FEBRUARY 7-8 AT 11PM
The Visitor
Two nights only!
Late night!
21+ screening!
New digital restoration!
(Giulio Paradisi, United States/Italy, 1979, DCP, 90 min)
In this unforgettable assault on reality—restored and presented uncut for the first time
ever in the United States—legendary Hollywood director/actor John Huston (The
Maltese Falcon) stars as an intergalactic warrior who joins a cosmic Christ figure in
battle against a demonic 8-year-old girl, and her pet hawk, while the fate of the universe
hangs in the balance.
Multi-dimensional warfare, pre-adolescent profanity and brutal avian attacks combine to
transport the viewer to a state unlike anything they've experienced. . .somewhere
between Hell, the darkest reaches of outer space, and Atlanta, GA.
The Visitor fearlessly fuses elements of The Omen, Close Encounters Of The Third
Kind, The Birds, Rosemary’s Baby, The Fury and even Star Wars, creating the most
ambitious of all '70s psychedelic mind-warps . Its all-star cast includes Shelley Winters
(Night Of The Hunter), Glenn Ford (Superman), Lance Henriksen (Aliens), Franco Nero
(Django) and Sam Peckinpah (director of The Wild Bunch).
FEBRUARY 7-13 AT 7PM, 9PM (PLUS MONDAY AT 1, 3PM; NO 9PM MONDAY)
Sidewalk Stories
New digital restoration!
(Charles Lane, United States, 1989, DCP, 98 min)
While riding the subway home late one night after a graveyard shift in 1988, Charles
Lane struck up a conversation with a homeless man about that night’s championship
boxing match. Two months later, writer-director-star Lane started production on his first
feature. A tale of the friendship between a tramp and a little girl, Sidewalk Stories is a
black and white silent comedy that deftly pays tribute both to Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid
and the human experiences of homelessness on the streets of New York. Awarded the
Guggenheim Special Prize as “The Best Source of Inspiration for Children,” this
restoration is a timely rediscovery of a significant work from 1980s New AfricanAmerican cinema.
FEBRUARY 14-19, AT 7PM, 9PM (NO 7PM SUNDAY OR 9PM MONDAY; PLUS
MONDAY AT 1, 3PM)
Trouble Every Day
New 35mm print!
(Claire Denis, France, 2001, 35mm, 101 min)
Without question Trouble Every Day was the most scandalous and shocking film in the
2001 Cannes Film Festival, made all the more stunning coming as it was from
celebrated French director Claire Denis, named by the Village Voice as One of the
1990’s Ten Best Directors. Starring Vincent Gallo, Trouble Every Day is a modern-day
horror story about a man and a woman, living thousands of miles apart, who are
afflicted with the same self-destructive cerebral impairment that affects their sexual
appetites.
FEBRUARY 14-20 AT 7PM, 9PM (PLUS MONDAY AT 1, 3PM; NO 7PM & 9PM
MONDAY)
Mauvais Sang
New digital restoration!
(Leos Carax, France, 1986, DCP, 110 min)
Leos Carax began shooting his second feature Mauvais Sang when he was just 25
years old. In order to repay a debt, Marc and Hans, two gangsters, plan to steal the
vaccine for the mysterious STBO virus (a direct AIDS reference). To pull off the heist,
they call on Alex (Denis Lavant), known as "Chatterbox,” a young and talented conjuror.
Alex falls madly in love with Anna (Juliette Binoche), a girl in a white dress he sees on a
bus. Only later does he discover that she is Marc’s mistress. During production, Carax
developed deep bonds with both of his stars (Lavant starred in Holy Motors, Carax’s
impressive 2012 comeback).
FEBRUARY 16 AT 7PM
We Are Alive! The Fight to Save Braddock Hospital
Visiting filmmaker Tony Buba!
(Tony Buba, Tom Dubesnky, United States, 2013, 95 min)
Tony Buba is, according to Anthology Film Archives, “One of the most singular, and
egregiously overlooked, filmmakers in the U.S. . .a national treasure, the prime
representative of the blue-collar, populist, politically committed yet outrageously
entertaining American filmmaking movement that’s largely missing-in-action.” For the
past 40 years, Tony’s working class focus and humorously experimental approach have
chronicled the trials and tribulations of the working people in his hometown of Braddock,
Pennsylvania.
We Are Alive! The Fight To Save Braddock Hospital chronicles a small town’s fight
for quality healthcare for all. The residents from Braddock, Pennsylvania waged war
against the ten billion dollar non-profit/medical corporate giant University of Pittsburgh
Medical Center to keep their community hospital open. Home to a YMCA, a chapel and
the town's only restaurant, the hospital employed 630 people, and its emergency room
served over 25,000 patients a year. Winner of the Studs Terkel Award for Media and
Journalism. Screens with Mill Hunk Herald (13 min), a short film featuring a
Springsteen-esque rockout—on an accordion.

