Calendar
Went the Day Well?
Sep 02 - Sep 08, 2011
(Alberto Cavalcanti, 1942, UK, 35mm, 92 min)
Cavalcanti’s first dramatic feature, Went the Day Well?, tells the story of Bramley End, an idyllic village with a cast of typical Brits who seem to have walked out of an early Hitchcock comedy made in a Britain where German invasion seemed imminent.
Amigo
Sep 02 - Sep 08, 2011
(John Sayles, 2010, USA/Philipines, 35mm, 128min)
Amigo stars Joel Torre as Rafael Dacanay, a village mayor caught in the murderous cross-fire of the Philippine-American War in 1900. When U.S. troops garrison his village, Rafael is forced to make the near-impossible, potentially deadly decisions faced by civilians in an occupied country.
Cure For Pain: The Mark Sandman Story
Sep 09 - Sep 11, 2011
(Robert Bralver & David Ferino, USA, 2010, Blu-Ray, 83 min)
Cure for Pain: The Mark Sandman Story examines the life and work of Mark Sandman, deceased front man of the Boston “low rock” band Morphine. Cure for Pain explores the meaning of family through this critically praised and personally conflicted singer, songwriter and innovative instrumentalist and revisits the “unique and sultry sound” of Sandman's music.
Four Nights with Anna
Sep 09, 2011
(Jerzy Skolimowski, 2008, Poland/France, 35mm, 87 min)
Skolimowski’s first film after a seventeen year directing hiatus, Four Nights With Anna tells a small, intense, eerily one-sided love story. Leon, a crematorium worker, is in love with Anna. One night, he breaks in to clean her apartment while she sleeps. As he indulges his obsession by lingering among her belongings, he remembers a deeply troubling shared experience that casts new light on this already unsettling relationship. Skolimowski’s expressionistic style elevate the film from a character study of an obsessive voyeur to the kind of art film that debuts in the Director’s Fortnight at Cannes, heralding a triumphant comeback.
Essential Killing
Sep 10, 2011
(Jerzy Skolimowski, 2010, Poland/Norway/Ireland/Hungary, 35mm, 83 min)
Essential Killing explores violence in the context of war, pitting an unusually silent Vincent Gallo (as escaped POW Mohammed) against a harsh winter in an unidentified European mountain range. Eschewing geopolitics, the film instead highlights the eternal question of what one human can—or should—do to survive. Gallo’s wordless performance earned him top honors at the film’s debut in Venice, where Essential Killing also won the Special Jury Prize, the first time one film has taken two major awards from the festival. After 83 minutes spent with Skolimowski’s relentless, brutal examination of isolated desperation, it is easy to see why.
Identification Marks: None
Sep 12, 2011
(Jerzy Skolimowski, 1964, Poland, 35mm, 73 min)
Skolimowski scraped his first film together from bits and pieces of film he picked up during his coursework at the Lodz Film School, crafting an independent feature at the height of state-funded film. The first piece is an Antoine Doinel-style semi-autobiographical quartet; Identification Marks: None follows Andrej Leszczyc, an alienated and aimless student who must finally face the Polish draft board. Skolimowski himself plays the lead role in a subdued performance that gives a bleak view of life in communist Poland, which is fraught with boredom and mistrust.
Walkover
Sep 13, 2011
(Jerzy Skolimowski, 1965, Poland, 35mm, 77 min)
Skolimowski’s follow-up to Identification Marks: None and the second in the Andrej Leszczyc quartet, Walkover highlights the more surreal, vaguely comedic aspects of life in 1960s Poland. It picks up Andrej’s story a few years down the line, where, struggling to make ends meet, he boxes in amateur fights, selling his prizes. Still alienated and aimless, he drifts through fights and affairs with glum resignation, seemingly driven by nothing but resistance to mainstream life.
