Here Comes Summer
The first thing out of the gate this week is a Seattle International Film Festival screening of local filmmaker Garrett Bennett's new feature, A Relative Thing (Thurs June 3, 4:45 pm, Egyptian). Bennett won a special jury prize at SIFF for his last feature, Farewell to Harry, and this new one looks to be a Northwest take on The Celebration, with a family reuniting and dysfunction running rampant. On that same day, over at the Seattle Art Museum, there's a free "first Thursday" screening of Chavez Ravine: A Los Angeles Story (Thurs June 3, 7:30 pm), a short film based on a series of photos of the Mexican-American neighborhood that was demolished to make room for Dodger Stadium.
A Relative Thing is not the only local film playing in the film festival this week. Busting Out (Sat June 5, 9:15 pm, Broadway Performance Hall, AKA BPH) is a documentary about breasts (did you know that not every culture eroticizes breasts? Foreigners are funny...). Up Thornton Creek (Sat June 5, 1 pm, BPH; Sun June 6, 6:15 pm, BPH) is another documentary, this one about a development company that promises not to screw up a salmon run before it screws up a salmon run. The short film packages have been strong and popular at SIFF this year, and two upcoming ones contain shorts by local filmmakers. Serge Gregory's beautiful black-and-white ode to waterways and cityscapes, Foster Island, screens in "The Great Unspoken" (Sat June 5, 4 pm, BPH), while David Donar's ode to drunken clowns, Pulcinello, screens in "ANIMATO!" (Mon June 7, 6:45 pm, BPH).
Filmmaker and cine-essayist Mark Rappaport made a splash a couple of years ago with Rock Hudson's Home Movies and From the Journals of Jean Seberg, two movies that explored the pressure of fame on two movie icons. As a filmmaker, he's been far too quiet, which makes it particularly nice that Consolidated Works is bringing back Rock Hudson's Home Movies, and is teaming it up with the Seattle premiere of Exterior Night (Fri-Sun June 4-6, 8 pm). The former has an actor playing Hudson talking about the gay subtext of his movies in front of clips of his films, and in a similar gambit, Exterior Night plays out a story of family roots literally against the backdrops of film noir-era films. The story isn't as strong as the style, and the idea of the piece works better than the execution, but it's still nice to see more work from Rappaport.
There are other screenings happening around town, ranging from socially conscious left-wing movies to socially bankrupt rock 'n' roll detritus (check out Film Shorts for more details), but I'm perhaps most excited for the return of Summer Movie Madness at Linda's. The series marks the official beginning of summer for a lot of us, and there's no better way to celebrate the season than sitting on the back patio watching movies like Gappa, the Triphibian Monster (Wed June 9, dusk) with beer after beer after beer. Nothing goes together quite as well as giant monsters and alcohol. Nothing.
