SEPTEMBER 23 – 24, TUESDAY AT 7:15PM, WEDNESDAY AT 9:15PM
SPECIAL GUEST!
NEW 35MM PRINT!
Miloš Forman's Formative Films
Loves Of A Blonde
(Miloš Forman, Czechoslovakia, 1965, 35mm, 88 min)
Forman’s breakthrough film, a commentary on the perils of totalitarianism, follows the everyday life and sexual fumbles of a naive teenage girl in a dreary town. A cornerstone of the Czech New Wave, the film grapples with the realities of injustice and disillusionment, yet its international popularity was due in part to the optimism and tenderness of its outlook.
Gordana P. Crnkovic, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature
and Slavic Languages and Literature will introduce the 7:15pm screning
of LOVES OF A BLONDE on September 23.
SEPTEMBER 25, THURSDAY AT 8PM
You’re Lookin’ at Country
Sponsored by KBCS 91.3 FM
Vintage performance footage from the "Golden Era of Country Music" and a live performance by singer/songwriter and Sirius Radio “Outlaw Country” DJ Dallas Wayne
Join us for a rollicking second edition of You’re Lookin’ at Country, featuring rarely seen footage of country music giants in their heyday, narrated by Texas troubadour and celebrated Sirius Radio “Outlaw Country” DJ, Dallas Wayne. Wayne will transport you to a bygone era filled with big hair, Nudie suits, jamborees, and cheerful songs about alcoholism, despair, family feuds, murder, and couples in trouble. This program will feature such greats as Hank, George, Porter, Johnny, Willie, Buck, and Loretta, singing a blissful mix of high lonesome and down dirty. The film presentation will be followed by a short live performance by Wayne, whose songs will not only take you back to the glory days of country music, but also give you hope for its future. Refreshments available.
Tickets $10/NWFF members, $12/general
“Wayne has one of the best honky–tonk voices in America today... If Nashville still valued grit and twang this guy would be a major star.” –Radney Foster, www.purespunk.com
“Missouri–born Dallas Wayne is to hardcore honky–tonk what 100 proof corn whisky is to hard liquor. Wayne’s sterling originals shine with exquisit hillbilly wit and poetry.” Bob Allen, sonicnet.com
OCTOBER 3 – 9
Local Sightings
Local Sightings is a film festival for the Northwest.
Northwest Film Forum’s premiere showcase of Northwest filmmaking is back, bigger than ever. The festival, which happens at NWFF’s theaters in Seattle, features great prizes, filmmaker parties, archival Northwest films and an impressive national film industry jury looking for strong Northwest work.
The annual festival includes both feature film presentations as well as short film programs and special events with live film performances, installation art, audience participation and parties. This year’s festival takes place in the cinemas of Northwest Film Forum from October 3–8. The line up of films will be announced and posted on the website on September 20. Included in this year’s festival will be the usual assortment of fiction, documentary and experimental films as well as a featured presentation of a historical Seattle film, a staged reading of this year’s Washington State Screenplay Competition winning script, and an opening party that will ignite Seattle’s film scene Friday night and keep it bleary eyed Saturday morning.
OCTOBER 10 – 16, FRIDAY – THURSDAY AT 7, 9PM (PLUS SATURDAY & SUNDAY AT 5PM)
NORTHWEST FILM FORUM AND LONGHOUSE MEDIA PRESENT
The Exiles
(Kent Mackenzie, USA, 1961, 35mm, 72 min)
New 35mm print!
Opening Night Reception
Sherman Alexie will Tuesday's screening
SPONSORED BY RANDY LEWIS AND NATIVE VOICES
After years of researching in the Native American community in Los Angeles, Kent Mackenzie began working with his protagonists on The Exiles in 1957. The film, which was completed three years later, is one of the first – and still very few – films about young Indians in the big city. For his empathetic observations, Mackenzie found poetic forms far from any kind of romanticizing. His graphic sense for nocturnal Los Angeles, the use of interviews with the actors as the inner monologues of the protagonists, and the soundtrack of the rock ’n’ roll band “The Revels” from radios and jukeboxes make The Exiles a masterpiece of great beauty and integrity. Its restoration closes another gap in the history of independent cinema.
OCTOBER 10 – 16, FRIDAY – THURSDAY AT 7:15, 9:15PM (PLUS SATURDAY & SUNDAY AT 5:15PM)
DIRECTOR Q&A AND RECEPTION OPENING NIGHT!
