March 2 Fri at 7pm

LIGHTER THAN AIR: THE FILMS OF JAQUES RIVETTE

IMPORTED 35MM PRINT!

L'AMOUR FOU

(Jacques Rivette,France, 1968, 35mm, 255 min.)

Rivette Series Sponsored by Center for West European Studies at The Henry M. Jackson School at U of W and Seattle Alliance Francaise

Shown with intermission.

This pivotal masterpiece was Rivette's first film to use as key elements an extended running time, scenes written and developed with actors’ participation and a blurring between art and reality. Focusing on the turbulent relationship between a director and an actress, the story moves between the couple’s unraveling and rehearsal scenes for a Jean Racine play. "You emerge from it changed," writes CHICAGO READER film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum. "It’s a life experience as much as a film experience."

"I reject the word 'script' entirely—at any rate in the usual sense. I prefer the old usage—usually scenario—which it had in the Commedia dell'Arte, meaning an outline or scheme: it implies a dynamism, a number of ideas and principles from which one can set out to find the best possible approach to filming." –Jacques Rivette

MARCH 2-8 Fri-Thurs at 7, 9:30pm

SEATTLE PREMIERE

THE AURA

(Fabián Bielinsky, Argentina, 2005, 35mm, 129 min.)

Fabián Bielinsky's THE AURA arrives with an unanticipated burden. The director's sudden death at 47 gives his second feature the weight of a testament—all the more so because it differs so distinctly from NINE QUEENS (00), his very popular picaresque comedy on the venerable theme of the scammer scammed. The film follows Espinosa, a master taxidermist and an epileptic who often speculates about committing the perfect crime. When his friend invites him on an ill-fated hunting trip, the opportunity to put his idle thoughts into action becomes a tantalizing reality. However, Espinosa' s keen observational skills and meticulous planning may not be enough to navigate the nefarious world he uncovers in the dark woods and back roads of southern Argentina. THE AURA is the more ambitious of Bielinsky's two films, all the more haunting for suggesting narrative possibilities that Bielinsky was just beginning to explore. His two films remain as the legacy of a genuine storyteller—a truly rare presence.

In Spanish with English subtitles.

WATCH THE TRAILER

March 3 Sat at 5pm

LIGHTER THAN AIR: THE FILMS OF JAQUES RIVETTE

JEAN RENOIR, THE BOSS: THE DIRECTION OF ACTORS

(Jacques Rivette, France, 1967, BetaSP, 97 min.)

Rivette Series Sponsored by Center for West European Studies at The Henry M. Jackson School at U of W and Seattle Alliance Francaise

In 1966 Jacques Rivette made a three-part TV documentary titled JEAN RENOIR, THE BOSS, and its centerpiece, THE DIRECTION OF ACTORS, has rarely been seen since. A PORTRAIT OF MICHEL SIMON BY JEAN RENOIR, or A PORTRAIT OF JEAN RENOIR BY MICHEL SIMON, or THE DIRECTION OF ACTORS: DIALOGUE is a missing link key to understanding Rivette's work. It's a raw record of the after-dinner talk between one of the world's greatest directors and his greatest actor, both in their early seventies, punctuated by clips from the five films they worked on together—TIRE-AU-FLANC (1928), ON PURGE BÉBÉ (1931), LA CHIENNE (1931), BOUDU SAVED FROM DROWNING (1932) and TOSCA (1941).

It also includes occasional remarks by Rivette, the documentary’s producers, Janine Bazin and Andre S. Labarthe and the distinguished still photographer, Henri Cartier-Bresson.

March 3 Sat at 1, 7pm

LIGHTER THAN AIR: THE FILMS OF JAQUES RIVETTE

OUT 1: SPECTRE

(Jacques Rivette, France, 1970, 16mm, 270 min.)

Rivette Series Sponsored by Center for West European Studies at The Henry M. Jackson School at U of W and Seattle Alliance Francaise

Shown with 15 min intermission.

For many cineastes, Rivette's OUT 1: NOLI ME TANGERE represents the Holy Grail. A nearly thirteen-hour adaptation of Balzac’s HISTOIRE DES TREIZE, the film centers on Rivette's central obsessions: conspiracy, community, theater, games and madness. When French television turned down the complete version, Rivette created a four-hour version, OUT 1: SPECTRE, which focuses more intensively on the intertwining tales of two rival theater companies, two eccentric outsiders and a mysterious cabal. Only slightly less rare than NOLI ME TANGERE, SPECTRE both doubles and refracts its parent film, offering a work totally different, yet still an epic. With Jean-Pierre Léaud, Juliet Berto, Bulle Ogier, Pierre Baillot, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze and Françoise Fabian.

"What we are left with is not a digest of the long version, but another film having its own logic: closer to a puzzle or a crossword game, playing less on affectivity and more on rhymes or oppositions, ruptures or connections, caesuras or censorships." –Jacques Rivette

March 4 Sun at 3, 7pm

LIGHTER THAN AIR: THE FILMS OF JAQUES RIVETTE

IMPORTED 35MM PRINT

CELINE AND JULIE GO BOATING

(Jacques Rivette, France, 1974, 35mm, 192 min.)

