NORTHWEST FILM FORUM
APRIL/MAY 2014
SCREENING CALENDAR
Last updated March 20, 2014 // Please note, dates and times are subject to
change, please confirm details and showtimes with publicity@nwfilmforum.org
before release.
SCREENINGS AND SPECIAL EVENTS
APRIL 3 AT 8PM
Music Craft: Thin Lizzy
(71 min)
Throw down quality time with the band many consider to be the best (more or less!).
This program includes the 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 4-6 AT 9PM; APRIL 7 AT 1, 3, 7PM; APRIL 8-10 AT 7PM, 9PM
Hide Your Smiling Faces
(Daniel Patrick Carbone, United States, 2013, DCP, 81 min)
In this meditative tale of life lessons learned one rural American summer, 14-year-old
Eric (Nathan Varnson) finds his kid brother Tommy’s (Ryan Jones) friend dead on a
wooded riverbank. The mysterious death raises questions about the gruff father of the
young boy, and Eric and Tommy struggle to process their unexpected introduction to
mortality.
Told from the P.O.V of its two young protagonists as they cope with the death of a friend,
Hide Your Smiling is intimately attuned to the complexity and confusion of emotional
worlds, as it captures youth in all its brutal beauty. Hide Your Smiling Faces is the
feature debut of New Jersey's Daniel Patrick Carbone.
MAY 5 AT 8PM
PANDEMIC: Viral Videos
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 dialogue 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
MAY 5 AT 8PM: Co-host David Schmader
APRIL 8 AT 6PM
MAY 13 AT 6PM
Women in Film: The Second Tuesday
Northwest Film Forum is the new home of 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-in-progress, and have a glass of wine.
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.
April 8 Program: Casting Actors, Scripts and Rehearsals
May 13 Program: Member Screening
APRIL 11 & 12 AT 6PM & 9PM
Jimmy P: The Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian
Co-presented with Longhouse Media
Join us for a conversation with actress Misty Upham after the screenings!
(Arnaud Desplechin, France, 2013, DCP, 117 min.)
"If they open up my brain, it will kill me." Jimmy P
Oscar winner Benecio Del Toro gives a soulful performance as the title character,
whose brain fracture (suffered in WWII) has led to intense physical and behavioral
issues. Mathieu Amalric (who should have won an Oscar for The Diving Bell and the
Butterfly) is the progressive psychiatrist whom, through intensive therapy, unearths
surprising revelations regarding his condition. Filled with breathtaking vistas from the
American West, Jimmy P, a true story, offers a rare unsentimental glimpse into Native
American culture.
This new film from the great director Arnaud Desplechin has been nominated for Caesar
Awards for Best Feature and Best Director, and is the co-screenwriting debut of
esteemed film critic and New York Film Festival programmer Kent Jones.
APRIL 11-17 AT 7PM, 9PM (MONDAY AT 1, 3, 7PM ONLY)
Exhibition
(Joanna Hogg, Great Britain, 2013, DCP, 104 min)
Britain's pre-eminent excavator of bourgeois angst hones in on a marriage between two
professional artists, who may not possess the creativity to keep the artifice of their
relationship intact.
In Joanna Hogg’s third feature, elements of her filmmaking style (architecture and
furniture as character, long and uncomfortable takes with a static camera, absent nondiegetic music) track the methodical peeling of an onion of interpersonal relationships,
in a claustrophobic exploration into her characters’ fruitless search for peace.
Far from a depressing slog, Exhibition is infused with mordant humor, and is a welcome
chance to witness the most accomplished work to date of a film auteur in the making.
With real-life artists Viv Albertine and Liam Gillick in raw performances as the two leads,
and Hogg regular Tom Hiddleston in a small but pivotal role as the real estate agent
handling the sale of their glorious mid-century modern home.
APRIL 19 AT 7PM
The Unity of All Things 物之合
Visiting filmmaker Daniel Schmidt in attendance
(Alexander Carver and Daniel Schmidt, United States, 2013, 97 min)
Shot in three languages, two types of film (16mm and 8mm) and in locations ranging
from China to Chicago to CERN in Switzerland, The Unity of All Things is a work of
experimental science fiction about the construction of a particle accelerator on the
U.S./Mexico border.
Grappling with questions of self and other by employing particle physics as a metaphor
for the morphing nature of human identity, Schmidt and Carver’s debut feature film
premiered in competition at the 2013 Locarno Film Festival. Marked by trance-like
modes of dialogue and impish forays into gender politics and queer desire, this satirical
and surreal film also features an immersive electronic score by Gatekeeper (Matthew
Arkell and Aaron David Ross).
Daniel Schmidt works in a variety of mediums, finding a focus in cinema through a
series of divergent works that include A History of Mutual Respect (with Gabriel
Abrantes), which won multiple international prizes, including first prize at Locarno ’10
and listed as one of the Best Films of 2010 by BFI Sight & Sound; and Palácios de
Pena / Palaces of Pity (with Abrantes), which premiered at the Venice Film Festival '11,
won first prize at Ann Arbor ’12 and Chicago Underground ’12, and was celebrated as a
“Highlight of Avant-Garde Cinema, 2011” by Andreá Picard for Indiewire and one of the
best films by Senses of Cinema.
