The 2013 Seattle International FIlm Festival came to a end yesterday with a closing-night-gala screening of Sofia Coppola's The Bling Ring at the Cinerama and an awards brunch at the top of the Space Needle.

Winners of the Golden Space Needle Audience Awards:

BEST FILM
Fanie Fourie's Lobola, directed by Henk Pretorius (South Africa, 2013)
First runner-up: The Rocket, directed by Kim Mordaunt (Australia, 2013)
Second runner-up: Monsters University, directed by Dan Scanlon (USA, 2013)
(I expect to see "Third Best Movie at the Seattle International Film Festival!" featured prominently on the Monsters University posters.)

BEST DOCUMENTARY
Twenty Feet from Stardom, directed by Morgan Neville (USA, 2013)
First runner-up: The Punk Singer, directed by Sini Anderson (USA, 2013)
Second runner-up: Harana, directed by Benito Bautista (Philippines, 2012)

BEST DIRECTOR
Nabil Ayouch, Horses of God, (Morocco, 2012)
First runner-up: David Ondříček, In the Shadow, (Czech Republic, 2012)
Second runner-up: Joss Whedon, Much Ado About Nothing, (USA, 2012)

BEST ACTOR
James Cromwell, Still Mine, (Canada, 2012)
First runner-up: Mads Mikkelsen, The Hunt, (Denmark, 2012)
Second runner-up: Terence Stamp, Unfinished Song (United Kingdom, 2012)

BEST ACTRESS
Samantha Morton, Decoding Annie Parker, (USA, 2013)
First runner-up: Onata Aprile, What Maisie Knew, (USA, 2012)
Second runner-up: Greta Gerwig, Frances Ha, (USA, 2012)

BEST SHORT FILM
Spooners, directed by Bryan Horch (USA, 2012)
First runner-up: My Right Eye (The Apple of My Eye), directed by Josecho de Linares (Spain, 2012)
Second runner-up: Malaria, directed by Edson Oda (Brazil, 2013)

And the winners of the special juried categories:

BEST NEW DIRECTOR
Harmony Lessons, directed by Emir Baigazin (2013, Kazakhstan)

BEST DOCUMENTARY
Our Nixon, directed by Penny Lane (2013, USA)

BEST NEW AMERICAN CINEMA
C.O.G., directed by Kyle Patrick Alvarez (USA, 2013)

Congratulations to all of SIFF 2013's winners and survivors! SIFF 2014 starts in ten minutes.

Recommendations for the pre-penultimate day:

As yet unseen but of interest:

Full SIFF guide here.

Based on a true story, Decoding Annie Parker follows Annie Parker (played by Samantha Morton), a cancer survivor seeking to understand why the women in her family keep getting breast cancer, and Dr. Mary-Claire King (played by Helen Hunt), a geneticist whose years of work led to the discovery of the BRCA genes that are now known to indicate an increased risk of breast and ovarian cancer. The cast also includes Aaron Paul, Rashida Jones, Richard Schiff, and Maggie Grace. Looks to be very interesting!

Here is a recent article about the movie from the Seattle Times.

Decoding Annie Parker plays Thurs June 6 at 7 pm at the Egyptian and Sat June 8 at 1:30 pm at the Egyptian. The screenings will benefit the King Lab at the University of Washington, which studies breast and ovarian cancer, and tickets are $25. Annie Parker, Dr. Mary-Claire King, and director Steven Bernstein will be in attendance.

The TBA films are being filled in, and a new addition to the SIFF lineup is Lil Bub & Friendz, about a very special cat with unique characteristics. Lil Bub is tiny, and she has extra toes (22 toes total!), stubby legs, and no teeth, but lots of charm. She has a giant fan base and her own YouTube channel. All hail Lil Bub!

Lil Bub & Friendz plays Sat June 8 at 9 pm at SIFF Cinema Uptown.

Apparently I'm in a SIFF movie tomorrow night, and Joel Connelly notes my attire:

“Evergreen: The Road to Legalization in Washington,” is an 86-minute documentary on how our voters finally decided it was time to exercise a modest use of intelligence...

“Evergreen” features a dour journalist — Jonathan Martin of The Seattle Times — who hedges his prediction on whether I-502 would win. (It swept to victory with 55.7 percent of the vote.) Steve Sher, interviewing on KUOW Radio, asks questions that could not penetrate a sheet of tissue paper.

In contrast, there are the original, revealing, amusing observations from Dominic Holden, news editor at The Stranger and a former Hempfest boss, on how ex-lawmen and civic pillars became advocates for marijuana legalization. (Friends of Holden will note his inevitable attire, a much-worn World Wildlife Fund T-shirt with a faded panda.)

I really gotta chuck that old thing. Showtimes are here.

IT AIN'T OVER YET.

Full guide here!

More, more, more...

And tonight at the Egyptian, SIFF presents the U.S. premiere of the documentary Alice Walker: Beauty in Truth, an event which will be attended by Ms. Walker herself and is appropriately hyped in Stranger Suggests.

Full SIFF guide here!

Part of a group of bohemian poets, philosophers, and dancers who made radical art, James Broughton was a poet, a pioneer of queer filmmaking, a teacher, and a free-spirited man who had a dynamic and amazing life, and who knew some of the most interesting people in the San Francisco art scene from the 1950s onward. His avant-garde films included dance, nudity, poetry, love, and all modes of sexuality. Big Joy includes excerpts from his poetry and films, documentation of him throughout his life, and interviews with people who knew him. His personal life was adventurous and complicated, and he made the most of everything the world had to offer. A friend said of Broughton: “He was forever liberating people.”

Big Joy plays Fri May 31 at 6 pm at SIFF Cinema Uptown and Sat June 1 at 1:30 pm at Pacific Place.

This week’s Short Film Friday will not, again, be a short film but instead a promotion video for the local film actor Paul Eenhoorn. Why am I doing such a thing? Because SIFF is what’s really happening right now. And what does Eenhoorn have to do with SIFF? He is the star of Chad Hartigan’s This Is Martin Bonner, a film that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2013 and won the Audience Award for Best of NEXT. The star will make an appearance today, May 31, at SIFF's screening of Bonner.