Calendar
Rubber
Seattle premiere
Additional screenings added by popular demand!
Apr 08 - Apr 17, 2011
(Quentin Dupieux, France, 2010, 35mm, 85 min)
Since the word first broke online that Rubber was "the movie about the tire that kills people," this film has become infamous. Robert is a tire who is angry at the mistreatment of his brethren by humankind and determined to exact vengeance. Unfortunately for motorists and inhabitants of Arizona, this tire has come to life endowed with enough telekinetic power to explode human heads at a distance. Official Selection of the Cannes Film Festival, Rubber is a smart and riotously funny treat for audiences in the US lucky enough to catch this limited release.
"An essay on storytelling and spectatorship within When-Inanimate-Objects-Attack schlock—one infused with the haunting aura and disillusionment of a post–Easy Rider road movie—Rubber is some kind of miracle." —Seattle Weekly
"Perhaps the greatest compliment you could pay writer/director Quentin Dupieux is that you have no idea what is going to happen at any given moment of Rubber. He has the audacity to perform a cinematic experiment that isn't just a rote reassembly of scenes we've all seen a million times before. Even as you're watching it, you know you're witnessing the debut of a remarkable young talent. One day—probably one day soon—you'll be using Rubber as a metric for comparison." —The Stranger
Empty Quarter
Seattle Premiere!
Directors In Attendance Saturday
Apr 08 - Apr 14, 2011
(Alain LeTourneau, Pam Minty, USA, 2011, 16mm, 70 min)
Through a series of stationary shots, recording open landscapes and activities of local residents, Empty Quarter reflects on the character of the region. Natural areas are viewed among images of industry, various labor processes, resource management and recreation.
"In their unconventional documentary “Empty Quarter,” Portland filmmakers Pam Minty and Alain LeTourneau expertly convey a much more complex, nuanced impression of an area that is as crucial to Oregon’s resources and character as anywhere else." —The Oregonian
Speedy
At the
Apr 11, 2011
(Harold Lloyd, 1928, USA, 86 min)
Speedy was both Harold Lloyd's last silent film as well as his only film to get an Oscar nomination. A fine example of why Lloyd was even more popular than Chaplain or Keaton at the end of the silent era. This fast paced dramatic comedy explores the theme of modernization, pitting the last horse drawn trolley in the city against the evil forces of the transit monopoly.
The Strange Case of Angelica
Seattle premiere!
Apr 15 - Apr 21, 2011
(Manoel de Oliveira, Portugal, 2010, 35mm, 97 min)
We’ve stopped wondering if this could be the final film from Portugal’s Manoel de Oliveira, who at 102 years young continues to share his rarefied gift for the screen by churning out some of the most exciting works of cinema today. His latest film The Strange Case of Angelica is a mysterious and melancholy affair about a photographer who captures a dead newlywed on film and slowly becomes infatuated with his subject.
"The director of this simple, lucid, elegantly paced ghost story, Manoel de Oliveira, was born in 1908, made is his first film before Hitler took power, and made 10 features in his 90s. Despite being so old, and next to death at every moment, his latest film has the kind of lightness you'd expect from a director who has lots of time to kill." Charles Mudede, The Stranger
"SW Pick: De Oliveira, ancient at 102, has firsthand memory of a world of emperors and archdukes. The unique aura this imparts to his films cannot be forgotten when watching them." —Seattle Weekly
Some Days Are Better Than Others
Seattle Theatrical Premiere!
Director in attendance Friday night (with actress Renee Roman Nose)
Sponsored by Easy Street Records
Apr 15 - Apr 21, 2011
(Matt McCormick, USA, 2010, HD, 93 min)
Northwest Film Forum Signature Short Recipient and Portland native Matt McCormick’s debut feature Some Days are Better Than Others is a poetic, character-driven film featuring Carrie Brownstein (Sleater-Kinney) and James Mercer (The Shins and Broken Bells) that asks why the good times slip by so fast while the hard times always seem so sticky. Some Days are Better Than Others is a sad valentine to the forgotten discards of a throwaway society, and a story about knowing when to hold on, and when to let go. Screens with It Was A Crushing Defeat.