Daniel Schmidt was artist-in-residency at Fundação Armando Alvares Pendteado in São
Paulo, 2012 and is a selected artist for the Biennale of Moving Image Images at Centre
d’Art Contemporain Geneve, 2014. Daniel’s works have been written in about in a
variety of publications, including Film Comment, Cinema Scope, Indiewire, Mousse
Magazine, ArtForum, Sight & Sound, Senses of Cinema, Filmmaker Magazine, The
Village Voice, The Chicago Sun Times, Moving Image Source, and Cahiers du Cinema.
APRIL 20 AT 7PM
Fantastic Planet
With a live score by members of Master Musicians of Bukkake and Midday Veil!
(René Laloux, France, 1973, 35mm, 72 min)
A stop-motion sci-fi cult classic of such cosmically epic proportions that it was awarded
the 1973 Special Jury Prize at Cannes (a rare feat for animated films), Fantastic Planet
is a work of exquisite psychedelia-infused surrealism.
In a truly trippy future on a far-away planet, humans (Oms) are routinely exterminated-but sometimes kept as pets--by giant fin-eared aliens (Traags), that reproduce through
psychic communal meditation. One pesky Om escapes, launching an all-out war
between the two species. This screening features a live score by members of legendary
Seattle band Master Musicians of Bukkake (“ritualistic electric excursions into the outer
and inner reaches”) and Midday Veil (on The Wire’s top 15 avant-garde rock albums of
2013).
APRIL 21 AT 7PM
The Thomas Crown Affair
Hosted by Mark Mitchell and Chiyo Ishikawa
(Norman Jewison, United States, 1968, 102 min)
This steamy heist starring Faye Dunaway and Steve McQueen gets a custom makeover,
as designer/artist Mark Mitchell and SAM curator Chiyo Ishikawa bring us a whole new
way to watch the ultimate chess game between a millionaire sportsman and a saucy
insurance investigator: by delighting in the fashion, style and design on display in this
1968 classic.
APRIL 24 AT 8PM
videOasis
Co-presented with 12toRain and City Arts magazine
Internet may have killed the video star, but music video culture is alive and kicking in the
Northwest. Join Northwest Film Forum, 12toRain and City Arts magazine for videOasis,
a new quarterly showcase of the best new music videos produced in the region. We’re
kicking off the first videOasis in conjunction with the 2014 Music Issue by City Arts, as
we pull videos from the interweb ether down to earth and onto the big screen, with
musicians and directors here in person to discuss the process of collaboration.
VJ’ed by City Arts senior editor Jonathan Zwickel, this debut event features a live
musical performance to accompany a video world premiere. Watch it bigger, listen
louder, feel it realer.
APRIL 25-30 AT 7PM, 9PM (MONDAY AT 1, 3, 7PM ONLY)
La Ultima Pelicula
(Raya Martin and Mark Peranson, Canada/Mexico/Philippines, 2013, DCP, 88 min)
A product of DOX:LAB, a Copenhagen-based consortium linking artists from developing
and developed countries to collaborate on projects, La Ultima Pelicula is Raya Martin's
(the Philippines) and Mark Peranson's (Canada, and first time-feature director) homage
to Dennis Hopper's bat-shit crazy film folly, The Last Movie.
Like Hopper's Magnum Whatsitz, La Ultima Pelicula concerns an insufferable gringo's
misadventures while trying to make a movie in a dirt-poor village (in Mexico this time,
instead of Peru), during the Mayan long-count end-of-days calendar.
Meta-cinematic, thematically rich and formally ambitious (shot in 7 different formats),
filled with a multitude of cinematic references (an IMDB.com page has sprung up
cataloging its homages), this is a film lover’s desert island movie.
MAY 2-8 7PM, 9PM (MONDAY AT 1, 3, 7PM ONLY)
Othello
New digital restoration!
(Orson Welles, U.S.A., 1952, DCP, 90 min)
When historians discuss the blighted career of Orson Welles, they generally hone in on
the meddlesome studio mutilations of Magnificent Ambersons or Touch of Evil, but there
is no more star-crossed Welles work than his 1952 adaptation of Othello.
A veritable perfect storm of impediments cursed this international production (too little
money, too little time, etc.). Even after winning the Palm D'Or at Cannes in 1952, it took
two years for Othello to find wide distribution, where it then flopped unceremoniously.
This masterpiece, which we are screening in a pristine digital restoration, is absolutely
essential viewing, and a rare chance to admire Welles' astonishing visual corollary to
Shakespeare's themes of race, trust, jealousy, paranoia. Unlike most film adaptations of
Shakespeare, this is unmistakably Cinema instead of Theatre.
With Welles in fine form, brilliant as the Moor (he also supplied the post-synchronous
voices of many minor characters), and Michael McLiammore as the venal Iago.
MAY 2 AT 11PM, MAY 3 AT 8PM & 11PM
Navajo Star Wars
Seventy voice actors speaking 5 Navajo dialects enact Star Wars: A New Hope, in the
first major theatrical movie to be dubbed into a Native language.
MAY 9-15 AT 7PM, 9PM (MONDAY AT 1, 3, 7PM ONLY)
It Felt Like Love
(Eliza Hittman, U.S.A, 2013, DCP, 82 min.)
