Calendar
Band of Sisters
Extended run by popular demand! Director and Sister Nancy Sylvester in attendance opening weekend!
Apr 12 - Apr 28, 2013
(Mary Fishman, USA, 2012, Blu-ray, 88 min)
The new film Band of Sisters tells the story of the Catholic Church's bravest heros—the nuns of the 1960s and onwards who were inspired by the reforms of Vatican II and the great social movements of the 20th century to fight for social justice across the United States. Even when their actions provoked the anger of the Vatican, the graceful struggles of these sisters for civil rights and immigration reform persisted. This poignant, funny and moving documentary by first-time director Mary Fishman shows us a forward-thinking portrait of religious women as citizens of the world and covers half a century of activism.
Leviathan
Extended run by popular demand!
Apr 05 - May 02, 2013
(Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel, France/United Kingdom/USA, 2012, HD, 87 min)
The border between viewer and subject is resoundingly breached in Leviathan, which follows a commercial fishing boat from whatever viewpoints it can, be they the hands of a fisherman or a helmet containing a tiny camera as it tumbles across the deck. Directorial super-duo Taylor and Paravel take the narrative of a nature documentary deep into uncharted waters, leaving us orphaned from the idea of a storyteller, even as the story itself—which roams through the daily lives of fishermen, ethical issues in the industry and ecosystems far out at sea—bears us forward helplessly in its net. The most groundbreaking work of cinema in decades, the documentary form will never be the same after Leviathan.
Night Across the Street
Apr 26 - May 02, 2013
(Raúl Ruiz, Chile, 2012, 35mm, 110 min)
This playful yet melancholy drama from one of the world's most distinctive film voices (the late, inestimable Chilean filmmaker Raúl Ruiz) is a beautifully imaginative memoir. An office worker heading into retirement begins to relive both real and imagined memories from his life. Stories hide within stories, and the thin line between imagination and reality steadily erodes, opening up a marvelous new world of personal remembrance and fantastic melodrama. With a memory burnished by a golden haze, Ruiz casts a longing look back to his childhood, while anticipating his own imminent death, and leaves us with a beautiful swan song from one of cinema’s finest poets.
Gotta Dance
Co-presented with the Healthy Aging Partnership
May 02, 2013
(Dori Berinstein, USA, 2008, Blu-ray, 95 min)
"Hip-hop" and "senior citizens" aren't phrases you normally see paired, but in director Dori Berinstein's exuberant and affectionate documentary, they combine in a way that's sure to change your preconceptions about age. When the New Jersey Nets hold auditions for members of a new dance team called "The Metsationals," thirteen hopefuls (ranging in age from 60 to 82) come to put on a show.
Lee Konitz
Sponsored by KPLU 88.5
May 02, 2013
Lee Konitz's New Quartet puts on a 2012 show in Burghausen, Germany, featuring Florian Weber on piano, Jeff Denson on bass and percussionist Ziv Ravitz. Although familiar with bebop and avant-interventions, Konitz (a Cool Jazzer) is considered one of the few alto saxophonists to retain his own sound at a time when Charlie Parker schooled other players.
Simon Killer
May 03 - May 09, 2013
(Antonio Campos, USA, 2012, Blu-ray, 105 min)
A visual feast for the eyes, Simon Killer finds Funny Games and Martha Marcy May Marlene star Brady Corbet playing a well-educated, handsome and seemingly sympathetic college graduate, with just a hint of something off-putting enough to ignite a sense of concern in the viewer. Recently heartbroken, Simon travels to Paris to clear his head. After several days of wandering aimlessly, Simon finds himself drawn into a sex parlor and has a sexual encounter with an exotic prostitute, Victoria (Mati Diop, 35 Shots of Rum). The chemistry builds between the two until they find themselves in a serious relationship, one that leads to blackmail, betrayal and the ultimate revelation of Simon's true nature. The film is Campos' much-anticipated follow-up to his unnerving, deliberate Afterschool.
Hu Enigma
Pre-screening happy hour at 6:30pm! Film introduction by Nic Rossouw, Founder, giraf design!
