Call and Response
Last week I put out a call to local filmmakers to tell me what they're up to. Jeremy Mackie wrote to tell me he's having another screening of his feature film Unsung at the Henry Art Gallery on Sunday, August 1, at 3:00 p.m. The June premiere sold out, and they want to give people another early chance to see it before they launch it into the festival circuit. The story of a "successful" karaoke-video producer, it features the music of lots of local bands like Carissa's Wierd, Climax Golden Twins, Kinski, the Long Winters, and more.
Speaking of producers, I've been producing a short film about a chef with a short fuse having a bad day. It's called Combustible Chef, and we shot for two nights in the restaurant Tango (whose wonderful staff is as generous as their food is good). Now we're on to editing. The reason I mention it is because the writer-director Per Anderson is making the film to support this new film-scheduling software he is developing, which you can check out at www.sunfrog-tech.com (not for Mac yet, though). It's nice to see Seattle going up against Hollywood not just with film production but with the tools of film production.
People looking for places to submit their films have a couple of local options. Ballard is putting out a call for entries for their ArtsBallard Film Feast (yes, "feast" not "fest"). Their deadline is August 11, and you can find out more at www.artsballard.org/filmfeast. Northwest Projections is putting out a call for entries for their festival of Northwest Filmmakers, sponsored by Comcast. The deadline is September 7, and the festival is November 4-7, but I have no idea where. In their quest to keep you from using copyrighted music, they will even put you in touch with musicians for your piece, and that alone is worth the $10 entry fee.
I want to give a quick mention of a few good shows this week. For the last 13 years, the Seattle Art Museum has been celebrating the work of Missoula-born and Pacific Northwest-raised director David Lynch. More specifically, they've been celebrating his surreal TV show, Twin Peaks. On Saturday, July 31, SAM will show Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, and it's sure to be supplemented with film clips, short films, and whatever guests they can bring up who were involved in the production.
Silent Movie Mondays return to the Paramount with a Rudolph Valentino series, starting with The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921). In it, Valentino plays a Lothario who has an affair with a lawyer's wife in pre-WWI France before the titular horsemen put the scare in him. On Wednesday, August 4, the Rendezvous is showing Murder in the Red Barn (1935), based on the scandalous and true 19th-century murder of a young and trusting maiden who is knocked up and eventually killed by a charming but evil landowner.