Eliza Hittman’s debut feature landed her on Filmmaker Magazine's 25 faces of
Independent Cinema list. Set in Brooklyn, it concerns 14-year old Lila (the brilliant Gina
Pierasanti), who, utterly neglected by her father, is left alone to break out of her
awkward adolescent shackles (by emulating her far more promiscuous friend). Lila’s
pursuit of a boyfriend from the wrong side of the tracks leads to circumstances that may
be inevitable, but, in Hittman's sensitive handling, never stray into the realm of judgment.
MAY 16 AT 7PM
Metropolis
With a live musical score by GRID!
This canonical, 1927 German Expressionist sci-fi opus by Fritz Lang is accompanied by
a new score from GRID, the Seattle-based live music-to-film project founded by
drummer Jen Gilleran.
Each GRID performance is different from the last, as Gilleran changes the
instrumentation to serve the film, the space in which it is seen, and/or to offer fresh
interpretations of the work. Past GRID-scored films have included the works of Maya
Deren, Ilya Chaiken, Alan Lomax, Pete Seeger and Mary Ellen Bute at Central Cinema,
The Royal Room, The Good Shepherd Chapel and the Racer Cafe. Band members
have included drummers Allison Miller, Gregg Keplinger, Don Berman, Andrew Rudd
and Sean Lane; guitarists CJ Stout and Rob Price; saxophonists Neil Welch, Kate
Olson and Dick Valentine; keyboardists James Han and Aaron Otheim and bassist Joe
Malcomb.
This performance with Metropolis will include sections of live improvisation, with the
intention of bringing the silent film era-theater experience to a “real time” interpretation
of the work. First presented in August 2013 at the Henry Art Gallery.
MAY 20 AT 8PM
Silent Magic: Trick Films and Special Effects, 1895-1912
(Various directors and countries, 1895-1912, 16mm, approx. 90 min)
At the dawn of the previous century, a new breed of sorcerer emerged: blending the
ancient arts of stagecraft and prestidigitation with experimental movie trickery, these
modern magicians transported audiences to entirely new realms of wonder.
Tonight we travel back in time with a program of special effects epics and “trick films”
more than 100 years old, and rediscover a sampling of pioneering films by Georges
Méliès, Edwin S. Porter, Segundo de Chomón, and others.
MAY 27 AT 8PM
Game On
Co-presented with Imagos Films
Whether or not you've played a video game since Frogger, you probably know that the
modern video game has become increasingly cinematic. But what relevance does this
have for today's filmmakers?
Seattle-based production company Imagos Films will be discussing what the overlap of
video games and independent films has meant to their company and body of work, the
production of their upcoming feature (which is intrinsically connected to the video game
industry), and, more importantly, how two seemingly different types of storytelling, film
and game, can be forged into one cohesive craft.
MAY 29—31 AT 8PM
Live at the Film Forum: Nicolas Maigret
World premiere!
Live performance!
The hidden activity and geography of real-time peer-to-peer file sharing via BitTorrent is
revealed in The Pirate Cinema, a live installation by digital artist Nicolas Maigret.
In Maigret’s monitoring room, omnipresent telecommunications surveillance gains a
global face, as the artist plunders the core of restless activity online, revealing how
visual media is consumed and disseminated across the globe.
Each act of this live work produces an arbitrary mash-up of the BitTorrent files being
exchanged, in real time, in a specific media category, including music, audio books,
movies, porn, documentaries, video games and more. These fragmentary contents in
transit are browsed by the artist, transforming BitTorrent network users (unknown to
them) into contributors to the audio-visual composition that is The Pirate Cinema.
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.
Major support for the 2013-14 season of Live at the Film Forum provided by the
National Endowment for the Arts, the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, ArtsFund,
4Culture, the Office of Arts & Culture, Seattle, Washington State Arts Commission,
KUOW 94.9 and The Stranger.
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 18, TUESDAY AT 7:30PM
Kshama Sawant and Charles Mudede: Why Socialism, Why Now?
Presented by: Town Hall, Northwest Film Forum, and 12toRain Productions, as part of
the Civics series.
Please note: this event is held at Town Hall, 1119 Eighth Avenue at Seneca Street
Seattle has a socialist on its city council for the first time in 100 years. Kshama Sawant’s
recent election raised a lot of questions around the values of the Socialist Alternative
Party and her platform of raising the minimum wage to $15. She’ll join Charles Mudede,
Associate Editor at The Stranger, for an exploration of socialism’s impact on the city
council and why, after seeing previous socialist candidates, the city is ready for
socialism now. What circumstances made the election of a socialist not only possible,
but timely? Living wages and the state of labor in the Puget Sound will also be
discussed. Prior to the discussion, enjoy a brief screening to kick off Northwest Film
Forum’s series Red Renewal: Seattle’s Socialist Spring.
MARCH 21, FRIDAY AT 8PM
THE LAND BEYOND THE RAINBOW
New 35mm print!
Introduction by author Reinhild Steingröver!
Co-presented with DEFA, the East German Film Library at the University of
Massachusetts Amherst
Post-screening reception!
(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.
Join us after the screening for a reception, hosted by DEFA, the East German Film
Library at the University of Massachusetts Amherst!
