Calvin Reeder
Filmmaker Calvin Reeder splits his time between Seattle and Los
Angeles, making seedy, hilarious splatter films for the Georgetown set.
From his 2003 film Jerkbeast, he’s gone on to make three short
films, each besting the last in visual sophistication, comedic timing,
and gross-out depravity. His last two films, the incest freak show
Little Farm and the vomit porn The Rambler, both made it
into Sundance—a feat accomplished by only one other Seattle-based
filmmaking team. And as his profile increases, so do his production
values. The Rambler wasn’t just nasty fun. It was an
old-fashioned, 16 mm beauty. ANNIE WAGNER
Sarah Jane Lapp
Illustrator, animator, and live-action filmmaker Sarah Jane Lapp is
best known for two semifictional animated films about work:
Chronicles of a Professional Eulogist, in which a rabbi
discloses his trade secrets, and Chronicles of an Asthmatic
Stripper, about the strange disjunction between perceiving one’s
own body as both an object of visual interest and a physiological
machine. Lapp’s signature quavery, hand-drawn and -painted cell
animation looks absolutely handsome and feels personal—a perfect
match for her idiosyncratic character portraiture. ANNIE WAGNER
Rob Cunningham
and Tony Mullen
Way back in 2001, a funny little Super-8 film called The Devices
of Gustav Braustache, Bachelor of Science won The Stranger‘s
PEEP Short Film Festival. Then, seven years later, cowriters and
directors Tony Mullen and Rob Cunningham screened its sequel, Gustav
Braustache and the Auto-Debilitator, at STIFF. The film—on
top of being comically pitch-perfect—oozes craftsmanship and
care: from dainty stop-motion-animated salamanders to charmingly
surreal machines to truly impressive quantities of mustache wax. LINDY
WEST
Zia Mohajerjasbi
The eye of the Hollywood studio sees little more of Seattle than the
Space Needle; the local filmmaker, however, sees a dynamic relationship
between the urban and the natural, between concrete and trees, between
outside and inside. In his latest video for Blue Scholars, “Loyalty,”
director Zia Mohajerjasbi contrasts the rural with hiphop’s
multicultural solidarity. A group of urban youth walk across a field of
wild grass. Though we do not see a single building, we never feel that
we are anywhere else but in the middle of Seattle. CHARLES MUDEDE
