Rolling into the closing weekend of SIFF, we've still got both screenings of Police Beat to look forward to, both screenings of the Death Cab for Cutie documentary Drive Well, Sleep Carefully, and the Hoop Dreams-styled documentary about the Roosevelt High School basketball team, The Heart of the Game.
The event I really want to plug, though, is the second screening of the Fly Filmmaking Challenge on Friday, June 10, at 2:00 p.m. Part of the reason is I'm proud of the work that Amy Lillard Dee, Jennifer Roth, and I put into producing the program. I'm even more proud of the work of the four Fly Filmmaking teams (as led by Andy McAllister, Thom Harp, T. J. Martin, and Sue Corcoran). Despite time and equipment limitations (but with the generous support of our city's best film and video vendors), they pulled together four distinct and excellent short films; everything from the story of a man who falls in love with a copy machine to a big-ass circus extravaganza (where God is Richard Sanders, the guy who played Les Nessman on WKRP in Cincinnati). Tickets are still available, so come see what our city's filmmakers are capable of.
On Friday night, June 10, from 7:00 p.m. to midnight, a new group called Cascadia Film Collective is throwing a party in their new Capitol Hill studio/warehouse space (1410 14th Ave, next to Piecora's Pizza). They're renting the space to build sets for their upcoming feature film Cthulhu, a gothic, apocalyptic, anti-Bush gay horror film. Apparently they've got more space than they need, and are willing to entertain offers from other filmmakers who may be able to use the location. Filmmakers and film fans are encouraged to stop by and take a look at what they're getting going.
Speaking of filmmakers' events, at 10:00 a.m. on Saturday morning, June 11, at the downtown Hyatt, SIFF is putting on its second annual Seattle Summit, where industry insiders sit down and talk about insider-y stuff. The jumping off point this year deals with being independent in such a corporate industry, and judging from last year's event, it's a good way to get the lay of the national filmmaking landscape from a panel of bigwig experts.
On Saturday evening, June 11, you can catch a true independent spirit at the Northwest Film Forum when they screen "Chaotic Visions: Films by Martha Colburn." This one-night-only event welcomes back Ms. Colburn for the northwest premiere of her new short Cosmetic Emergency, which is coming straight from Cannes. She is a self-taught filmmaker who has taken her Super 8 and 16 mm animations from the underground festival circuit to Sundance, Rotterdam, and now Cannes. Impressive. And her stuff is really fun to watch, too. The next day, on Sunday, you can sign up for a workshop where Colburn will teach you her techniques and conceptual processes, and lead you to find your own personal signature and vision.
On Monday, June 13, fans of the HBO series Deadwood will want to see what Robert and Winda Benedetti have come up with when TheWarrenReport presents a script reading of Sundown at On the Boards at 7:00 p.m. Set in the town of Prosperity after the gold rush has passed, this R-rated script promises a badass sheriff, a sumbitch prisoner, and a whole lot of ugly. As they say in their press release, "In Prosperity your odds of living are in the hands of those who ain't quite yet done dying."