MARCH 26 AT 7PM
JARI MARI: OF CLOTH AND OTHER STORIES
Co-presented with Tasveer
(Surabhi Sharma, India, 2001, 75 min)
Jari Mari is a sprawling slum colony near Mumbai’s main international airport. Its narrow
lanes house hundreds of small sweatshops, where women and men work without the
right to organize. Their existence is on the edge: their illegal dwellings could be
demolished at any time by the airport authorities, and jobs have to be found anew every
day, from workshop to workshop. This documentary explores the lives of the people of
Jari Mari, and records the changes to the nature and organization of Mumbai’s
workforce, over the past two decades.
Surabhi Sharma’s films explore music. identity, labor, globalization and women’s health.
Her films have screened at various international festivals, and have been awarded at
Film South Asia, Nepal; Karachi Film Festival, Pakistan; The Festival of Three
Continents, Argentina; Indian Documentary Producers’ Association and Eco-cinema,
Greece.
This event is part of our series Red Renewal: Seattle’s Socialist Spring.
APRIL 2 AT 7PM
Bogota Cambió
Co-presented with Capitol Hill EcoDistrict Project
(Andreas Møl Dalsgaard, Denmark, 2009, DVD, 58 min)
Out of crisis comes radical experimentation. Few cities have hit rock bottom as Bogota,
Columbia did in 1994, ravaged by the violence and corruption of the war on drugs.
Bogota Cambió tells the story of how two “crazy, extraordinary politicians,” Antanas
Mockus and Enrique Peñalosa, road waves of public discontent that enabled them to
transform the city, break the old political system and upend approaches to public safety,
transportation and the use of public space.
Bogota Cambió is also the story of the politician as performance artist and performance
as public policy, of mimes, superheroes, and the marriage of extreme contempt with
extreme submission. Director Andreas Møl Dalsgaard’s debut film, Afghan Muscles
(2007) won Best Documentary at the AFI Film Festival.
This event is part of our series Red Renewal: Seattle’s Socialist Spring.
APRIL 4-5 AT 11PM
The Raspberry Reich
Late night!
21+ screening!
(Bruce LaBruce, Germany/Canada, 2004, Digibeta, 90 min)
Sexual revolution crass meets tongue-in-cheekery, as a terrorist group, led by the
militantly sexually liberated Frau Gudrun, sets out to kidnap a bourgeois pig.
Bruce LaBruce, one of queer cinema’s bawdiest bad boys, has created a film where plot
is secondary to the stylistic critique of both terrorist chic and neoliberal identity politics.
The Raspberry Reich was inspired by the work of Wilhelm Reich, an early 21st century
Marxist psychoanalyst whose theories about cosmic sexual energy led to one of the
most remarkable cases of American censorship ever (in which some six tons of his
works were burned by order of the court).
Reich’s cinematic legacy ranges from Woody Allen’s Sleeper to the sci fi classic
Barbarella, but few films have taken up his radical sexual politics so explicitly. Bad
acting, elevator sex, handgun fellatio and a problematic trip to Burger King make for
scintillatingly crude fun in this kinky counter-culture camp, that borrows as liberally from
John Waters as it does Che Guevara.
This event is part of our series Red Renewal: Seattle’s Socialist Spring.
APRIL 9 AT 7PM
Urban Subversions
Co-presented with PubliCola at Seattle Met
Hosted by Josh Feit
A tour through movies where urbanism—particularly the electric youth culture fed by city
life—is as radical and subversive as Marxism and Anarchism. Agit-prop teens translate
music into politics and tech smarts into transgression, upending the government and
corporate status quo, in this collection of urban-themed films. Multiculturalism, mass
transit and the kismet of streets (all fixed features of cities) also factor in to the
revolution at hand.
This event is part of our series Red Renewal: Seattle’s Socialist Spring.
APRIL 16 AT 7PM
W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism
(Dušan Makavejev, Yugoslavia, 1971, 84 min)
In what might be the zaniest cinematic rendering of Soviet-Yugoslav-American relations,
Serbian maverick Dušan Makavejev employs his characteristic style of associative
montage to create a comedic manifesto for sexual revolution. Makavejev collages
documentary footage and fiction to create a mashup of American counter-culture, Soviet
ideology and Nazi propaganda.
Roger Ebert gave the film four stars and called Makavejev “the most eclectic, eccentric,
impenetrable, jolly anarchist to come out of eastern Europe” in the 1960s.
The screening will be followed by a discussion led by Rich Jensen and Allena Gabosch,
executive director of the Foundation for Sex Positive Culture.
This event is part of our series Red Renewal: Seattle’s Socialist Spring.
APRIL 23 AT 7PM
Salt of the Earth
Co-presented with the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies at the University of
Washington and the Labor Archives of Washington, UW Libraries Special Collections
(Herbert J. Biberman, USA, 1954, 94 min)
Blacklisted film professionals, with political beliefs deemed too radical in McCarthy-era
Hollywood, collaborated with the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers
to make this neorealist classic, which follows the struggle of miners and their families
(many of them non-actors from the miners union) as they strike against the Empire Zinc
Company in New Mexico.
Mexican actress Rosaura Revueltas plays the strong and spirited Esperanza Quintero,
wife of strike leader Ramón and herself a gifted labor organizer. Police bigotry, alliances,
spies and impassioned picketing lace this lively tale of solidarity: among workers, in the
Mexican-American community, between women and men.
Championing feminist ideals and immigration reform decades before these issues
received significant national attention, the remarkable historical context surrounding this
film makes its continued relevance all the more impressive. Director Herbert J.