Screens with three of Skolimowski’s early shorts: The Menacing Eye (Oko wykol, 1960, 2 mins); Little Hamlet (Hamles, 1960, 8 mins); Erotique (Erotyk, 1960, 3 mins). (B&W, 35mm, From Polish National Film, Television, and Theatre School, Lodz, total running time 90min)
Curry + Dillon: Interview Me
Support for this program provided by 4Culture and The Mayors Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs.
Sep 15 - Sep 17, 2011
Interview Me integrates public installation, multi-media performance, and interactive movement theatre to explore the ways in which interviews function in our society. Curry + Dillon exploit the drama and architecture of “the interview” in a highly interactive evening where the audience plays a significant role in the experience. Drawing from historical references and contemporary social media, Interview Me forces an up-close investigation of America’s love affair, and contemporary culture’s fascination, with the interview.
World on a Wire
Sep 16 - Sep 22, 2011
(Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1973, Germany, 35mm, 205 min)
Based on Daniel Galouye’s 1964 science fiction novel Simulacron-3, World on a Wire is Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s exploration of what it means to exist, and what happens if you begin to suspect that you don’t. At the Institute for Cybernetics and Future Science, 10,000 identity units live a simulated existence, but only one of them, called Einstein, knows it. When the real world starts to resemble the simulated world in uncanny ways, Institute Director Dr. Schiller contacts Einstein and develops unsettling suspicions about the nature of his own reality.
I Travel Because I Have To, I Come Back Because I Love You
Sep 18 - Sep 22, 2011
(Karim Ainouz and Marcelo Gomes, 2009, Brazil, DigiBeta, 75 min)
This visually fascinating collaboration from Brazilian filmmakers Karim Ainouz and Marcelo Gomes is almost more video installation than movie. Its unseen protagonist, a geologist sent to the northeast of Brazil for research purposes, mounts a camera to the dashboard of his car, and in between geological measurements, examines the people and landscapes he finds. His narration moves back and forth between scientific observation and personal reflection, musing in turn about the earth’s exterior and his own interior. With a collage of formats and an often first-person perspective, it is a tale of emotional crisis lived through travel and is bound to imprint new images on the mind’s eye.
The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceaucescu
Sep 23 - Sep 29, 2011
(Andrei Ujica, 2010, Romania/Germany, 35mm, 180 min)
In 1990, film essayist Andrei Ujica teamed up with Harun Farocki to document the media’s coverage of the Romanian Revolution of 1989. The result was Videograms of a Revolution, one of Cahiers du Cinema’s "Top 10 Most Subversive Films of All Time."
Shut Up Little Man! An Audio Misadventure
Q & A with Eddie Lee Sausage on Saturday night!
Sep 23 - Sep 29, 2011
(Matthew Bate, Australia, 2011, 85min)
Ten years ago a 3-minute film appeared called Shut Up Lil’ Man, described as “A series of disturbing conversations recorded from real-life alcoholic neighbors and re-enacted by Muppets from hell.” Little did we know that the short was just the tip of the iceberg. The story begins in 1987, when two young punks moved from the Midwest to a cheap flat in San Francisco and ended up next door to Peter Haskett, a flamboyant gay man, and Raymond Huffman, a raging homophobe. This ultimate odd couple hated each other with raging abandon, and their alcohol–fueled rants terrorized the boys. Fearing for their lives, they began to tape record the insane goings-on. In recording Pete and Ray’s bizarre dialogues, they accidentally created one of the world’s first “viral” pop-culture sensations. Exploring the blurred boundaries between privacy, art, and exploitation, Shut Up Little Man is a darkly hilarious modern fable and a truly extraordinary documentary.
Local Sightings Film Festival
Local Sightings Film Festival is supported by Koerner Camera Systems, Bad Animals, Naked City Brewery, and Winebow.
Sep 30 - Oct 06
Visit the website for details: http://www.localsightings.org
Mark your calendars and call your friends – The 14th Annual Local Sightings Film Festival kicks-off next Friday, September 30! From September 30 – October 6, Local Sightings is bringing the best in independent filmmaking from the Northwest, along with a bevy of special presentations, programs, panels and discussions for filmmakers and film lovers alike.