Seattle International Film Festival: May 16 - Jun 9

Link to Seattle International Film Festival site



It's that time of the year again! SIFF once again arrives a week earlier than usual bringing a spectrum of cinema from across the world. This year, like the string of years since 2009, sees a qualitative diversity-dip in the percentage of foreign cinema, arthouse, auteur and all things challenging or adventurous. These were content genres that once dominated the festival, making it of a caliber to challenge Toronto and New York. Those times, I fear, look to be officially over.

As a consequence we again get the thematically titled Pathways with the conceptual hand-holding of themes like "Love..." for the disproportionately large romance selection, "Thrill Me" obviously for adventure and action,  "Make Me Laugh" signifying comedic content, the infantile "Open My Eyes" for documentaries and the once-predominant New Global Cinema section is now categorized as "Show me the World". You decide how you feel about all this. Last I saw, it was adults a good bit mature (and senior) to myself that were attending International Film Festivals across the country. I wasn't quite aware the self styled clever-and-quirky' "Glee" tv demographic were going out of their way to seek out unknown cinema experiences in North America's urban centers. Makes one curious as to where SIFF are getting their demographic statistics, doesn't it?

Nonetheless, this year's fest isn't as painfully ommissive as 2011 or 2010 for that matter. As a a hopeful hint of things to come, the lackluster programming described above waned a bit in 2012, thankfully. Nonetheless we're again seeing a glut of middle-ground contemporary romances, clever quirky dramas for the sub-Sundance sect and a lot of filler seemingly there to entice some imagined suburban demographic out of their Bellevue hobbles and into the city. But there's a good bit of legitimate, original, challenging, crafted cinema to be found in here too. SIFF in the past has existed as a focal-point of visionary cinema curatorialship, with the resources, funds and legacy to be hugely influential. This year I found some 16-20 films of interest, curiosity or gravitas that I plan to attend, by both directors of note and new developing artists. Overall not a bad year, but like I've been beating into the dirt, not on par with the stellar run we'd seen spanning the decade of 1998-2008.

They've got a long way to go to gain back that lost ground, but I continue to be enthused about their new home at the SIFF Cinema at the Uptown and expanded screens between that venue and their Film Center. As always though, venue resources, influence, and legacy in the arts are all about what you do with them. That said, glad to have a international film festival of it's stature in my city. Anticipating the likely highlights of the festival in Ulrich Seidle's new trilogy of austere, unflinchingly brutal takes on the subjects of faith, hope and love, Sion Sono's second melodrama set in the wake of the Tōhoku earthquake/Fukushima disaster and the eradication of the 'safety' of moral distancing on the part of the viewer, in response to Joshua Oppenheimer's surreal reenactment by the murderers of over a million alleged Communists under Indonesia's Suharto regime.


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Friday, May 17
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6:30 PM - Peter Greenaway  "Goltzius and the Pelican Company"
Egyptian Theatre
GOLT1713

http://myaccount.siff.net/festival/film/reserve.aspx?FID=306&ID=16917

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Saturday, May 18
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11:00 AM - Alex Gibney  "We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks"
SIFF Cinema Uptown
WEST1813

http://myaccount.siff.net/festival/film/reserve.aspx?FID=306&ID=16800

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Saturday, May 18
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4:00 PM - Joshua Oppenheimer  "The Act of Killing"
Harvard Exit
ACTO1813

http://myaccount.siff.net/festival/film/reserve.aspx?FID=306&ID=16987

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Sunday, May 19
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10:30 AM - Thomas Riedelsheimer  "Breathing Earth"
AMC Pacific Place 11
EART1913

http://myaccount.siff.net/festival/film/reserve.aspx?FID=306&ID=16758

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Sunday, May 19
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9:00 PM - Kim Ki-Duk  "Pieta"
AMC Pacific Place 11
PIET1913

http://myaccount.siff.net/festival/film/reserve.aspx?FID=306&ID=17062

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Tuesday, May 21
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6:30 PM - Ulrich Seidl  "Paradise: Love"
SIFF Cinema Uptown
LOVE2113

http://myaccount.siff.net/festival/film/reserve.aspx?FID=306&ID=17181

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Tuesday, May 21
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9:30 PM - Sion Sono  "The Land of Hope"
Egyptian Theatre
HOPE2113