Biberman, one of the "Hollywood Ten," began production after his release from prison,
on a charge of contempt for Congress.
Followed by a discussion featuring Professor George Lovell, (UW Department of
Political Science and Chair of the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies) Professor
James Gregory (UW Department of History) and Conor Casey, Labor Archivist.
This event is part of our series Red Renewal: Seattle’s Socialist Spring.
APRIL 23 AT 9:30PM
A Report on the Party and the Guests
(Jan Němec, Czechoslovakia, 1966, 35mm, 70min)
In Czechoslovak maverick’s Jan Němec’s most politically charged film, a group of
middle-aged bourgeois friends picnic in the woods; soon they are assaulted by thugs
who interrogate them, until the party’s host intervenes. This examination of the
mechanics of power and the ways people participate was banned in Czechoslovakia by
the Communist regime, who rebuffed Němec’s assurances that it was not intended as
an allegory of their government.
In collaboration with Ester Krumbachova (who also contributed to the script) and in the
visual style of Vera Chytilova’s Daisies, Němec’s absurdist yet universal film placed him
in the ranks of the Czech avant-garde, and was selected for the 1968 New York Film
Festival, in defiance of political pressure at home.
This event is part of our series Red Renewal: Seattle’s Socialist Spring.
APRIL 30 AT 7PM
High Rise
Co-presented with ARCADE and Charles Mudede
(Gabriel Mascaro, Brazil, 2009, 66 min)
“What you are doing is great! People only ever want to do documentaries about misery
and killings.”
In High-Rise (Um Lugar ao Sol), nine penthouse residents in three of Brazil's largest
cities (Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo and Recife) divulge what it's like to live at the top.
Through revealing interviews with the residents, in the comfort of their high-rise lofts,
director Gabriel Mascaro exposes a world of wealth gone wild.
The penthouse residents share sentiments that range from elitist to oblivious to bizarre:
removed from reality by hundreds of feet of glass and steel, one woman remarks that
the favela shanties below look like "little dollhouses." Another laughs, "We can talk to
God more easily up here."
A contemplation of the neo-liberalization of space emerges from the (almost absurdly)
humorous dis-junction between the decadent lifestyles on display, and the tumult of
poverty and daily struggle below. High Rise ruminates on the role that architecture plays
in the socioeconomic as well as physical scaffolding of human relations, as the social
stratification of vast urban centers is crystallized through striking images of an upper
class perched quite literally above the rest of the world.
Charles Mudede is guest editor of ARCADE’s Spring 2014 issue After Growth:
Rethinking the Narrative of Modernization. After the screening, he will lead a
conversation connecting the themes of the film and the ARCADE issue.
This event is part of our series Red Renewal: Seattle’s Socialist Spring.
MAY 1 AT 7PM
May Day at the Film Forum
For International Workers' Day, we wrap up Red Renewal and kick off May Works, a
month-long celebration of workers in Seattle, with a performance by the Seattle Labor
Chorus, accompanied by worker films, a final community discussion and a proper May
Day party.
The Seattle Labor Chorus was formed in March,1997 for a performance at the
Northwest Folklife Festival with Pete Seeger. Since then, the chorus has performed for
the King County Labor Council, Washington State Labor Council, and many local unions,
as well as in concert with folk musician Charlie King.
Recent performances include the 50th anniversary conference of the International
Confederation of Free Trade Unions, the AFL-CIO rally to protest the World Trade
Organization and the Western Workers Heritage Festival. Directed by Janet Stecher, an
experienced vocal performer and recording artist (in the duo Rebel Voices), the chorus
is a nonprofit organization dedicated to economic and social justice, and the
fundamental right of all workers to organize as a means of securing a living wage.
This event is part of our series Red Renewal: Seattle’s Socialist Spring.
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APRIL 13
Seattle Autistic Film Festival
Co-presented with the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network
In honor of Autism Acceptance Month, we present the first annual Seattle Autistic Film
Festival, in collaboration with the Washington state chapter of the Autistic Self Advocacy
Network.
Selected by autistic activists and self-advocates to promote the message of
neurodiversity and autism acceptance, these films deconstruct the harmful “fear-andtragedy” driven narratives around autism that dominate national conversation, and
illustrate how an acceptance-based view of autism can counteract harmful messages
and improve the lives of autistic people, and those who love them.
The Autistic Self Advocacy Network is a national disability rights organization run by and
for autistic people. Please note this is a disability-friendly, sensory-friendly and
fragrance-free event. All films will be captioned to keep events accessible to those with
auditory processing difficulties or hearing loss. Lighting and sound levels will be
adjusted to keep events accessible to those with sensory sensitivities. Please do not
wear scented products to this event, to keep it accessible for those with sensory and
chemical sensitivities. If you arrive wearing scented products, you may be asked to
leave, for the safety of other attendees.
APRIL 13 AT 3PM
Wretches & Jabberers
Co-presented with the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network
(Gerardine Wurzburg, 2011, 90 min)
In Wretches & Jabberers, two men with autism embark on a global quest to change
attitudes about disability and intelligence. Determined to put a new face on autism,
Tracy Thresher, 42, and Larry Bissonnette, 52, travel to Sri Lanka, Japan and Finland.
At each stop, they dissect public attitudes about autism and issue a hopeful challenge to
reconsider competency and the future.
Part of the first annual Seattle Autistic Film Festival.