May 03, 2013
(Pedro Urano & Joana Traub Csekö, Brazil, 2011, HD, 75 min)
At the edge of Rio de Janeiro, the glittering monument to Brazil’s rise in the world of global capitalism, stands another monument: a giant edifice, full of light. It’s divided symmetrically down the middle. Doctors and technicians walk in and out of the same side every day, but nobody walks in the other. It’s a ruin, an ambiguous space that could have been anything but was never occupied. A casually unlocked door in the hospital leads into the facility’s collapsing mirror image, an enigma that directors Csekö and Urano explore in this mystery movie of societal proportions. Special pre-screening happy hour at 6:30pm!
Upstream Color
No Sunday screenings + No 7:15pm Friday, Saturday, Monday
May 03 - May 09, 2013
(Shane Carruth, USA, 2013, Blu-ray, 96 min)
It's rare that you'll find films moved to our screens from elsewhere in Seattle, but Shane Carruth's Upstream Color is no ordinary film. A mythic, mysterious and sensuous romantic thriller, this long-anticipated second feature is a brilliantly executed, dizzyingly fast-paced zombie-horror-thriller which borrows from the drama and mystery genres.
ARCHITECT: A Chamber Opera Inspired by the Life and Work of Louis Kahn
Pre-screening introduction and conversation with Rebecca Brown and Anthony Pellecchia at 4:30pm!
May 04, 2013
(Jenny Kallick, USA, 2012, HD, 63 min)
There’s music in the spaces Louis Kahn designed; just as, in his words, “to hear a sound is to see a space.” ARCHITECT steps into the late Kahn’s designs through video clips, still shots and watercolor paintings, and floods them with the twists and turns of a chamber opera inspired by his work. Combining the ideas of electro-acoustic musician John Downey, Jr., music professor Jenny Kallick and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Lewis Spratlan, the opera takes a journey independent from what we see on the screen while hinting at a story of Kahn’s visions, trials, and victories. Join us at 4:30pm for a pre-screening conversation with visiting guest speakers.
Reconversão
Film introduction by Seattle architect Gordon Walker!
May 04, 2013
(Thom Andersen, 2012, Portugal/USA, HD, 65 min)
Thom Andersen is the sort of director that film professors teach classes about, and with Reconversão he uses his legendary visual precision to document another legend: Portuguese architect Eduardo Soutu de Moura. Studying the life of de Moura’s finished and unfinished projects over time, Andersen’s indulgent camerawork highlights the bond between each structure and its natural environment, playing off the architect’s declaration that “if there is nothing there, I invent a pre-existence.” Much more than a history about beautiful buildings, Reconversão explores the place that those buildings occupy between the earth and its natural relationship with time.
Perret in France and Algeria
Film introduction by Vikramāditya Prakāsh!
May 05, 2013
(Heinz Emigholz, Germany, 2012, HD, 110 min)
From Heinz Emigholz—who sits atop the list of directorial experts on architecture after making films about urban design for two decades—comes a movie that is both biography and cultural commentary, telling the story of architectural pioneer Auguste Perret’s dual careers in Algeria and France. Many of the works that Perret describes are mired in history, including Parisian buildings destroyed (and later rebuilt by Perret) during World War II. A tale rather than a tour, Emigholz’s stunning visual storytelling in Perret investigates the architect’s relationship with the volatile societies where his designs came to life.
This Gala Is Not Yet Rated
at 415 Westlake
May 10, 2013
Potential. Passion. Fierce Independence. Seventeen years ago, Northwest Film Forum was born, with a mission to serve, sustain and ignite a community of film lovers and filmmakers. As we prepare to leap from adolescence to adulthood this year, we hope you will be with us on a Gala evening to celebrate and support the Northwest's premiere center for film arts.
Something In The Air
May 10 - May 16, 2013
(Olivier Assayas, France, 2012, 35mm, 122 min)
Olivier Assayas’ (Carlos, Summer Hours) latest is a rumination on the personal and political. In the months after the heady weeks of May ’68, a group of young people search for a way to continue the revolution they believe to be just beginning. For Gilles (newcomer Clément Mettayer), this means having to balance his political commitments with his desire to explore painting and filmmaking; for his girlfriend Christine (Goodbye, First Love star Lola Créton), this means throwing herself wholeheartedly into the task of organizing. Called Apres Mai in France, consider this Assayas’ Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man.