http://myaccount.siff.net/festival/film/reserve.aspx?FID=306&ID=16932

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Wednesday, May 22
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6:30 PM - Ulrich Seidl  "Paradise: Faith"
SIFF Cinema Uptown
FAIT2213

http://myaccount.siff.net/festival/film/reserve.aspx?FID=306&ID=17183

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Thursday, May 23
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6:30 PM - Ulrich Seidl  "Paradise: Hope"
SIFF Cinema Uptown
HOPE2313

http://myaccount.siff.net/festival/film/reserve.aspx?FID=306&ID=17185

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Thursday, May 23
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9:30 PM - Sergei Loznitsa  "In the Fog"
SIFF Cinema Uptown
FOGX2313

http://myaccount.siff.net/festival/film/detail.aspx?FID=306&ID=46148

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Saturday, May 25
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11:30 AM - Richard Rowley  "Dirty Wars"
SIFF Cinema Uptown
DIRT2513

http://myaccount.siff.net/festival/film/reserve.aspx?FID=306&ID=16807

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Sunday, May 26
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8:30 PM - Jessica Woodworth/Peter Brosens  "The Fifth Season"
AMC Pacific Place 11
FIFT2613

http://myaccount.siff.net/festival/film/reserve.aspx?FID=306&ID=17082

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Tuesday, May 28
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9:30 PM - Joachim Lafosse  "Our Children"
AMC Pacific Place 11
CHIL2813

http://myaccount.siff.net/festival/film/reserve.aspx?FID=306&ID=17088

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Sunday, June 02
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5:30 PM - Shohei Imamura  "A Man Vanishes"
SIFF Cinema Uptown
MANV0213

http://myaccount.siff.net/festival/film/reserve.aspx?FID=306&ID=17156

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Tuesday, June 04
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3:30 PM - Fernando Guzzoni  "Dog Flesh"
SIFF Cinema Uptown
DOGF0413

http://myaccount.siff.net/festival/film/reserve.aspx?FID=306&ID=16839

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Tuesday, June 04
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7:00 PM - Thomas Vinterberg  "The Hunt"
Harvard Exit
HUNT0413

http://myaccount.siff.net/festival/film/reserve.aspx?FID=306&ID=17035

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Saturday, June 08
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10:00 PM - Sophie Fiennes  "The Pervert's Guide to Ideology"
AMC Pacific Place 11
PERV0813

http://myaccount.siff.net/festival/film/reserve.aspx?FID=306&ID=17119

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Sunday, June 09
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2:00 PM - Saul Bass  "Phase IV"
SIFF Cinema Uptown
PHAS0913

http://myaccount.siff.net/festival/film/reserve.aspx?FID=306&ID=17169

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Sunday, June 09
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9:00 PM - Adrián García Bogliano  "Here Comes the Devil"
AMC Pacific Place 11
HERE0913

http://myaccount.siff.net/festival/film/reserve.aspx?FID=306&ID=17123

Nationwide James Turrell Retrospective at the Los Angeles County Musuem of Art, Museum of Fine Art Houston and Guggenheim New York: May 26 - April 6

Hard to believe it's been nearly a decade since the James Turrell retrospective "Knowing Light" graced the Henry Art Museum. Immediately establishing itself as one of, if not the, greatest modern art exhibit seen by me that decade. It's lasting impression even more deeply ingrained by having returned to the museum to further soak in the literally mind-altering luminosity of it's perceptual, hallucinogenic precision. So! 2013 sees a return of overviews of his work, in not one city, but three! The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston  and The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum New York, will all host retrospectives featuring distinctly different aspects of Turrell's work, all three combining to produce an encompassing overview of the artists singular creative vision. Hilarie M. Sheets bottles the significance and anticipation for the nationwide retrospective by "Paying Homage to James Turrell, Who Turns Light Into Art" in the New York Times and Amy Abrams gets to the fundamentals of "How We See" for Art in America. Notably, the LACMA exhibit, featuring the largest selection, spanning six decades of Turrell's work and consuming over 33,000 square feet of gallery space will have a running time of nearly a year. So we all have absolutely no excuse to not catch this coast-to-coast retrospective by America's premier modern alchemist of material, form, space, time and light. Photo credit: Emily Duff

Red Bull Music Academy hosts "Drone Activity" showcase, Ryuichi Sakamoto with Alva Noto & Pantha Du Prince at Knockdown Center, West Park Church & Metropolitan Museum of Art New York: May 2 & 28 - 29