Don’t miss Tony Buba’s class, Approaches to the Autobiographical Film, on
Saturday, February 15.
FEBRUARY 23 AT 7PM
Getting Back to Abnormal
Visiting filmmaker Paul Stekler
(Louis Alvarez, Andrew Kolker, Peter Odabashian, Paul Stekler, United States, 2013, 92
min)
New Orleans' long history of political dysfunction gets a new lease on life when Stacy
Head, a polarizing white woman, wins a seat on the city council after Katrina. Four
years later, she needs to get black votes to be re-elected. Getting Back to Abnormal
follows the odd couple of Head and her irrepressible political advisor, Barbara LacenKeller, as they try to navigate New Orleans' complicated political scene. Featuring
provocative commentary from New Orleans cultural figures like David Simon (Treme,
The Wire).
*********
FEBRUARY 21-26 AT 7PM, 9PM (PLUS 1 & 3PM ON MONDAY; NO 9PM MONDAY)
Run and Jump
(Steph Green, Ireland/Germany, 2013, Blu-ray, 105 min)
Funnyman Will Forte (SNL, 30 Rock) dons a serious beard, and tweed jacket, to play a
strait-laced brain researcher who finds himself in the midst of a family’s efforts to rebuild.
Steph Green’s debut feature film is a warm-hearted Irish drama that takes an
unconventional approach to the premise of a family changed by a father and husband’s
stroke. Written, directed, and produced by women, the narrative focuses not on the
husband (Conor) and his experience of adjusting to a new life, but on his wife Vanetia’s. As
the doggedly optimistic Vanetia navigates the emotional challenges of reintegrating Conor
in family life when he returns from the hospital, she bonds with the American doctor (Forte)
sent to observe and research Conor’s transition.
SERIES PAGE
FEBRUARY 21-26
Independent of Reality: Jan Nemec Retrospective
With a style marked by the urgency of (what would prove to be well-founded) fears of
censorship and exile, Czechoslovak New Wave director Jan Nemec not only bucked the
formalist conventions of his time, but also directly challenged the state art establishment
with an approach he called “dreamy realism.”
Citing influences like Bresson, Faulkner, Hemingway, Resnais, and Bunuel, Nemec
(pronounced Niemetz) was an instrumental player in the Czechoslovak New Wave
alongside Milos Forman, Jiri Menzel, and others. However, the political controversy
surrounding his subversive and surrealist work resulted in a 15 year exile from his
country in the 1970s and ‘80s, making his films difficult to access in the U.S.
This long-overdue survey of Nemec’s nearly 50 year career of uncompromising work
features five of his films.
Part of a touring retrospective of Jan Nemec films INDEPENDENT OF REALITY: The
Films of Jan Nemec in North America, premiered by BAMcinématek in New York. The
retrospective is produced by Comeback Company, curated by Irena Kovarova, and
organized in partnership with the National Film Archive, Prague, Aerofilms, and Jan
Nemec - Films.
*********
FEBRUARY 21 AT 7PM, 9PM
Diamonds of the Night
New 35mm print!
(Jan Nemec, Czechoslovakia, 1964, 35mm, 64 min)
Nemec’s conviction that a director must create “a personal style” and “a world
independent of reality as it appears at the time” was already evident in his first feature
length film. Diamonds follows the escape of two young concentration camp prisoners
through the woods of Sudetenland and the ensuing pursuit of them. Moving freely
between the present, dreams, and flashbacks, Nemec employs an aesthetic of Pure
Cinema to depict the state of the distressed human mind. The style was, in fact, inspired
by the hallucinatory diary of an ailing boy, who escaped to Prague in 1945. Upon its
release, one critic hailed the film as a “vehement protest against the humiliation of man.”
FEBRUARY 22 AT 7PM
Martyrs of Love
One screening only!
(Jan Nemec, Czechoslovakia, 1967, 71 min)
This three-part ballad, which often uses music to stand in for dialogue, remains the most
perfect embodiment of Nemec’s vision of a film world independent of reality. Mounting a
defense of timid, inhibited, clumsy, and unsuccessful individuals, the three protagonists
are a complete antithesis of the industrious heroes of socialist aesthetics. Martyrs of
Love cemented Nemec’s reputation as the kind of unrestrained nonconformist the
Communist establishment considered the most dangerous to their ideology. Screens
with Mother and Son (Moeder en zoon): This absurdist tale about a doting mother of a
brutal torturer was shot without the permission of Czechoslovak authorities on a special
commission from the Amsterdam Film Festival and later won the main award at the
International Short Film Festival Oberhausen.