"You might never see a film with more indie rock cred than this...[McCormick's] view of Portland—its interconnected organism of individuals, but also its bridges, its skies, and its thrift stores—is appealingly dreamy." —The Stranger
"An excellently scripted, beautifully shot, and surprisingly well acted movie about restless maturation that shouldn’t be missed." —Chris Estey, KEXP blog
Deathwatch
Co-presented by Three Dollar Bill Cinema Not available on video!
Apr 16, 2011
(Vic Morrow, 1966, 88 min)
Promoted as “the strangest triangle ever filmed,” this rarely screened film version of Genet’s first play stars Leonard Nimoy, Paul Mazursky, and Michael Forest as three prisoners battling for affections behind bars.
NOT AVAILABLE ON VIDEO
The Crowd
At the
Apr 18, 2011
(King Vidor, 1928, USA, 100 min)
This realistic, bittersweet drama of the day-to-day existence of an ordinary American is as relevant today as it was in 1928, just before the great stock market crash. In director King Vidor's Academy Award nominated timeless silent masterpiece we see James Murray, an everyman white-collar worker, trying to make it with his wife in the big city of New York.
The Balcony
New 35mm print!
Apr 21, 2011
(Joseph Strick, 1963, 84 min)
Shelley Winters runs the show in a brothel where wild fantasies are fulfilled as a very real political revolution rages outside. Lee Grant, Peter Falk, and Leonard Nimoy also star in this Academy Award nominated film.
Bummer Summer
Seattle Theatrical Premiere
Director in Attendance!
Apr 22 - Apr 28, 2011
(Zach Weintraub, USA, 2010, 79 min)
Winner of the 2010 Local Sightings Film Festival, Zach Weintraub's first feature is a mesmerizing debut. When you’re seventeen, even little things can seem like a major change. So it goes with Isaac, a teenager who, as his senior year in high school comes to an end, stares uneasily into the future. His confusion is compounded by the arrival of his older brother Ben, who comes home for the summer to take up with his ex-girlfriend Lila and set out on one last road trip before entering the world of responsibilities. The harmony the three youngsters seek over the weekend getaway quickly gives way to unexpected complications.
"Finding magic in the mundane, this terrific first-time feature from Olympia resident Zach Weintraub turns "nothing happening" into something beautiful." —Seattle Times
"The film moves across the screen with the lightness of a summer cloud." —The Stranger
Zero Bridge
Seattle premiere!
The first film from Kashmir in 40 years!
Apr 22 - Apr 28, 2011
(Tariq Tapa, Kashmir/India/USA, 2008, 35mm, 96 min)
A neorealist tale of unexpected friendship and moral complication set and shot in the Indian-occupied city of Srinagar, Zero Bridge is the debut feature of Tariq Tapa, a US-born filmmaker of Kashmiri/Jewish-American descent. It tells the story of Dilawar (Mohammad Imran Tapa), a wayward teenage pickpocket who longs to reunite with his adoptive mother in Delhi, but finds himself morally and emotionally attached to a young woman whose passport he has stolen. The film avoids any direct mention of the violent political turmoil in the region but intimately explores the pressures of living inside a militarized zone.
"Made for a song with a non-pro cast and DV camera gear out of his backpack, Tariq Tapa's debut feature shows the young Kashmiri-American as a filmmaker of enormous promise and precocious maturity." —Seattle Weekly
"Has a lot of heart and shows us a world that’s completely fresh and strange to cinema--the streets, homes, stores, offices, parks, rivers, boats, and mountains of Srinagar." —The Stranger
Native Lens Films for Earth Day
Seattle Premiere!
Co-Presented by Longhouse Media
Sponsored by KBCS 91.3FM
Apr 23, 2011
(Suquamish, Tulalip and Intertribal Native Lens Youth, USA, 2011, 75 min)
Longhouse Media's Native Lens program has been teaching Native American youth how to tell their stories through digital media for the past 7 years. This selection of shorts will highlight the regional impact of climate change and ocean acidification on the Suquamish Tribe and how their community and youth want to bring awareness to these issues. In addition a selection of shorts produced by Tulalip Heritage School students that focus on the school year's guiding question, "Why Music?", will premiere.
