The great thing about movies is that you don't always need to shoot new footage to create a new work. Sometimes it's a matter of creating a new context for old pictures, which can be done by changing the soundtrack, mixing together footage from a variety of old films, or by finding new ways to talk about old films. Take, for example, Bodysong by Brit director Simon Pummel, which is playing Thursday through Sunday at the Northwest Film Forum. Drawing from silent films, newsreels, documentaries, and home movies from the past 100 years, the movie has been described as "an epic story of love, sex, violence, death and dreams" as well as "a meditative catalog of human existence." Heck, even if you don't like how the images are put together, I've heard great things about the soundtrack by Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood.

Another movie that puts old images into a new context is Other People's Pictures, which plays Friday through Sunday at Consolidated Works. This is a documentary about people who go to flea markets and collect snapshots of random families. Though I haven't seen the movie, I like the idea not only of rescuing memories from the garbage heap of history, but being able to study them and figure out the family narratives that the pictures imply.

There are other ways to rethink old pictures. In a sense, just showing a classic film invites both comparisons to today and questions of relevance. For example, when Ridley Scott made Blade Runner in 1982, I'm sure he had no idea that the Dick Cheney "Cheneybot 3000™" would blend in so well with the non-replicants in Washington. I have no idea if science-fiction author Greg Bear will talk about that when he introduces the movie on Friday, October 29, at the EMP's JBL Theater, as part of the Science Fiction Museum's history of sci-fi film series. Meanwhile, the fine folks at Twisted Flicks continue their wacky improv of dialog replacement when they change all the words spoken in the original The Blob at the Historic University Theater from Thursday through Saturday.

Though I could talk about some of the Halloween movies playing about town, like Rosemary's Baby and Mad Monster Party at the Grand Illusion, Eyes Without a Face late night at the Egyptian, and the aforementioned The Blob, I want to mention a very different kind of movie playing on Halloween. On Sunday over at the Ethnic Cultural Theater (3940 Brooklyn Ave NE), there's a showing of About When..., a documentary about Palestinian refugees and families who try to return to the homes they were evicted from in 1948. This will be followed by a presentation on the "Right to Return" by a professor from WSU. Those who are scared by the messy politics of Israel and Palestine can instead hole up for a couple days before going out to the Showbox on Wednesday, November 3, for Soul Purpose, a 16mm ski and snowboard movie at which you could win many valuable prizes.

andy@thestranger.com