FEBRUARY 23 AT 7PM
Pearls of the Deep
One screening only!
(Jan Nemec, Czechoslovakia, 1966, 107 min)
A manifesto of the Czechoslovak New Wave, this anthology of five short films by five
rising directors is based on a book by the celebrated writer Bohumil Hrabal. Absurdist in
style, with a heightened attention to the individual, Hrabal’s work broke with the socialist
realism that dominated the era. Nemec’s story The Imposters is the simplest stylistically,
chronicling two elderly men who share stories of their illustrious life careers while
spending time together in a hospital. Ultimately they reveal themselves to be masters of
the art of embellishment.
FEBRUARY 24 AT 7PM
Late Night Talks with Mother
One screening only!
(Jan Nemec, Czechoslovakia, 2001, 68 min)
After his return from exile, Nemec delved immediately into filmmaking. Unlike his
generational peers, he did not rely on existing structures, and began producing films
independently, continuing to develop a personal style without regard for generally
accepted rules. Experimenting with digital video formats, this counterpart to Kafka’s
Letter to Father finds the director probing his own psyche in the form of a confessional
dialogue with his long-deceased mother. Nemec turns a fish-eye lens on himself and his
birthplace of Prague to create an experimental personal essay film, an
“autodocumentary,” which the jury at Locarno International Film Festival recognized with
a Golden Leopard for the best video film in 2001.
FEBRUARY 25 AT 7PM
Ferrari Dino Girl
One screening only!
(Jan Nemec, Czechoslovakia, 2009, 68 min)
While shooting a documentary about the exciting and hopeful period known as the
Prague Spring, Nemec and his crew found themselves watching and filming in horror as
the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia in August 1968. Along with his friend, the titular
Ferrari Dino Girl, and her boyfriend with diplomatic passport, Nemec smuggled the
resulting four reels of footage of the events for the rest of the world to see. This film
returns to the escape route, dramatizing the director’s account of the days and
presenting all the original footage shot during the invasion, for the first time.
FEBRUARY 26 AT 7PM
Golden Sixties: Jan Nemec
Free screening!
(Martin Sulik, 2011, 58 min)
An illuminating portrait of Nemec, from a 27-part TV series about masters of the
Czechoslovak New Wave.
FEBRUARY 27—MARCH 6 AT 6:30M, 9:30PM (PLUS MONDAY AT 1, 3PM; NO
9:30PM MONDAY)
Winter in the Blood
Presented in partnership with Longhouse Media
Seattle premiere!
Producer Sherman Alexie in attendance Thursday!
Directors in attendance Thursday, Friday, Saturday!
Cast & crew in attendance!
(Alex and Andrew Smith, United States, 2013, 105 min)
Longhouse Media trained the media interns for the production of this film, which is based on
the book by James Welch, acclaimed Native writer and former student of Richard Hugo.
Winter in the Blood opens with Virgil First Raise waking in a ditch on the hardscrabble
plains of Montana, hungover and badly beaten. Shaken, Virgil returns home, only to find
that his wife, Agnes, has left him. Worse, she’s taken his beloved rifle. Virgil sets out to town
find her— or perhaps just the gun— beginning a hi-line odyssey of inebriated and
improbable intrigues.
Northwest Film Forum partners with Longhouse Media to present the ongoing series
Indigenous Showcase, spotlighting emerging talents in indigenous communities. This
exciting program exemplifies how Native American and indigenous filmmakers are at
the forefront of the industry, successfully establishing a dialogue and creating images
that are challenging and changing long established cultural attitudes towards indigenous
culture. The mission of Longhouse Media is to catalyze indigenous people and
communities to use media as a tool for self-expression, cultural preservation, and social
change.
MARCH 4 AT 8PM
PANDEMIC: Viral Videos
Hosted by Amanda Manitach and Adam Sekuler
Each month, PANDEMIC turns Northwest Film Forum’s cinema into a virtual
examination room, as two cultural curators poke and prod viral blights from across the
interwebz.
As we’ve all experienced, viral videos infect the minds of millions with the frenzy of a
water-skiing squirrel. Symptoms: debilitation and loss of productivity—much like hoof
and mouth disease. Through examining infection vectors, this live video dialog takes us
through vast internet archives, to examine the latest strains of you-tuberculosis.
This month, meme-machines Adam Sekuler and Amanda Manitach guide us on a quest
to answer the nebulous koan of cloud life—yes, you can haz cheeseburger. . .but can
you digest it?
WARNING: Content is highly contagious
ABOUT AMANDA MANITACH
Amanda Manitach is an artist, writer and curator at Seattle University's Hedreen Gallery.
