Watch a Film, Buy a Car
First there was the Honda Fit concert series, and then the Yaris Works. And now, the next chapter in Cheap Japanese Car-Sponsored Hipster Activity/Youth-Focused Advertising Campaign is the Scion Route Independent Film Series. It's taking place in only six cities, so Seattle's in good company with Atlanta, Austin, L.A., Minneapolis, and New York. Looks like the guys in marketing think we're cool.
This time, the targeted advertising is in the form of one Scion-sponsored exxxxtreme documentary a month for the next four months. All film screenings are at the Harvard Exit, and the first one, Infamy, is tomorrow night. It's free, but you gotta be 21. RSVP with Scion; it's first come, first served.
All four films, with brief descriptions:
Infamy - An intense journey into the dangerous lives and obsessed minds of six of America’s most prolific street artists.
August 29 @ 8pmFavela Rising - Anderson Sá is a former drug-trafficker who turns social revolutionary in Rio de Janeiro’s most feared slum. Through music, he rallies his community to counteract the violence.
September 26 @ 7pmJust for Kicks - The first documentary film featuring the sneaker phenomena through interviews of world-renowned collectors, hip-hop pioneers, industry players, rap stars, journalists, brand marketers, and other sneaker addicts.
October 23 @ 7pmNext: A Primer on Urban Painting - A personal exploration of this painting world, it will publicize and give these important emerging and established artists their dues.
November 14 @ 8pm.
Seattlest will go, not because we're corporate shills (which we are), but because we like the cinema, and we really like the free. Well-played, Scion, well-played.
More elaborate film descriptions after the jump.
INFAMY - August 29th @ 8pm
Directed by Doug Pray, Infamy is an intense journey into the dangerous lives and obsessed minds of six of America's most prolific street artists. With brutal honesty, humor and charisma, these artists reveal why they are so willing to risk everything to spray paint their cities with "tags," "throwups," and full-color murals. The film had its world premiere in New York City as a part of RESfest before going on to play in over 35 cities around the world. It will be released as a DVD in summer of 2006. Infamy doesn't analyze or glorify Street Art... it takes you there and brings it to life. (Featuring street legends SABER, TOOMER, JASE, CLAW, EARSNOT, and ENEM.)FAVELA RISING - September 26th @ 7pm
This film documents a man and a movement, a city divided and a favela (Brazilian squatter settlement) united. Haunted by the murders of his family and many of his friends, Anderson Sá is a former drug-trafficker who turns social revolutionary in Rio de Janeiro's most feared slum. Through hip-hop music, the rhythms of the street, and Afro-Brazilian dance, he rallies his community to counteract the violent oppression enforced by teenage drug armies and sustained by corrupt police. At the dawn of liberation, just as collective mobility is overcoming all odds and Anderson's grassroots Afro Reggae movement is at the height of its success, a tragic accident threatens to silence the movement forever.JUST FOR KICKS - October 23rd @ 7pm
Just For Kicks is the first documentary film featuring an overview of the sneaker phenomena through interviews of world-renown collectors, hip-hop pioneers, industry players, rap stars, journalists, brand marketers and other sneaker addicts. In the film, shot in New York, Paris, London, Portland, and Los Angeles, insider personalities such as Bobbito Garcia, Rock Steady Crew's Doze Green, Grandmaster Caz & JDL (Cold Crush Brothers), Rev. Run, DMC & Russell Simmons, Scoop Jackson, Futura 2000, Fab 5 Freddy, Bonz Malone, Wu-Tang Clan's Raekwon, Damon Dash, and more share their passion and their perspectives on how and why sneakers have evolved into one of the key elements of style of the MTV generation.NEXT: A PRIMIER ON URBAN PAINTING - November 14th @ 8pm
This feature-length documentary film is a personal exploration of this painting world. It will publicize and give these important emerging and established artists their due. The trailblazers like Lee Quiñones and Doze Green are given their proper treatment within contemporary art history. It also profiles the next generation of artists that are beginning to make their mark. The movement is explored and defined including its connection to late 20th century and early 21st century societies in nine countries including USA, Canada, France, Holland, Germany, England, Spain, Japan, and Brazil. A combination of vérité moments and interviews with painters, "writers," designers, documentarians, and other participants within the subculture, Next conveys the dynamism and creative energy of this significant emerging artistic movement.