We Are All Failing Them
May 16 - May 18, 2013
a new work by Robin Holcomb, Britta Johnson and Curtis Taylor World premiere!
The border between ambition and hard luck is a blind spot. We Are All Failing Them is a song cycle, performed live with film and objects, that engages in a sideways view of the curious and spectacular tragedy of the Donner Party. Drawing upon the languages of recital, film and staged séance, this evening-length entertainment asks: what gets left behind along the trail to the Promised Land?
Framing Pictures
Free event!
Jan 18 - Sep 13, 2013
Join us for a monthly discussion with three long-time 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.
Le Pont Du Nord
New 35mm Print!
May 17 - May 23, 2013
Jacques Rivette's classic, absent from our 2007 retrospective and presented here in a new print, features Bulle Ogier and her daughter Pascale as two marginal characters who find themselves dead center of a political adventure. Over four days they are trapped in a Parisian labyrinth, a kind of French board game, but dangerous when played for real. On the film's world premiere at the 1981 New York Film Festival, Jonathan Rosenbaum called Le Pont du Nord "the most alive movie I saw at the festival.... [It] leaves me with a whole album of indelible images and uncanny encounters.... Shot exclusively in Paris exteriors, it leads like a quixotic fairy tale.... For Baptiste (Pascale Ogier), an abstract punk without a past, for whom 'real life is a reign of terror'...Paris is the tail of the dragon, a city of eyes to be defaced and spies named Max to be faced.... For ex-terrorist, bank robber and prison convict Marie (an equally gritty performance from Bulle Ogier), waiting around for her dreamboat Pierre Clementi to bump her off, it's a conspiratorial spider's web, a marked map of Paris, and intermittently a kid's game...." (in Soho News)
Joe McHugh: Slaying the Gorgon How the Mediums of Storytelling Shape How We Think and Act
May 23, 2013
Since earliest times people have used stories to entertain, inform, and pass on cultural values. They have also used stories to persuade. In today’s fast-paced world, corporations use stories to sell products and gain competitive advantages, while political parties use stories to elect candidates and promote their agendas. Slaying the Gorgon is a fascinating and provocative multimedia presentation by storyteller, writer and public radio producer Joe McHugh that explores how stories are told in the modern age with the dynamic and transforming influence of new technologies. From the venerated saints and cathedrals of the Middle Ages to the pop stars and cineplexes of today, he explains why images and sound are increasingly supplanting the authority of the printed word, and, by so doing, radically altering the cultural, economic, and political landscape of United States and the rest of the world. He combines plain language, historical anecdotes, and humor to get his points across while providing the audience a much-needed opportunity for reflection and spirited discussion.
Greetings From Tim Buckley
Seattle premiere!
May 24 - May 30, 2013
(Daniel Algrant, 2013, USA, Blu-ray, 99 min)
Venus and Serena
Seattle premiere!
May 24 - Jun 06, 2013
(Maiken Baird and Michelle Major, 2011, USA, blu-ray, 100 min)
The Williams sisters are unlike any other sports celebrities in America today, and so well-known that their last name need never be mentioned—not even in this documentary’s title. Venus and Serena Williams, tennis stars who endured years of training, triumph and hardship side by side, have worked as a team despite countless opportunities for their blood ties to split them apart. Venus and Serena turns the spotlight on their hardest year, as physical challenges and personal changes reveal the inspiring depth of their commitment to each other.
Movie Night
Dec 14 - May 24, 2013
DJs Jon Francois and Nik Gilmore return Movie Night to our screens as they remix quirky feature films with some of the finest vinyl records, live! Feast your eyes on odd cinematic gems, as the DJs replace almost the entire soundtrack (including music, sound effects and dialogue) of classic flicks. Special ticket pricing: $5 online or at the door!