She works in all kinds of mediums, especially drawing and video. She has a degree in
literature from Oral Roberts University. Her work has been shown at Frye Art Museum,
Lawrimore Project, Bryan Ohno Gallery and Roq la Rue, among others. Anytime she is
given a rose, she will eat it, because she loves the opening scene of Fando y Lis so
much.
ABOUT ADAM SEKULER
Former Northwest Film Forum Program Director (2006 – 2013), Adam Sekuler is a
filmmaker and curator who specializes in regional and international thematic film series,
director retrospectives, and film festivals. Among the films that have benefitted from his
expertise are Lisandro Alonso’s Liverpool, Pedro Costa’s Ne Change Rien, Albert
Serra’s Birdsong, and Oliver Laxe’s You Are All Captains. Previously the programmer
for the nation’s first and only dedicated nonfiction theater, The Bell Auditorium, he is
also co-founder of Search and Rescue, an ongoing effort to present and preserve
discarded archives of 16mm films.
MARCH 6 AT 8PM
Music Craft: Roxy Music
(65 min)
The timeless cool and alien emo of Roxy Music is compressed into a BBC doc,
supplemented with complete versions of "Ladytron" from the 1973 Montreux Jazz
Festival, along with live performances from '75. Part of Music Craft, our ongoing series
of rare concert footage from music legends.
MARCH 7-8 AT 11PM
Streets of Fire
Late night!
Two nights only!
21+ screening!
(Walter Hill, United States, 1984, DCP, 93 min)
The 1984 box office flop-turned-beloved-cult-classic, Streets of Fire, hybridizes musical,
western, comedy and action genres in a self-proclaimed “Rock & Roll Fable.” Willem
Dafoe is a leather body suit-clad biker villain named “Raven,” 19-year-old Diane Lane is
a ballad-belting rock star, Rick Moranis is her sleazy bow-tied manager and Michael
Pare (Eddie and the Cruisers) is the gun-toting loner-hero.
Set in “another time…another place,” the set design and costumes evoke what the
bizarre love-child of the 1950s and 1980s might look like, while the soundtrack features
the handicraft of Jim Steinman (“Total Eclipse of the Heart,” much of Meatloaf’s
discography), and birthed a radio hit or two (Dan Hartman’s “I Can Dream About You”).
Does a subtext of queer desire subvert silly misogyny in this neon-drenched spectacle
of motorcycles and music? You be the judge of this pure guilty pleasure: one of those
rare delights, where the protagonist is the least likable part of the movie and you still
love it all.
MARCH 7-13 AT 7PM & 9PM (MONDAY AT 1PM, 3PM, 7PM ONLY)
Alien Boy: The Life and Death of James Chasse
Local Sightings Festival award winner!
(Jason Renaud and Brian Lindstrom, United States, 2013, DCP, 90 min)
Early in its musical history, the Portland punk scene saw the emergence of a magazine,
the Oregon Organizm, written and edited by an influential band member of the time,
James Chasse. With a close friend performing as lead singer of The Wipers—an
influential punk band that made an impact on groups like Nirvana—James became a
well-known member of his society.
In 2006, tragedy struck, when James died during a highly controversial arrest by
Portland police in downtown. Following the case, many people looked into the history of
James Chasse, from his early punk years to his mental illness and the effects it had on
the musician and his community.
This documentary follows his musical rise, decline and tribulations, along with a modern
perspective on a police case increasingly relevant today.
MARCH 11 AT 6PM
Women in Film – The Second Tuesday
Happy hour + program!
Free event for WIF and NWFF members!
Northwest Film Forum is the new home Women in Film Seattle's The Second Tuesday!
Every Second Tuesday of the month, connect with your peers and share stories of your
latest gig, find out what's happening in WIF, show off a finished project or a work-inprogress, and have a glass of wine.
On March 11 we present dot org, a meeting point for Seattle film and media nonprofits
to discuss future community collaborations.
Women in Film’s focus is supporting and building the careers of its members, as well as
the industry as a whole. Second Tuesday events are designed to be fun, friendly, and
entertaining, and are open to members of all levels, both men and women. Entry for all
current WIF and NWFF members is free; cost for guests or the general public is $6.
MARCH 13 AT 8PM
Festival of (In)appropriation
Whether you call it collage, compilation, found footage, detournement, or recycled
cinema, the incorporation of previously shot materials into new artworks is a
longstanding film practice. These novel juxtapositions have produced new meanings
and ideas, sometimes not intended by the original makers: that are, in other words
“inappropriate.”
The act of appropriation may produce revelation that leads viewers to reconsider the
relationship between past and present, here and there, intention and subversion. In the
past decade, a wealth of new sources for audiovisual materials has emerged that can
be appropriated into new works. In addition to official state and commercial archives,
vernacular archives, home movie collections and digital archives have provided
fascinating source material that may be mined for new meanings and resonances.