APRIL 13 AT 5PM
Citizen Autistic
Co-presented with the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network
(William Davenport, 2013, 52 min)
The history of civil rights in America has been marked by the hard-won progress of one
category after another of oppressed and marginalized citizens who stand up and
demand recognition, respect, and equal access to the benefits of modern society.
William Davenport's film Citizen Autistic brings us an inside look at the front lines of the
autistic civil rights movement, showcasing autistic activists and self-advocates on the
front lines of this struggle for inclusion, and freedom from persecution.
Featuring notable figures such as Ari Ne'eman, president of the Autistic Self Advocacy
Network, and Landon Bryce, of thAutcast.com, this documentary details what the
emerging neurodiversity movement is up against, from the torturous electroshock
"treatment" that takes place at the Judge Rotenberg Center in Massachusetts, to the
dehumanizing and alarmist marketing campaigns of fundraising juggernaut Autism
Speaks.
Promoting a philosophy of neurological variation as simply another aspect of human
diversity, these tireless activists embody the call of the disability rights movement:
"Nothing About Us, Without Us."
Part of the first annual Seattle Autistic Film Festival.
APRIL 13 AT 7PM
Loving Lampposts: Living Autistic
Co-presented with the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network
(Todd Drezner, 2010, Blu-Ray, 84 min)
As autism has exploded into the public consciousness over the last 20 years, two
opposing questions have been asked about the condition, fueling the debate: is it a
devastating sickness to be cured or is it a variation of the human brain – just a different
way to be human?
Loving Lampposts: Living Autistic takes a look at two movements: the “recovery
movement,” which views autism as a tragic epidemic brought on by environmental
toxins, and the “neurodiversity movement,” which argues that autism should be
accepted and that autistic people should be supported. After his son’s diagnosis,
filmmaker Todd Drezner visits the front lines of the autism wars to learn more about the
debate and provide information about a condition that is still difficult to comprehend.
Part of the first annual Seattle Autistic Film Festival.
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APRIL 18-26, FRIDAY – SATURDAY
Pulsos Latinos
Films from the frontier of Latin American cinema
Curated by Jay Kuehner
Explore a nueva ola in Latino cinema with us this April, as we mine the open veins of a
transcontinental film movement—both native and diasporic (Spanish, Portuguese, and
of course English-speaking) —filled with vibrant, insurgent film voices.
An industry boom in production and funding, combined with digital technologies and an
invigorated festival circuit (including FIC Valdivia in Chile, BAFICI in Argentina, Morelia
FF and FICUNAM in Mexico, to name a few) has transformed a once marginallyexposed cinema region into a contemporary center of film gravity
From lush Amazonia to the arid frontera, from cock-fighting comedy in Costa Rica to
slacker drama in Ecuador, from tragedy in the Andes to growing up punk in Jalisco:
there's a world waiting to be discovered. Come join us as we explore the new crystal
frontier. Please note specific screening dates and times for films in this series can be
found online.
Porcelain Horse (Mejor No Hablar de Ciertas Cosas)
(Javier Andrade, Ecuador, 2012, DCP, 100 min)
A corrosive and funny drama—by turns blackly sardonic and deeply tender—about two
brothers trying to grow up amid the torpor of drugs and the insulating comforts of class
privilege in Portoviejo, Ecuador.
Elder brother Paco (who dryly narrates from a point in the future) is an insouciant
slacker who lives at home with his parents and carries on an affair with his (married)
childhood sweetheart. His younger brother Luis is a punk with a short fuse, trying to
make it in a one-hit band. Both are compulsive users of freebase cocaine. Their scheme
to pawn the family's eponymous heirloom sets in motion an unforeseen tragedy, that
director Andrade skillfully wields as a cautionary tale, bitter satire, thriller and eulogy to
the living.
Part of our series Pulsos Latinos: Films from the frontier of Latin American cinema.
We Are Mari Pepa (Somos Mari Pepa)
(Samuel Kishi Leopo, Mexico, 2013, DCP, 95 min)
Breathing unexpected life into the naturally jaded (but hormone-riddled) body of male
youth/buddy/skate/band movies, Samuel Kishi Leopo's debut is utterly faithful to its
milieu of bored and confused teenagers hanging out and playing hooky on the outskirts
of Guadalajara: skating, trying to meet girls, and practicing for an upcoming battle of the
bands.
Hangdog band leader Alex, bent on writing new songs and finding work, is forced into
bittersweet maturation when neither his guitar (just stolen) nor a girl (just met) can carry
the weight of expectations from his ailing grandmother, with whom he lives in the
absence of parents. Ultimately, her repeated spinning of classic canciónes on vinyl
proves to be symbolic of an independent ethos all its own.
Part of our series Pulsos Latinos: Films from the frontier of Latin American cinema.
Jonathas’ Forest (A Floresta de Jonathas)
(Sergio Andrade, Brazil, 2012, DCP, 99 min)
A becalmed but ripe tale of family life in Amazonia is transformed into a haunting
rumination on man-in-nature, in this Brazilian take on tropical malady.
Dutiful Jonathas (”not Jonathan”) works for his father, harvesting fruits and vegetables
from the modest family jungle estate and selling their crops at a roadside stand
frequented by motoring tourists. His brother Juliano can't be bothered with the labor, as
the itinerant customers prove perfect foil for his exotic charms.