Red Bull Music Academy's programming has always been surprising. Especially in it's intersection with new media and technology bringing cutting edge electronic works to the stage, theater and installation space. This May sees New York get not one, but two significant series on the more experimental periphery, coinciding with this year's 'Academy' taking place in that city of cities. The first being one of the most audacious assemblies of it's kind this decade, Drone Activity showcasing an international roster so encompassing as to be a global who's-who of Noise, Ambient, Doom, Drone and sonic Dissonance. One Night. Sixteen Acts. 8PM until 4AM at the massive, industrial, gorgeous, converted glass factory that is Queens' Knockdown Center. From Red Bull Music Academy: "For one night we will turn the spectacular Knockdown Center in Queens into a temple of thundering noise with some of today’s most daring sound artists. The night will see performances from sixteen solo artists and duos on three stages, where the sound bleed between stages is entirely intentional. Performers at this noise, drone and experimental techno festival-within-a-festival include Stephen O’Malley of Sunn O))), who will be performing solo and with his duo project KTL alongside Peter Rehberg, owner of Editions Mego Records, Sonic Youth founding member Kim Gordon  presenting her collaborative project with Bill Nace, Body/Head influential noise artist and Hospital Productions founder Dominick Fernow, performing both with his conceptual noise project Prurient and under his doom-techno moniker Vatican Shadow, Hunter Hunt-Hendrix, the frontman and “dogma director” of transcendental black metal band Liturgy, Australian composer and multi-instrumentalist Oren Ambarchi, NYC-based guitarist and composer Alan Licht, Yellow Swans' analog techno noisemaker Pete Swanson, Sacred Bones recording artist Margaret Chardiet aka Pharmakon, Oneida and Man Forever drummer Kid Millions performing with Borbetomagus saxophonist Jim Sauter; virtuoso guitarist Mick Barr of Ocrillim and Krallice, Kris Lapke’s power violence/black metal solo project Alberich, composer Sarah Lipstate’s solo electric guitar project Noveller, Arto Lindsay collaborator and 2013 Academy participant Grassmass from Brazil and Mexican beat experimentalist Hiram Martinez. Visuals come courtesy of the creative minds behind Nuit Blanche so expect a multi-sensory experience o' sorts."



As if the not-of-this-earth Drone Activity showcase wasn't enough, the latter end of the month sees the Kunst als Klang series featuring a night of Ryuchi Sakamoto's sublime piano explorations alongside Raster-Noton label founder, Carsten Nicolai's austere digital constructions as Alva Noto. The two taking part in Red Bull Music Academy's Fireside Chat session on the meeting of their two aesthetics earlier this year. This tour coinciding with Sakamoto's performance at the Nam June Paik Retrospective at the Smithsonian American Art Museum where sound artist and Paik aficionado Steven Vitiello hosted an intimate discussion with Ryuichi on the subjects of Fluxus, Bad Brains, Joseph Beuys, John Cage and Paik as teen idol to Asian artists (ha) in the 1960's. The second event in the series being no less canorous and bold in it's construction, Hendrik Weber's Pantha Du Prince, who's "Elements of Light" project comprises a symphony for electronics, percussion, hundreds of individual bells and and a Bell Carillon a single three-ton instrument comprising 50 bronze bells. As the Rough Trade label describes, influenced by some of the very same 20th Century progenitors of Modernism and Minimalism referenced in the Sakamoto interview above: "The album is a single continuous work in five tracks named for elements of light: “Wave,” “Particle,” Photon,” “Spectral Split” and “Quantum.” Sonically, the work is a fusion of electronic music and classical composition, and draws on house and minimalism, jazz and new music, gamelan and western sacred music. Influences include John Cage, Iannis Xenakis, Steve Reich, LaMonte Young and Moondog." Best witnessed in action, the "Spectral Split" video and trailer for the album depicts the scope of this ambitious, sublime orchestra of resonance. From Red Bull Music Academy: "Pantha Du Prince is the moniker of Hendrik Weber a charming lad from the middle of nowhere, Germany, who grew up on a well-balanced diet of British indie rock, techno kick drums, and adventurous electronica straight from the house that Autechre built. He eventually ended up co-founding Dial Records, a label that has fostered its very own philosophical and romantic view on electronic dance (and non-dance) music over the past 14 years. After releasing an album of fragile techno folklore via Rough Trade Records in 2010, he teamed up with Norwegian composer and conductor Lars Petter Hagen to explore the unknown versatility of the bell as a musical instrument, and finally release the post-minimalist “Elements Of Light” earlier this spring. Witness one of the year’s most talked-about shows in the venerable surroundings of Manhattan’s West Park Church, featuring a six-piece band on live electronics – and hundreds of bells."