The Vinyl Frontier
Q&A with director Daniel Zana and artists from the film
Apr 24, 2011
At the dawn of the 21st century, renegade toy designers, bored with the G.I. Joe status quo, boldly remixed and reassembled the toys of their parent's generation. Birthing a new format of toy and medium of artistic expression, these artists were thefirst to explore The Vinyl Frontier. A world where Art is Fun!
The Cameraman
At the
Apr 25, 2011
(Buster Keaton & Edward Sedgewick, 1928, USA, 67 min)
The first film he made after moving to MGM, The Cameraman is arguably Buster Keaton's last truly great work before the studio system stifled him. Here "The Great Stone Face" is cast as an aspiring, but lousy, newsreel cameraman in quest of the perfect shot, and, of course, the requisite pretty but oblivious Keaton ingénue.
On The Bowery
New 35mm Print!
55th Anniversary
Apr 29 - May 05, 2011
(Lionel Rogosin, USA, 1956, 35mm, 65 min)
Lionel Rogosin began his influential filmmaking career with this glimpse of life on one of New York’s most downtrodden strips of real estate. At the time the Bowery was a skid row for alcoholics, mostly men of the laboring trades. From the shadows of the extinct Third Avenue El and the smoky half-light of bars where pocket change would send patrons reeling into days, weeks, lifetimes of oblivion, Rogosin delivers a piece as visually captivating as it is anthropologically essential.
"SW Pick: The ultimate New York movie...living history captured with such fortune and care that there's no sign of decay after 50-plus years." —Seattle Weekly
"The granddaddy of American independent film...The sooner you see it, the sooner you will be able to go back and watch it a second time." —Seattle Post Globe
The Bang Bang Club
*Please note updated showtimes
Apr 29 - May 05, 2011
(Steven Silver, Canada/South Africa, 2010, 35mm, 106 min)
From the book of the same title, The Bang Bang Club gets its name from four young photographers, Greg Marinovich (Ryan Phillippe), Kevin Carter (Taylor Kitsch), Ken Oosterbroek (Rautenbach) and Joao Silva (Neels Van Jaarsveld), whose photographs captured the final bloody days of white rule in South Africa (two of whom were awarded Pulitzer Prizes). Silver’s film tells the remarkable story of these young men and their photo editor, Robin Comley (Malin Åkerman), who protected them and made sure their photographs were seen throughout the world.
"The Stranger Suggests: The story of moral ambiguity—and how these guys negotiated the divide between exploitation and public service—is fascinating and ultimately sad." —The Stranger
Querelle
Co-presented by Three Dollar Bill Cinema
Apr 30, 2011
(Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1982, 108 min)
The final film from groundbreaking German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder, this provocative work follows a muscular French sailor’s surreal sexual adventures in a seedy seaport.
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.
Gala-Ga: The Film Forum's Annual Fundraising Bash
Tickets on sale now!
May 06, 2011
Mark your calendars for Northwest Film Forum's annual fundraising gala, held this year at the lovely . Festivities will include a galaxy of game playing, films & filmmakers to go with them, delicious food and delicious people, and of course a giant spaceship ready to zoom away with your exuberant generosity. Can't make the gala? Join us for the after-party beginning at 10pm!
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
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
The Embargo Collective
Co-Presented by Longhouse Media
May 07, 2011
(Various directors, 2009, Beta-SP, 62 min)
Join us for a collection of seven short films by indigenous filmmakers, developed from a two-year collaboration challenge by the imagineNATIVE Film & Media Arts Festival in Toronto. Inspired by filmmaker Lars Von Trier’s documentary The Five Obstructions—in which Von Trier dared his mentor to remake his own 1967 film five times with a different set of rules imposed each time—imagineNATIVE has been facilitating the Embargo Collective, encouraging these artists to push their creative boundaries by asking them to construct a set of limitations for one another.