Founded in 2009, the Festival of (In)appropriation is a yearly showcase of contemporary
short (20 minutes or less) audiovisual works that appropriate film or video footage and
repurpose it in “inappropriate” and inventive ways. The show, now in its fifth year, is
curated by Jaimie Baron, Lauren Berliner and Greg Cohen.
MARCH 14 - 20 AT 7PM, 9PM (MONDAY AT 1PM, 3PM, 7PM ONLY)
Vic+Flo Saw a Bear
(Denis Côté, Canada, 2013, 95 min)
Winner of the 2013 Silver Bear (Alfred Bauer Prize) at the Berlin International Film
Festival, Quebecois multi-hyphenate talent Denis Côté’s seventh feature tells the darkly
mysterious tale of two lesbian ex-cons, Victoria and Florence, trying to make a new life
in the backwoods of Quebec. Seeking peace and quiet, the couple slowly begin to feel
under siege, as Vic's probation office keeps unexpectedly popping up, and a strange
woman in the neighborhood soon turns out to be an increasingly menacing shadow
from Flo's past. With its collection of complex and eccentric characters, unexpected plot
twists and unsettling humor, Côté has created an original film that is traumatizing,
uplifting and utterly breathtaking.
MARCH 15 - 16 AT 7PM
Los Angeles Plays Itself
Two nights only!
New digital restoration!
(Thom Andersen, United States, 2003, DCP, 169 min)
Los Angeles’ cinematic self receives a thoroughly enjoyable meta-treatment in Thom
Andersen’s engrossing video essay about one of the most extensively filmed cities on
earth, featuring scenes from films as wide-ranging as Chinatown and Killer of Sheep.
In this documentary, Andersen charts the cinematic trajectories of the city’s iconic and
less recognizable fixtures. In one instance we watch a bank transform into a hotel, then
into an orphanage through its various on-screen iterations. A new DCP of a longtime
NWFF audience favorite, voted best documentary of 2004 by the Village Voice.
*********
MAJOR SERIES
MARCH 18—MAY 1
RED RENEWAL: SEATTLE’S SOCIALIST SPRING
Presented in partnership with Town Hall, ARCADE, PubliCola at SeattleMet, Tasveer,
DEFA Film Library and Charles Mudede
“It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold:
when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.” —Charles Dickens, Great
Expectations
Winter 2013 in Seattle began with changes of pace, both in the weather and for
workers. Hardly a raindrop fell in typically dour November, and clear skies greeted
Kshama Sawant on the 15th, when she won an historic victory to become the first
socialist elected to Seattle City Council in living memory. Ten days later, Washington
voters passed a $15 minimum wage for SeaTac workers.
The year wound down while workers got fed up. One hundred fast food workers and
supporters marched 13 miles from SeaTac to Seattle City Hall to advocate for the $15
minimum wage. Machinists battled what (now former) union president Tom Wroblewski
called a “piece of crap” benefits-slashing proposal from Boeing. Moved by the
machinists’ struggle, Timothy Egan forlornly postulated: "So this is how the middle class
dies. Not with a bang, but with a forced [pension] squeeze."
As 2014 dawned, Sawant decried “the reality of international capitalism” and calling for
“organized mass movements of workers and young people” to a thousand citizens who
packed City Hall for her inauguration. The same week saw the launch of 15 Now, a
coalition of community groups and unions, mobilized to make $15 wages a reality first in
Seattle, then across the nation.
On Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, “the sign of a rising tide” marched through the city, with
many marchers bearing $15 signs to form “a sea of red” that shone in the sun. Infusing
Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy with the rejuvenated fight for fair wages, former head of
Seattle’s Black Panther Party chapter Aaron Dixon declared: “We got the power, we are
the 99 percent.”
With Red Renewal: Seattle’s Socialist Spring, Northwest Film Forum opens our
cinemas for collective contemplation of the 2014 spring fever: sparked by
solidarity but marked by uncertainty, as Seattleites debate what the future should
hold.
How will this new season shape the city’s political, economic, and civic landscape?
What will happen to workers’ rights and wages, and where will they live in a city gripped
by ever sky-rocketing rents? “Is there something in the water in Seattle” that drives the
city's labor movement to the forefront of national conversations? Revitalized by newly
sown seeds, but a long way off from harvest, this Spring signals a moment ripe
for cinematic exploration.
During Red Renewal, community groups and citizens from across the city will host
weekly screenings and discussions around films from many countries, eras and
perspectives. From canonical propaganda to satirical critique, Red Renewal recasts
cinema’s historical encounters with socialist themes in connection to ongoing
conversations about Seattle's economy and politics.
