Keeping It Local
Who dares go up against SIFF? This is a tough time of year for our city’s independent cinema venues, those places that pride themselves on bringing in motion pictures that otherwise wouldn’t show here. Some are dedicated cinema screens, others the backrooms of bars, but they have all been working at developing audiences for movies outside the studio distribution system. Of course, the Seattle International Film Festival has been doing that for the last 29 years, and it shows. The Satellites: Screens From Outer Spaces festival started as a Slamdance-like alternative to SIFF, emphasizing local venues. But even they shifted away from the onslaught of the 24-day festival, which made sense because they are promoting year-round organizations instead of a once-a-year event.
Smaller venues have employed different strategies during the festival, from counterprogramming to going dark. Last year, the Little Theatre had good success showing Dracula: Pages from a Virgin’s Diary, a SIFF-worthy film that somehow didn’t make it into the lineup. Nobody has the same option this year, at least in terms of showing Guy Maddin movies, because the festival is showing Maddin’s latest two: the crowd-pleasing Isabella Rossellini starrer The Saddest Music in the World (Fri May 21 and Sun May 23) and Cowards Bend the Knee (Sat May 22 and Sun May 23), an allegedly autobiographical piece of work that some are calling his best film yet. In terms of presenting festival-type art films during SIFF, the Grand Illusion is bringing back Matthew Barney’s five-film Cremaster cycle for those who missed one or all of them, or those of us who’d be curious to see them again. Unavailable on video, these movies bridge the art vs. film divide and come close to being must-sees.
Meanwhile, SIFF has done a great thing in pulling local films out of the Spawned in Seattle ghetto and plopping them into the Contemporary World Cinema section where they belong. Things start off with a musical bang with Ondi Timoner’s award-winning Sundance documentary DIG! (Sat May 22), an incredibly entertaining warts-and-all look at the creative rivalry between Portland’s Dandy Warhols and the Brian Jonestown Massacre. There may still be time to get tickets for two more movies that are essentially local, seeing as they were shot around here and employed lots of local crew members. Both Dandelion and Evergreen also premiered at Sundance, and both of them get their Seattle premieres on Thursday, May 27.
Of course, there are a couple more things happening in town outside of festival programming and counterprogramming. On Friday, May 21, 911 Media Arts is hosting an Animators’ Social Puppet Party, where you can meet animators, bring in your own puppet movies, and watch classic Starevitch shorts along with Peter Jackson’s Meet the Feebles. Over the weekend at the Seattle Art Museum, there will be a Stop-Action Puppet Animation Workshop on Saturday, with a special screening of amazing work that very night.