Banished from the home by a bitter, if jealous, father, Juliano embarks on a defiant
camping trip, with a curious Jonathas in tow. Jonathas' solo digression into seemingly
known territory becomes a fever-dream of, and wake-up call to, nature's bounty.
Part of our series Pulsos Latinos: Films from the frontier of Latin American cinema.
Summer of the Flying Fish (El verano de los peces voladores)
(Marcela Said, Chile/France, 2013, DCP, 87 min)
Marcela Said's first foray into scripted narrative filmmaking after a series of awardwinning documentaries focusing on Pinochet's regime sees her mining discreet (but no
less politically sensitive) material: indigenous versus inherited legacies in Chile.
The Mapuche Conflict is refracted through this film drama that pits a well-off white
landowner against his hired, native help. A patriarch attempts to vacation with his family
in a lakeside home, immune to a history of territorial claims and the escalation of
tension from ancestral neighbors who are surviving off the same land. This
impressionistic and lush drama derives subtle but considerable tension from a teenage
daughter's point of view, a character who becomes increasingly sympathetic to realities
beyond her bourgeois horizon.
Part of our series Pulsos Latinos: Films from the frontier of Latin American cinema.
All About the Feathers (Por las plumas)
(Neto Villalobos, Costa Rica, 2013, DCP, 85 min)
Getting an independent production off the ground in Costa Rica (where the film industry
pales in comparison with the sway of ecotourism) is about as likely as a lanky security
guard raising a prize-fighting rooster. Director Neto Villalobos nimbly charts the trials of
Chalo, who covets a local grocer's auspicious-seeming bird that, once possessed, is rechristened 'Rocky' and becomes something of a life partner to the loner who lives,
naturally, above a fried chicken joint.
Increasingly banished on account of his feathered friend, whom bosses and landlords
are less than hospitable to, a weary Chalo finds unexpected friends at the intersection
where dreaming meets displacement. Count on the neighborly maid (an avid Avon
saleswoman), and gun-toting workmate (teller of Bible stories) to fill out Chalo's
adoptive family: birds of a feather flock together in this original and winsome comedy.
Part of our series Pulsos Latinos: Films from the frontier of Latin American cinema.
Purgatorio: A Journey Into the Heart of the Border (Purgatorio: Un viaje el
corazón de la frontera)
(Rodrigo Reyes, Mexico/USA, 2012, DCP, 80 min)
La Frontera is both gate of heaven, and hell on earth. Show me a fifty-foot wall and I'll
show you a fifty-one foot ladder, the saying goes. And yet, the desert is strewn with
corpses, while debates about immigration continue to polarize discussion north of the
border.
Rodrigo Reyes' harrowing and lyrical documentary goes in search of stories along the
U.S.-Mexico border–from Tijuana to Juarez–to piece together a human portrait of
migration, xenophobia, corruption and salvation. The film moves through the stark
contrasts of this liminal space, juxtaposing Minutemen with Border Saints, overworked
coroners with drug lords, hope with abjection. Reyes has composed a mythic and
unsettling work that addresses the paradox posed by his emigrante subjects who are
determined to leave “a beautiful country.”
Part of our series Pulsos Latinos: Films from the frontier of Latin American cinema.
Waiting For Adventure
(Kimi Takesue, Peru/USA, 2013, PRO-RES, 47 min)
Exploring with rigorous formal composure the “strains, pleasures, and choreography” of
group tourism in Peru, documentary filmmaker Kimi Takesue has created a unique
ethnography of Andean culture: both its commodification for the exotic-seeking traveler,
and the sublime elements that effectively inspire pilgrimages of universal beauty.
Tension arises in the film's still tableaux, in which vast landscapes are dotted by
migratory patterns of curious, bored, and intrepid wanderers. A sense of gentle
circumspection, rather than cynicism, attends Takesue's radically observational mode of
filmmaking, a protracted gaze in which time and place assume precedence.
Part of our series Pulsos Latinos: Films from the frontier of Latin American cinema.
Los Posibiles
(Santiago Mitre, Juan Onofri Barbato, Argentina, 2013, DCP, 55 min)
The follow-up to Santiago Mitre's student political drama El Estudiante (featured in last
year's focus on Argentine films at Northwest Film Forum) comes as an unexpected
surprise: Los Posibles is a dance film, albeit as mysterious and propulsive as his first
narrative feature.
Made in collaboration with choreographer Juan Onofri Barbato and Grupo KM29, Los
Posibles is a cryptic and ultimately kinetic performance which enacts (and reconfigures)
rituals of codified masculinity, a street-wise West Side Story told through gesture and a
hammering drum-track belted out in the margins of an industrial 'stage.'
The title refers to acts of self-realization within and beyond the frame: this mesmerizing
dance group is the dedicated result of an at-risk youth program.
Part of our series Pulsos Latinos: Films from the frontier of Latin American cinema.
Walt Disney Square (Praça Walt Disney)
(Sergio Oliveira, Renata Pinheiro, Brazil, 2011, DCP, 21 min)
A quasi-musical short film that reflects on the commonplace, yet often unseen elements
of urban life in Recife. This miniature city-symphony is a collage that playfully reflects on
Brazilian culture and identity.
Part of our series Pulsos Latinos: Films from the frontier of Latin American cinema.
