Viva La Revolution
There is a place in town that has consistently played good and innovative film programming, but which I had restrained myself in talking about because I worked there. That place is Consolidated Works. Now that I no longer program there, I can wax enthusiastic about every good show they have coming up. I will start with Robert Fenz’s Meditations on Revolution I-V, playing on Thursday, May 6, at 8 pm. You may not recognize his name, but other very impressive people do, as evidenced by his 2004 Guggenheim Fellowship and the major museums that have hosted his shows.
Seattle is lucky because Fenz himself will be in town to present his acclaimed series of films. Photographers and film lovers alike should make it a point to see this show, because Fenz has a photographer’s eye when it comes to composition and the images he captures are absolutely gorgeous. The first meditation starts in Cuba, where the architecture and old cars give a sense of dislocation in time, and over the course of the remaining films he moves from Rio de Janeiro to Mexico City to New York to Greenville, Mississippi. He looks at the streets, architecture, and the disenfranchised, especially children, with an obvious warmth.
Apparently, May is Asian Pacific Heritage Month, and there’s plenty of ways you can celebrate. Over at the Seattle University Fine Arts Building (Broadway Ave and Madison St) you can see the Aono Jikken Ensemble perform a live original score to the 1926 avant-garde classic A Page of Madness (Fri-Sat May 7-8 at 7:30 pm). The movie is about an old man trying to make things right with his insane wife and estranged daughter, and the band is a Seattle-based music and performance group who combine traditional Asian and Western instruments with found objects, children’s toys, and “specially crafted sound devices” made of metal, bamboo, kelp, and other materials.
Another screening you may want to check out is Refugee at the Theatre Off Jackson (409 Seventh Ave S, 340-1445) on Saturday at 7:00 p.m. A documentary by Emmy Award-winning director Spencer Nakasako, Refugee follows (co-editor) Mike Siv and two friends who grew up on the streets of San Francisco’s Tenderloin District as they take their first trip to Cambodia to visit family and have fun, and whose lives “will never be the same.” The press release doesn’t say how they change, so you’ll have to see the movie if you want to know if it’s a good or bad thing. Mike Siv will attend.
Two more things I want to quickly mention. The Grand Illusion is having a free screening, for members, of The American Astronaut, the highly entertaining musical space Western, on Thursday, May 6. You can become a member on the spot, or come back during its two-week run. 911 Media Arts Center is showing the Slamdance doc Bruce Haak: The King of Techno on Friday, May 7. An innovator in electronic music, Bruce Haak made children’s albums and inspired the likes of Beck, the Beastie Boys, and others.