Friday was also the conclusion of the Local Sightings festival at the Northwest Film Forum, and more money was given away. Judges for the Altoids-sponsored friendly film competition included Marcus Hu (co-president of Strand Releasing), Jeff Hill (longtime publicist for a ton of notable indie films), and Amy Talkington (award-winning short-filmmaker). They were in charge of giving $2,500 to a short-filmmaker and awarding a feature filmmaker $1,000 and a guarantee of a weeklong run at the Northwest Film Forum. Like the Genius Awards, this is another instance where a corporate sponsor is giving money directly to artists. That is a very good and generous thing, indeed. So congratulations to Danielle Morgan for her short film "Les Nanas," described as a day in the life of three doll-like women, and congratulations to Patrick Shen and Greg Bennick for Flight from Death, a feature-length documentary about how the fear of death affects society.
This Local Sightings festival follows a program called Early Circuits: Pioneers of Electronic Music, which followed the Up Close and Personal Festival of Independent Documentary. Since they opened their new space, it's been rare for a film to play at the Northwest Film Forum for three days or more. When they were running the Grand Illusion and the Little Theatre, the Grand Illusion played weeklong runs of new and classic films while the Little Theatre played more adventurous and varied programs. Lucky for us, the new management of the Grand Illusion is continuing in that grand tradition of showing great new films with classic oldies, with crazy late-nights continuing on too.
Meanwhile, the Northwest Film Forum seems to be trying to pack a whole summer's worth of programming into their calendar. Executive Director Michael Seiwerath assures me that things will have a more balanced pace on the next calendar, and I know I'm not the only one in town looking forward to their upcoming and extensive Ozu retrospective. Looking to this week, though, I do want to plug their next wacky series, Lost & Found: Media Archeology, which includes a program of rare and important films by Joseph Cornell (Fri-Sat, Oct 22-23), among other exciting things.
Elsewhere around town, on Tuesday the 26th, the UW's Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media will be hosting Exploding Essays: Things Fall Together, a collection of cutting-edge experimental video from around the world. This will take place at Meany Hall, and will be hosted by Steven Seid of Berkeley's Pacific Film Archive.