Expect the shouts and songs of workers, Soviet crocodiles and Slovenian
psychoanalysts, Gandhi’s teachings melded with Marx’s writings, a renegade East
German and the return of Wilhem Reich, radical labors of love and public spheres—
both real and virtual—primed for debate. It all begins with a screening and discussion
with Kshama Sawant and Charles Mudede at Town Hall on March 18.
EVENTS DURING RED RENEWAL
MARCH 21 AT 8PM
The Land Beyond the Rainbow
New 35mm print!
Part of Red Renewal: Seattle’s Socialist Spring
Book release for Last Features: DEFA's Lost Generation with introduction by author
Reinhild Steingröver!
Presented by DEFA, the East German Film Library at the University of Massachusetts
Amherst
(Herwig Kipping, East Germany, 1991, 35mm)
In this new director’s cut, renegade East German filmmaker Herwig Kipping set out to
explore the roots of the socialist society that he grew up in. Consciousness about
pressing social-political issues of GDR life, in his opinion, would not be raised through
didactic socialist realist films, but by re-introducing the poetic element into film.
Kipping calls his approach “magical idealism,” emphasizing the need to elevate visuals,
metaphorical elements and poetic language over conventional narrative structures and
language. Only after the collapse of the GDR regime was Kipping able to realize his
script for The Land Beyond the Rainbow, which takes place in the fictional town of
Stalina in 1953, and depicts a place that lies “beyond the rainbow.”
Representing a radical departure from the East German cinema of the time, Kipping’s
influences included Buñuel, Nietzsche, Dostoyevsky, Hölderlin, Tarkovsky and Rilke.
Reinhild Steingröver teaches German and film studies at the Eastman School of Music
at the University of Rochester and focuses on contemporary German and Austrian film
and literature. She co-edited After the Avant-garde: Engagements with Contemporary
German and Austrian Experimental Film.
MORE RED RENEWAL EVENTS
Wednesdays in April at 7pm (April 2, 9, 16, 23, 30)
*********
MAJOR SERIES
MARCH 19—22
SCMS AT NWFF!
The Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS) is the leading scholarly organization
in the United States dedicated to promoting a broad understanding of film, television,
and related media through research and teaching. The Society’s annual conference is
an international gathering where scholars and teachers in the field come together to
discuss new work and to promote the field of cinema and media studies among its
practitioners, to other disciplines, and to the public at large, in part through public
recognition of award-worthy achievements and other significant milestones within the
field.
Seattle is the location for the 2014 SCMS conference, and Northwest Film Forum will
host nightly events in conjunction with the conference. All events are open to the public
and offer opportunities to see rarely screened films and meet film experts from across
the country!
MARCH 19 AT 7PM
Archival Activism: Reclaiming and Remixing the Battle of Seattle
This special event features a talk by filmmaker Jill Freidberg (director of This is What
Democracy Looks Like) as well as the top entries from a Remix Video Competition
designed to revisit the seminal 1999 WTO demonstrations. Using archival or “found”
footage, work from participating filmmakers will explore a contemporary political issue
through the lens of the “Battle of Seattle” and, in the process, contemplate this historical
event’s uniqueness and legacy in political actions such as the Occupy movement and
the Arab Spring.
MARCH 20 AT 9PM
Pacific Wonders: Nontheatrical Films From the Northwest
16mm prints!
Before Gus Van Sant, Kelly Reichardt and David Lynch made the Pacific Northwest
known for hustlers, dreamers and weirdos, thousands of amateur and professional
filmmakers filmed their own visions of the region. Made with the intention of screening
them in homes, workplaces, schools and institutions, these films collectively represent a
visual history of the region.
Pacific Wonders features films on architecture, design and the environment in the
Pacific Northwest. Titles include Comin' Home Baby, a city symphony made in Seattle in
1968, and In Partnership with Time, a 1981 documentary on the historic preservation
movement, produced by the Tacoma-based educational filmmakers Ruth and Louis Kirk.
Films courtesy of the Oregon Historical Society and the University of Washington.
Sponsored by the Nontheatrical Film and Media Scholarly Interest Group of the Society
for Cinema and Media Studies, with additional support from the Urban Studies, Silent
Cinema Cultures, and Media and Environment Scholarly Interest Groups.
MARCH 22 AT 8PM
Harry Smith: Early Abstractions and the Animation of Bodily Rhythm
Rani Singh, director of the Harry Smith Archives, in attendance!
16mm prints!
([Film program run time] 83 min)
He collected paper airplanes, Seminole textiles and Ukrainian Easter Eggs. He
recorded Allen Ginsberg, The Fugs and the peyote songs of the Kiowa Indians. He was
"shaman in residence" at Naropa Institute and the world's leading authority on string
figures. And this was only the tip of the dazzling intellectual iceberg that was Harry
Smith (1923–1991)—painter, filmmaker, musicologist, anthropologist, linguist, translator,
collector, occultist and eccentric genius of the 20th-century underground.