Véréna Paravel & Lucien Castaing-Taylor of the Harvard Sensory Ethnography Lab's new documentary "Leviathan" at Northwest Film Forum: April 5 - 11 & 26 - May 2

Next month Leviathan surfaces at Northwest Film Forum! No, no, not the mythical beast of Biblical Lore, nor the Great White Whale of Melville. This beast is instead the brutal, sensorial, visceral ONSLAUGHT that is the creation of Paravel and Castaing-Taylor of the Harvard Sensory Ethnography Lab and the Visual and Environmental Studies department's "Leviathan". And if you think a documentary on the subject of Deep Sea Fishing isn't going to be the most audio-visual engaging experience you have in the theater this year, well, you'll have a chance to be proven wrong, wrong, wrong, in a few short weeks. Their previous, environmental, ambient, gorgeously duration-oriented "Sweetgrass" certainly doesn't prepare you for this. Nor does A.O. Scott's review for the New York Times, which I feel only touches on it's one-of-a-kind sensory approach. It's instead the Dennis Lim piece of earlier this year that suggests the true physical, auditory, visual, conceptual experience of this singular work. Trust me. You will never again see a documentary on this subject (or most any other) that will leave this indelible an impression on your mind, senses or imagination. There's a reason the poster features a Gothic Doom Metal font and all the images seem as though they're sourced from Dante's Divine Comedy.

Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining" (both fowards and backwards) & Rodney Ascher's new documentary "Room 237" at SIFF Cinema: April 5 - 11

Not only is Stanley Kubrick's (superior) adaptation of Steven King's "The Shining" back in theaters in a new print (and yes, in 1980 I was among the generation of children that had it absolutely wreck my 9 year old head, thank you). But smartly timed with the documentary of all things theory, conspiracy, insights and speculation on it's potentially coded symbolism, imagery and synchronicity spelling out everything from the Holocaust, to the slaughter of American Indians and the claim that the film is a kind of apology by Kubrick for the putative role he played in helping to 'fake' the Apollo 11 lunar landing. (Yep, you read that right). Rodney Ascher's "Room 237" screens at SIFF for one week back-to-back with the film itself. There's more. For the true dedicated Kubrick-o-phile, here's your one chance to see some of this film's layered mystery revealed, in the single screening of "The Shining" forwards and backwards. And in honor of IFC's distribution of all the coded meaning reexamined and the metaphorical can of worms growing in Room 237 of the Timberline Lodge being re-opened, the New York Times featured this fun, insightful, debunking piece, in interview with Kubrick's assistant Leon Vitali on the shooting of the film.
"It’s Back. But What Does It Mean?".

Shane Carruth's "Upstream Color" & Park Chan-Wook's "Stoker" advance screening Premiers at SIFF Cinema: March 12 - 14

