, 1996, 35mm, 87 min)
When a film’s credits thank Sigmund Freud and the Marquis de Sade for their “professional expertise,” questions of sexual repression are going to be on the table. Svankmajer’s first live action feature employs neither nudity nor dialogue in its exploration of six “normal” citizens. As the film gallops down parallel storylines, it asks: what would our sexualities look like if shame were not imposed upon us?
Little Otik
Jun 19, 2012
(Jan Svankmajer, Czech Republic, 2000, 35mm, 132 min)
Little Otik revives an Eastern European folk story about a man who carves a root into the shape of a baby as a gift for his infertile wife. When she pretends to give birth, it comes alive, and soon its indiscriminate appetite makes its parents wonder whether they wouldn’t be better off childless.
Lunacy
Jun 20, 2012
(Jan Svankmajer, Czech Republic, 2005, 35mm, 118 min)
This startling film turns the idea of madness upside down. Jean, whose greatest fear is imprisonment in the madhouse where his late mother was committed, is invited by a friend to experience a new sort of asylum. We follow Jean as he descends into a mental hospital where the staff is behind bars and the inmates run free, in an adventure that blurs the often political lines between madness and sanity.
Surviving Life
Jun 21, 2012
(Jan Svankmajer, Czech Republic, 2010, 35mm, 109 min)
Jan Svankmajer is back with the most unpretentious mind-bender you’ll ever find in the romantic comedy section. At the beginning of Surviving Life, the director apologizes for the film’s mix of live action and paper animation and then launches into the story of a middle-aged office worker who meets the woman of his dreams in his dreams. The character’s dilemma beckons the viewer to choose one reality or another, tempering our confusion with delight.
Lost Bohemia
Jun 22 - Jun 28, 2012
(Josef Birdman Astor, USA, 2011, 35mm, 77 min)
A quarter century ago, photographer Josef Birdman Astor took up residence in apartments located above Carnegie Hall, which housed artists and teachers of all degrees of fame, from an 85-year-old ballerina to Marilyn Monroe. Shortly after Astor moved in, the Carnegie Hall Corporation announced plans for offices and began evicting its elderly tenants. Astor’s artful protest was to film his neighbors and collect vintage footage of the space he called home.
Music From The Big House
Seattle Premiere!
Rita Chiarelli in person and performing Saturday at 7pm screening!
Jun 22 - Jun 26, 2012
(Bruce McDonald, Canada, 2010, Blu-ray, 90 min)
Part concert film, part observational essay, Music From the Big House is a story of redemption. Taking place in Angola State Prison, an ex-slave plantation and the largest maximum-security facility in the U.S., Canadian singer Rita Chiarelli organizes a concert with the prisoners. Starring many men who have life sentences, Chiarelli facilitates the return of blues to its origins. The inmates are characterized by their performances, not their crimes, their smiles and sways reiterating the power of the blues.
Special Saturday 7pm ticket prices: $15 general, $12 members.
Grandma Lo-fi: The Basement Tapes of Sigridur Nielsdottir
Jun 27 - Jun 28, 2012
(Kristín Björk Kristjánsdóttir, Orri Jónsson, Ingibjörg Birgisdóttir, Iceland, 2011, DigiBeta, 62 min)
At 71, Sigrídur Níelsdóttir finally found the time to explore her creativity—and ended up a decade later with 59 home-produced records and 700 songs. Almost by accident, her experiments with a Casio keyboard and a tape recorder found cult fame among Icelandic music listeners. Instead of spinning a poignant story of Sigrídur’s life, Grandma Lo-Fi focuses on the here and now of her creative process.
The Beat Hotel
Jun 29 - Jul 01, 2012
(Alan Govenar, USA, 2011, Blu-ray, 88 min)
Alan Govenar's new film goes deep into the legacy of the American Beats in Paris during the heady years between 1957 and 1963. Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky and Gregory Corso fled the obscenity trials in the United States surrounding the publication of Ginsberg's poem "Howl," taking refuge in a cheap no-name Paris hotel. They were soon joined by others from England and elsewhere in Europe, seeking out the "freedom" that the Latin Quarter of Paris might provide.
Celine and Julie Go Boating
New 35mm Print!
Jun 29 - Jul 05, 2012
(Jacques Rivette, France, 1974, 35mm, 192 min)
An elaborate fairy tale with literary roots in Lewis Carroll, Henry James and Borges, this whimsical story involves a white rabbit chase through Montmartre, a mysterious old house in the Paris suburbs and strange potions in the form of little candles placed on the tongue.