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MAY 17 AT 3PM, 7PM
MAY 18 AT 3PM
John Hubley Centennial
New 35mm prints!
(John and Faith Hubley, 35mm, 80 min)
American film animator John Hubley began his career working on classics like Bambi
and Fantasia at Disney. In the late ‘40s, Hubley created the character of Mr. Magoo; in
the ‘50s, he founded Storyboard Studios, where he worked on Sesame Street and
directed classic shorts like Moonbird. We present a program of newly restored 35mm
prints of some of the most beloved of John Hubley’s works, on the 100 th anniversary of
his birth.
PROGRAM
Adventures of an Asterisk (1956, 11 min)
A joyful, humanistic rumination on the value of art in modern life, set to an original score
by jazz legend Benny Carter.
Tender Game (1958, 6 min)
This visually resplendent reading of an age-old story, Boy meets Girl in Central Park,
draws deep emotion from its extraordinary musical score (Ella Fitzgerald and the Oscar
Peterson Trio performing "Tenderly"), along with unmistakable elements of selfportraiture.
Moonbird (1959, 10 min)
Against an enchanted nocturnal backdrop, two young brothers set out on an adventure
to recapture a lost pet bird.
The Hat (1964, 18 min)
By John and Faith Hubley
Built on the improvised collaboration—both verbal and musical—of actors Dizzy
Gillespie and Dudley Moore, this meditation on world history and the folly of war tells the
story of two soldiers patrolling a cold and forlorn border, deep in a nuclear winter.
Windy Day (1968, 9 min)
By John and Faith Hubley
Two young sisters share a languid summer day—playing, squabbling and parsing life,
love and mortality—all along the shoreline of looming adolescence.
Urbanissimo (1967, 6 min)
A charming parable about issues of urban design and global thinking, set to a playful
composition by longtime Hubley collaborator Benny Carter.
Of Men and Demons (1968, 9 min)
By John and Faith Hubley
A simple fisherman faces the challenges posed by climate and modernity, personified
by three resourceful demons, in this spirited and painterly fable. Music by Quincy Jones.
Eggs (1970, 10 min)
Mother Nature bickers with Death over control of humankind, before a fateful decision is
made. Music by Quincy Jones.
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MAY 30-JUNE 5
Godard Does Himself
Jean-Luc makes appearances in each of these three beloved classics of the French
new wave (most notably as the voice of Alpha 600 in Alphaville). Please note specific
screening dates and times for films in this series are FPO.
Alphaville
(Jean-Luc Godard, France, 1965, DCP, 99 min)
Ostensibly a sci-fi genre exercise about a nightmarish future, Alphaville is unmistakably
about Now. And Now isn’t a very pretty place in this nocturnal, intellectually rigorous,
bleak satire of the 60s at their exact mid-point. As always, Godard makes a virtue out of
his budgetary limitations, taking the aspects of contemporary Paris he finds dehumanizing and making “special effects” out of them (making the nightmare that much
more present and real).
Eddie Constantine is Lemmy Caution, a role he played many times in French pulp
fiction, but is, here, a parody of the hard-boiled hero. Anna Karina is the girl who
represents a chance for Lemmy to escape Alphaville; but the dominant presence is
Alpha 60, the computer that runs the city. Peppering the proceedings with poetic
musings about the State of Things, Alpha 60 is a rasping, gurgling Greek Chorus:
voiced by none other than Jean-Luc Godard himself.
Part of our series Godard Does Himself, screening through June 5.
La Petit Soldat
(Jean-Luc Godard, France, 1963, DCP, 88 min)
A tale of star-crossed lovers disconnected by ideology (He is a Right Wing terrorist, She
is a Left-Wing terrorist), La Petit Soldat is Godard’s first and best study of the strange
bedfellows of love and politics
Created on the heels of the International success of Breathless, Le Petit Soldat was
completed in 1960, but was barred release by censors until 1963 (its subject of the
Algerian War was strictly verboten in the French cinema of 1960). Soldat does not rank
very highly in the canon (amongst hardcore Godard-ians), but it holds up remarkably
well, due its pungent political content and Godard’s never-less-than-modern-seeming
alienation techniques, deployed in full force here.
Difficult to find on DVD in a serviceable format, this is a rare chance to see this essential
early work of the master on the big screen. With Godard muse Anna Karina in her first
movie role.
Part of our series Godard Does Himself, screening through June 5.
Contempt
(Jean-Luc Godard, France, 1963, 35mm, 102 min.)
Godard is on an almost 60 year exploration into the heart of cinema, and Contempt is
the standard bearer of films about filmmaking. At its heart it is a mystery, examining
why a wife (Brigitte Bardot) suddenly falls out of love with her husband (Michel Piccoli).
In Contempt, his first (and last) big-budgeted film, Godard took the money from Carlo
Ponti and Joseph Levine and delivered the goods (lush CinemaScope photography,
exotic locations and requisite Bardot cheesecake) and then some. In fact, to call it
simply a film about film or relationships is too facile: Contempt contains multitudes.
With Fritz Lang as the director of the film within the film (representing the argument for
cinema as art), and Jack Palance as the crass producer (representing cinema as
commerce). The remarkable final shot has Godard himself as the Director of
Photographer, turning the camera to the audience, as if to ask, “which side are you on?”
Part of our series Godard Does Himself, screening through June 5.
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