Last week I talked about how the Northwest Film Forum is already showing movies, despite the fact that it officially opens October 7. Well, the programming kicks into high gear with First Person Cinema: A Festival of Independent Documentary. Bouncing between two screens, the fest will include personal documentaries like People Say I'm Crazy, a self-portrait of a schizophrenic; Slasher, the first doc by John Landis, which is about the greatest living used-car salesman; and The Garden, about Tel Aviv's red-light district. Even more impressive is how they're bringing out filmmakers like Soleil Moon Frye (yes, she was TV's Punky Brewster), who will be showing her feature documentary Sonny Boy, which documents a trip she took with her Alzheimer's-stricken father to places around the country that were important in his life.
Perhaps most impressive, though, is that the NW Film Forum is bringing Ross McElwee to town for a retrospective of his work. Like it or not, he sparked a boom in self-referential documentary filmmaking with Sherman's March, long before home video or weblogs. The tribute to McElwee will start off with a program called "Ross Vision," where he'll show clips from his films and talk about his career as an independent filmmaker. This will be followed by a screening of Bright Leaves, his latest feature. And more of his films will be screened. Those fine folks at the NW Film Forum are sure to spark an increased outburst of film addiction with the sheer volume of interesting films on their calendar. My goodness.
With the weather turning to the autumnal, the festivals are starting to sprout like mushrooms. Beyond First Person Cinema, there is the Tasveer Festival of Independent South Asian Film, which covers indie films from India, Pakistan, and the surrounding areas. They're having an opening night gala on Thursday, Sept 16, at Consolidated Works, then will screen movies from Friday through Monday at the Broadway Performance Hall. In addition, there will be a couple of bonus screenings, like a Saturday-night showing of Final Solution at the Seattle Art Museum. Go to www.tasveer.org for more information.