For the next three weeks, Short Film Fridays will feature work by directors who are participating in the current Seattle International Film Festival. The first film in this series is a music video made in 1994 by the Seattle-based director Josh Taft. The music video is for one of the most important tracks in the history of hiphop, Nas’s “The World Is Yours.” The world premiere of Josh Taft’s first feature, Alive and Well, a documentary about people dealing with Huntington’s disease, happens at SIFF Cinema Uptown on May 22nd (7:00 pm).

Charles Mudede—who writes about film, books, music, and his life in Rhodesia, Zimbabwe, the USA, and the UK for The Stranger—was born near a steel plant in Kwe Kwe, Zimbabwe. He has no memory...