Two major advance screening premiers this month at SIFF! The past decade has seen Korean cinema take Western Society's love of shock and thrills, imbued it with meaning, almost grotesque humor, stylistic flourishes, a frenetic sense of risk, propelled through a often labyrinth of inventive narrative hooks and thrown it back at us. Seemingly upping Hollywood at it's own game and delivering some seriously joyous, brooding, psychotic, perverse, playful, absurd thrills. So it's with paradoxically hesitant anticipation that I went into Park Chan-Wook's new film "Stoker" last night. Anticipation for all the reasons listed above, hesitation for him now on Hollywood ground, directing films in English with a cast including Nicole Kidman, Mia Wasikowska and Matthew Goode. Nonetheless I had hope of him delivering a psychotic fusion of Jean-Pierre Jeunet ("I'm a Cyborg but that's OK") and Alfred Hitchcock ("Old Boy") as a american psycho-drama. Well, good thing I went in with a degree of trepidation, attuned to how this setting and cast could go amiss. As the psychological thrills simmered throughout, yet never reached the cohesion of a boiling point. Seemingly a case of 'lost in translation' it's eccentric cast of sociopaths and the ultra-privileged elicit neither your sympathy, or even quite the dynamics of a love them/hate them dichotomy of the despicable. Here's hoping Mr. Park makes a quick return to more fertile (Korean) cinema ground again soon!
The second, and more anticipated premier, is the long, long awaited follow-up to Shane Carruth's brilliant bit of low budget, smaller cast, sci-fi of 2004, "Primer". His newest, "Upstream Color" screened already at SXSW last weekend to near-hysterics online. Filling a void left by Soderbergh, Aronofsky, Fincher and many of the other promising genre-directors of the 2000's, who went on to make solid, but more formula-based films with larger budgets and celebrity casts. Carruth has the very real potential to be their equivocal for this decade. "Upstream Color"'s Sundance screening garnering no small amount of critical praise from The Village Voice, The LA Times and yet more attention in the pages of the New York Times for it's inclusion in MoMA's prestigious New Directors/New Films series, along with a Lion's share of the contents of Film Comment's 'Best Undistributed Films of 2012' survey of last year. I'm not going to say much more about Carruth's film in advance of SIFF's preview screening as seeing it 'blind' is the best way to appreciate it's particularly moving, bucolic and at once nightmarish vision. Even with reading the above New York Times interview (and I recommend you don't) you'd not be prepared for the fusion of cinema forms on display so disparate as the visual aesthetic of Terrence Malick and the corporeal, psychological drama/trauma of early David Cronenberg. How's that for a unexpected junction?! I'll even go as far as to say the hyperbole you've heard issue from the festival screenings along the lines of "the most original new sci-fi film of this decade", isn't unfounded. Witness Carruth's newest yourself when it returns for SIFF's theatrical run next month.

"Tokyo 1955 - 1970: A New Avant-Garde" & "Gutai: Splendid Playground" at MoMA & Guggenheim Museum NY: Nov 18 - Feb 25 & Feb 15 - May 8

The reasons are innumerable why Tokyo 1955 - 1970: A New Avant-Garde is likely going to be the best exhibit I see this year. Especially if considered in combination with the first-ever US retrospective of the related, Gutai: Splendid Playground at the Guggenheim. Big claim, I know, particularly so early in the 2013... but with the 40 Film Retrospective of New Wave, Experimental and post-War cinema and a series of ongoing installation/performance pieces in the MoMA lobby during the duration of the show, like Eiko & Koma "Caravan Project", in addition to the scope and rarity of the work in the exhibit. I think it's safe to say it's claim to that title is pretty much cinched. It's breadth encompassing artists and movements like Jikken Kobo which included in it's ranks composers Toru Takemitsu, Toshi Ichiyanagi and Joji Yuasa along with innovative post-War author Kobo Abe and his often collaborator, seminal Japanese New Wave director Hiroshi Teshigahara (who's brilliant existentialism cinema was finally given a proper and much overdue western release by Criterion and Masters of Cinema this decade. As a collaborative trio between the author and director, with the above mentioned Toru Takemitsu supplying the scores). Among other notable characters like movement co-founder Tetsuji Takechi and the once Pinku Eiga director turned political artist, Koji Wakamatsu (who in the past year was barred from the United States and unable to attend the New York premier of what were then his two most recent films, had a 30 film! retrospective at Cinémathèque Française, released two more new films "The Millennial Rapture" and "11/25: The Day He Chose His Own Fate" and sadly was killed by an errant cab driver in Tokyo). Overlapping with, and likely to even outshine the MoMA, there's the Guggenheim Gutai-focused exhibit and it's brilliant multimedia artist Atsuko Tanaka, 'mail' artist Shozo Shimamoto, painter and author of the Gutai Manifesto Jiro Yoshihara, the extraordinary visual and installation work of Motonaga Sadamasa, and another personal favorite, 'bodily painter' Kazuo Shiraga. Many of the major players in these movements overlapping with that of the Art Theatre Guild who's work figures largely in MoMA's film retrospective. And all of that only touching on the surface of what's on display, the scope and greater significance of the exhibit simply beyond what I'm able to convey here. For that I'm going to direct you to the the most coherent encapsulations I've read, Holland Cotter's "A Feisty Phoenix From the Nuclear Ashes" and Roberta Smith's "The Seriousness of Fun in Postwar Japan" for the New York Times.