Secrecy
Sponsored by KBCS 91.3 FM and ACLU WASHINGTON
(Peter Galison, Robb Moss, USA, 2007, digiBETA, 85 min)
In today’s wired world most of us enjoy the luxury of free flowing information 24 hours a day. So why does the United States government spend more time and money than ever before making sure we don’t have access to certain information? The seduction and power of secrecy is at the core of this provocative documentary from Robb Moss and Peter Galison. Are secrets necessary for our national security? Is an informed American public the best way to fight terrorism? Where does the line exist between public safety and civil liberties? If secrets are necessary, who gets to know? The film focuses on journalists, lawyers and government officials who have spent their careers debating these important questions. From World War II and the creation of the atom bomb through September 11 and recent abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, we see the role information management has played in some of this country’s biggest triumphs and tragedies. Moss and Galison combine credible talking head interviews and real–world footage with stylized animation, and expressive music to create a layered, thought provoking narrative.
The ACLU of Washington will host a reception before the Friday 7:15 show on October 10 with director Rob Moss.
NOV 13, THURSDAY AT 8PM
NORTHWEST FILM FORUM AND THIRD EYE CINEMA PRESENT
Punto y Raya (Dot and Line)
SPECIAL GUESTS
(Various directors and countries, 2002–2007, 65 min)
Buenos Aires–based artist and organizer with MAD (Moviment d’Alliberament Digital) Nöel Palazzo introduces an engaging selection of contemporary experimental animated films in which artists from England, Spain, Germany, Japan, the United States and Canada explore graphics, abstraction and synesthesia. Culled from the most recent Punto Y Raya Festival, a collaboration of Mad–Actions and the iota Center, this special program surveys the currents of “visual music” with films by Chris Casady, Joaquin Gil, Danielle Ye, Laurie Gibbs, Tom Jobbins, Bret Battey and many others.
NOVEMBER 14 , FRIDAY AT 8PM
FESTIVAL OF NEW CINEMA FROM SPAIN
Under the Stars
(Félix Viscarret, Spain, 2007, 35mm, 107min)
Director In Attendance!
Opening Night Reception!
Director of several internationally acclaimed short films, Félix Viscarret easily makes the transition to features with this offbeat, delicately observed tale that swept the major prizes at this year’s Spanish national film festival in Malaga. Benito Lacunza (Alberto San Juan) is a mediocre trumpet player eking out a living when he gets word that his father has died. Back home, he reconnects with his brother Lalo, a sculptor and former alcoholic who has struggled to get straight. Lalo is planning to marry Nines, which Benito is against — until he meets Nines’ daughter Ainara (Violeta Rodriguez), an introverted child with whom Benito creates a most unusual friendship. Viscarret elegantly captures the feeling of small-town life, with its suspicions, jealousies and sense that everyone knows everybody else’s business. San Juan is excellent as Benito: just the right combination of big-city snobbery and barely concealed vulnerability. In her first major role, Rodriguez is a revelation.
NOVEMBER 16 – 17, SUNDAY AT 7PM, MONDAY AT 9:15PM
FESTIVAL OF NEW CINEMA FROM SPAIN
In The City of Sylvia
(José Luis Guerin, Spain, 2007, 35mm, 90 min)
Director Expected To Attend!
José Luis Guerín nimbly brings moviemaking and moviegoing back to some of their lovely early pleasures in his masterful In the City of Sylvia. He is so successful at modernizing and rarefing these elements that it forces one to reconsider the dialogue and special effects in other films as clutter. In the City of Sylvia is an everyday, yet sublime, vision, one so exquisite you’d think that everything Guerín looks at—the city of Strasbourg, its flaneurs and shops, even the sun that shines on it-was created for the loving gaze of his camera. The story also evokes the most blessed moments of a New Wave work like Agnès Varda’s Cleo from 5 to 7. During a few languid summer days, a young foreigner spends his afternoons sketching in an outdoor café. He is looking for a woman named Sylvia who he’d met years before in the same city. He is also sketching the many attractive young women he sees everywhere, any one of whom could be her. Then one afternoon, thinking he’s actually seen her, he sets off through the city to confront his memory. Guerín’s graceful work eloquently captures the feeling of being in love with love, and the youthful sense of a world filled with an almost limitless sensuality.