This program is dedicated to the early films of Harry Smith, the pioneering American
filmmaker and ethno-musicologist born and raised in the Pacific Northwest. Smith's
early film experiments, known as the Early Abstractions, drew on his passion for
American folk art and music, from indigenous song rituals and textiles, to syncopated
jazz beats and Yiddish prayer. In these diverse cultural forms, Smith discovered
different ways that bodily rhythms were animated and channeled through audiovisual
forms.
Smith described his own experiments with hand-painting film as a meditative practice
that transmuted the body's vitality into moving images. The films in this program explore
Smith's legacy in abstract animation, putting his work in conversation with some of his
contemporaries and current film artists, who also explore the rhythmic and somatic
dimensions of animated movement.
The program includes numerous rarely screened film prints, original live
accompaniment to Smith's Early Abstractions led by Lori Goldston, and a live
performance by Seattle-based filmmaker and musician Eric Ostrowski. Special
introduction by Chuck Kleinhans, Northwestern University professor emeritus and coeditor of Jump Cut media journal.
FILM PROGRAM
Harry Smith, Early Abstractions (1946-1952), 23 min
Live musical accompaniment by Lori Goldston and friends
Storm de Hirsch, Third Eye Butterfly (1968), 10 min
Len Lye, Color Cry (1952), 3 min
Izabella Pruska-Oldenhoff, Fugitive L(i)ght (2005), 9 min
Eric Ostrowski, original film + live accompaniment
Hy Hirsh, Eneri (1953), 7 min
Jud Yalkut, Us Down By The Riverside (1966), 3 min
Jodie Mack, Glistening Thrills (2013), 8 min
Harry Smith, Film Number 15: Untitled Seminole Patchwork Film, (ca. 1965-66), 10 min
(provided by Rani Singh)
Organized by the Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS) in collaboration with
Northwest Film Forum. Sponsored by three SCMS scholarly interest groups:
Experimental Film and Media (ExFM); Cinema and Art History (CinemArts);and
Animated Media. Program curated by Alla Gadassik and Rani Singh. Special thank you
to Kaveh Askari.
*********
MARCH 21 - 27 AT 7PM, 9PM (MONDAY AT 1PM, 3PM, 7PM ONLY)
In Bloom
(Nana Ekvtimishvili and Simon Gross, Germany/France/Georgia, 2013, 102 min)
Loosely based on debut writer and co-director Nana Ekvtimishvili’s memories of growing
up in Georgia after the collapse of the Soviet Union, In Bloom follows Eka and Natia,
inseparable fourteen-year-old friends navigating the everyday of family, school and
young love in a newly independent and not yet stable country. Jury award winner at
2013 Berlinale.
MARCH 28—APRIL 3 AT 7PM, 9PM (MONDAY AT 1PM, 3PM, 7PM ONLY)
Je t’aime, je t’aime
New 35mm print!
(Alain Resnais, France, 1968, 35mm, 91 min)
As in Chris Marker's La Jetée, in Je T’aime a man is selected to travel back in time. The
time machine malfunctions and the man finds himself trapped in his own scattered
memory. As he re-lives moments of bliss and tragedy from past relationships, the line
between dream and flashback becomes distorted in this cerebral time travel romance.
Resnais’ only sci-fi drama represented a significant turn for the French New Wave
auteur, associated with a politicized Left Bank group. Its intended screening at Cannes
was cancelled due to political turmoil in France, and Resnais, (Last Year at Marienbad,
Hiroshima Mon Amour) would not make another film for five years.
MARCH 27—29 AT 8PM
Live at the Film Forum: Salt Horse
World premiere!
Live performance!
In Salt Horse’s new work, Color Field, unique and often-unseen spaces are activated
throughout Northwest Film Forum’s venue, generating kinetic architectures of shape,
color and form.
Images and scenarios arise and dissolve—a large eye of light soars above the horizon,
a man emerges fully and then disappears in plain sight, and a blackened corner harbors
a hovering body. The piece begins in an installation of site-specific performances
throughout the Forum, and then collects into the theater where these images merge and
abstract through the amplification of design, color, physicality and sonic texturing.
Abstract Expressionist painters such as Stella, Frankenthaler and Gorky are sources of
inspiration for Color Field. Joining Salt Horse (Corrie Befort, Beth Graczyk, and
Angelina Baldoz) is a vibrant cast of dancers including Ariana Bird, Belle Wolf, Kathleen
Hunt and Steven Gomez.
