Film Fests Galore
If you've been feening for a film festival since SIFF ended, and you didn't make it to Toronto, New York, or Vancouver, you can catch a movie at one of the upcoming area fests.
First off, the new and improved Northwest Film Forum is hosting the 8th Annual Local Sightings Film Festival, which opens tonight and runs through next Wednesday, the 12th.
With Local Sightings, Northwest Film Forum opens its cinemas every year to showcase the best in recent local films. This year we are delighted to be presenting some unique movie-going experiences. Among the collections of experimental, narrative, and documentary films are Vancouver artist Alex MacKenzie's dual projector performance Parallax, a retrospective of Seattle artist Bob Hutchinson's animated films, and a mind-bending and ear-splitting performance by Northwest musicians as they accompany experimental films in Eyes and Ears Explosion.
When you witness the spectacle that is northwest filmmaking you learn about some of the original stories that can only come from these mountainous, rainy lands. Expand your consciousness with a town that hosts an annual outhouse race! Freak out as you watch a mild-mannered computer programmer cast away his mortal coil with an online fetish! Go bug-eyed as you watch a man trek from Seattle to LA on foot to meet Werner Herzog! It's all here in this diorama of virtue and depravity that we call the cinema!
Peruse the film catalogue here, and buy tickets here ($8, $5 NWFF members). Even better, all screenings at 7pm, 7:30pm, or 7:45pm are FREE---though you still have to reserve a seat. Looks like a lot of these screenings are already full, so if you're interested in getting into a film for free, get on that and reserve a seat posthaste. For tonight's kick-off event, not only is the film (Shep Salusky's The Greenan Tapes) free, but there's an after-party, complete with free drinks and free membership give-aways. So if you can't get into the film, you can always drop by the NWFF for the party and free stuff starting around 8:30pm. Hey, did we mention the free?
If you're looking for a film-related day trip, this weekend is also the Ellensburg Film Festival, self-described as "three days of the finest in new and classic films, hosted in historic downtown Ellensburg, Washington." They're showing a total of 53 films which run the gamut from indie flicks to foreign films to documentaries and shorts. A few movies of note include Cinema Paridiso, High Noon, McLibel, End of the Century: The Story of the Ramones, and Koyaanisqatsi, not to mention that they'll be featuring the work of a whole bunch of Central Washington filmmakers. Tickets are only $6 per film. Big PDF file with all the details here.
Looking ahead, next Friday is the beginning of the 10th Annual Seattle Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. We're sure it'll be fabulous.