APRIL/MAY DATE/TIME TBC
PANDEMIC: Viral Videos AT 8PM
Each month, PANDEMIC turns Northwest Film Forum’s cinema into a virtual
examination room, as two cultural curators poke and prod viral blights from across the
interwebz.
As we’ve all experienced, viral videos infect the minds of millions with the frenzy of a
water-skiing squirrel. Symptoms: debilitation and loss of productivity—much like hoof
and mouth disease. Through examining infection vectors, this live video dialog takes us
through vast internet archives, to examine the latest strains of you-tuberculosis.
For this special April’s Fools Day PANDEMIC, our two meme-machine hosts guide us
on a quest to answer the nebulous koan of cloud life—yes, you can haz
cheeseburger. . .but can you digest it?
WARNING: Content is highly contagious
APRIL 3 AT 8PM
Music Craft: Thin Lizzy
(71 min)
Each year finds Thin Lizzy's cred bigger than ever. Throw down quality time with the
band many consider to be the best (more or less!). Program includes BBC doc "Bad
Attitude" and uncut live performances from Dublin, 1975. Part of Music Craft, our
ongoing series of rare concert footage from music legends.
APRIL 4-10 AT 7PM, 9PM (MONDAY AT 1PM, 3PM, 7PM ONLY)
Hide Your Smiling Faces
(Daniel Patrick Carbone, United States, 2013, 81 min)
Lensed by Northern Light director Nick Bengten, Hide Your Smiling Faces vividly
depicts the young lives of two brothers as they abruptly come of age through the
experience of a friend’s mysterious death. The event ripples under the surface of their
town, unsettling the brothers and their friends in a way that they can’t fully understand.
Once familiar interactions begin to take on a macabre tone in light of the tragic accident,
leading Eric and Tommy to retreat into their wild surroundings. As the two brothers
vocally face the questions they have about mortality, they simultaneously hold their own
silent debates within their minds that build into seemingly insurmountable moral peaks.
Hide Your Smiling Faces is a true, headlong glimpse into the raw spirit of youth, as well
as the calluses that one often develops as a result of an unfiltered past.
APRIL 4 & 5 AT 11PM
The Raspberry Reich
(Bruce LaBruce, Germany/Canada, 2004, Digibeta, 90 min)
A critique of terrorist chic from pop culture maverick Bruce LaBruce.
APRIL 8 AT 6PM
Women in Film – The Second Tuesday
Happy hour + program!
Free event for WIF and NWFF members!
Northwest Film Forum is the new home Women in Film Seattle's The Second Tuesday!
Every Second Tuesday of the month, connect with your peers and share stories of your
latest gig, find out what's happening in WIF, show off a finished project or a work-inprogress, and have a glass of wine. Happy hour at 6pm, program at 7pm.
APRIL 11-17 AT 7PM, 9PM (PLUS MONDAY AT 1, 3PM; NO 9PM MONDAY)
Exhibition
(Joanna Hogg, UK, 2013, 104 min)
An intimate examination of a contemporary artist couple, whose living and working
patterns are threatened by the imminent sale of their home.
APRIL 15 AT 8PM
Third Eye: Experimental Cinema
APRIL 25 & 26
Indigenous Showcase: Navajo Weekend
MAY 2-8
Othello
New digital restoration!
(Orson Welles, United States, 1952, 90 min)
Orson Welles masterful take on Shakespeare’s Othello is all the more impressive
considering the many obstacles that plagued the production, such as an almost
debilitating lack of funds. Despite premiering to rave reviews in Europe, it took another
three years before it was released in the U.S. (1955). Backlash against a shoddy 1992
print restoration added another chapter to the ragged tale of this under-appreciated but
characteristically resplendent work by Welles, which takes grandly cinematic liberties
with the bard’s classic play.
MAY 29-31 AT 8PM
Live at the Film Forum: Pirate Cinema
In the context of omnipresent telecommunications surveillance, “The Pirate Cinema”
reveals the hidden activity and geography of Peer-to-Peer file sharing. The project is
presented as a monitoring room, which shows Peer-to-Peer transfers happening in real
time on networks using the BitTorrent protocol. The installation produces an arbitrary
cut-up of the files currently being exchanged. User IP addresses and countries are
displayed on each cut, depicting the global
topology of content consumption and dissemination.
Nicolas Maigret is an artist working in digital art and sound since 2001. His work
exposes the internal workings of media, through a reflection on their errors, their
dysfunctions, their limitations or failure thresholds. After completing studies in intermedia art, Maigret joined the LocusSonus lab in France, where he explored networks as
a creative tool. He teaches at École des beaux-arts de Bordeaux and cofounded the
collective Art of Failure in 2006. He is also involved with the project Plateforme, an
artist-run centre in Paris.