Rivette Series Sponsored by Center for West European Studies at The Henry M. Jackson School at U of W and Seattle Alliance Francaise

Rivette's best-known film is an elaborate fairy tale with literary roots in Lewis Carroll, Henry James and Borges and cinematic roots in Méliès, Marienbad and Laurel and Hardy. In a film-with-in-a-film structure, memory and fantasy stretch an encounter between a librarian, Julie (Dominique Labourier), and a magician, Céline (Juliet Berto), into the past and the future while never leaving the present. More whimsical but no less labyrinthine than PARIS BELONGS TO US, the story involves a white rabbit chase through Montmartre, a mysterious old house in the Paris suburbs and strange potions in the form of little candies placed on the tongue. In the house, a haunting melodrama involving Bulle Ogier and Barbet Schroeder is being played out. Can Céline and Julie intervene to change the plot? A film that has retained its cult status, CÉLINE AND JULIE invites repeat viewings.

March 5 Mon at 7, 9:30pm

LIGHTER THAN AIR: THE FILMS OF JAQUES RIVETTE

IMPORTED 35MM PRINT

DUELLE

(Jacques Rivette, France, 1975, 35mm, 121 min.)

Rivette Series Sponsored by Center for West European Studies at The Henry M. Jackson School at U of W and Seattle Alliance Francaise

A pair of goddesses descend to Paris to search for—and battle over—a magic stone that will allow them to remain on Earth. Quieter in tone but more mysterious than CÉLINE AND JULIE, DUELLE marked the beginning of Rivette’s collaboration with cinematographer William Lubtchansky. With Juliet Berto and Bulle Ogier.

March 6 Tues at 7, 9:30pmm

LIGHTER THAN AIR: THE FILMS OF JAQUES RIVETTE

JACQUES RIVETTE, THE NIGHT WATCHMAN

(Claire Denis, France, 1990, BetaSP, 125 min.)

Rivette Series Sponsored by Center for West European Studies at The Henry M. Jackson School at U of W and Seattle Alliance Francaise

An assistant to Rivette before she became a director, Claire Denis (BEAU TRAVAIL, CHOCOLAT) Filmed Rivette and the great French film critic Serge Daney discussing the director’s films and his early days as part of the French New Wave with Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, and Eric Rohmer. This portrait, which includes clips from Rivette’s films, offers an excellent introduction to the filmmaker.

March 8 Thurs at 7pm

BY DESIGN 07

ROBERT BROWNJOHN - An Introduction

A protege of Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, late designer Robert Brownjohn combined audacious imagery with ingenious typography, illustration and found objects. His book jackets, album covers, posters, exhibitions, and film title sequences brought modernist design concepts to popular culture in the 1950s and 60s. Curator Peter Lucas presents this introduction to Brownjohn's life and work, including images of his print, package and exhibition design and screening of his film title sequences for James Bond films FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE (1963) and GOLDFINGER (1964) and rarely seen ad films MONEY TALKS (1965) and THE TORTOISE AND THE HARE (1966).

Special thanks to Eliza Brownjohn, Emily King, and The Design Museum, London for helping to make this program possible.

For more information, visit the Design Museum website

March 8 Thurs at 9pm

BY DESIGN 07

Randy Jones: SIX AXIOMS

OPENING NIGHT EVENT Featuring Randy Jones, Scott K. James and and ndCv

Join us for the BYDESIGN 07 opening night party featuring live audio-visual performances. Randy Jones was co-creator of the graphics and matrix-processing program Jitter, has performed at festivals around the world and created tour visuals for Radiohead. He will create a unique synaesthetic experience with a performance of his visual music work, SIX AXIOMS. This will be preceded by a set from visualist Scott K. James (The Now Device) and electronic musician ndCv (Basskamp) Refreshments available.

MORE ON RANDY JONES

March 9 Fri at 6:30, 9:30pm

LIGHTER THAN AIR: THE FILMS OF JAQUES RIVETTE

NOROIT

(Jacques Rivette, France, 1976, 16mm, 145 min.)

Rivette Series Sponsored by Center for West European Studies at The Henry M. Jackson School at U of W and Seattle Alliance Francaise

The second film in Rivette's projected four-part series SCENES FROM A PARALLEL LIFE, this enigmatic female pirate adventure with strains of mythology and avant-garde dance was described by critic Jonathan Rosenbaum as "the strangest by far of Rivette's films...[D]ays or weeks after you see this chilling conundrum of a movie, sounds and images may come back to haunt you."

"NOROÎT contains the most beautiful images and sounds of any Rivette film, and the fewest indications of what a spectator is meant to do with them, apart from look and listen." –Jonathan Rosenbaum, CHICAGO READER

March 9-11 Fri-Sun at 7pm

BY DESIGN 07

ENTROPY - Shorts and Music Videos

Each year, we showcase a wide variety of new works by innovative designers, directors and VJs from around the globe in our ENTROPY program. This year's survey features the Seattle premieres of short films and music videos by Ben Stokes, Max Hattler, Nando Costa, Impactist, Pes, Semiconductor, Leftchannel, Post Panic, JJ Walker and others. Photography, found footage, animation, motion graphics and music collide and converge in this selection of the year's best short works.

March 9-11 Fri-Sun at 9pm

BY DESIGN 07

Northwest premiere!

8 BIT: A Documentary About Art And Videogames

(Director: Marcin Ramocki, Co-Director Justin Strawhand, 2006, USA, 77 min.)

Named in ArtForum as one of the top ten films of the year by MoMA curator Barbara London, this new documentary examines the influence of video games on contemporary culture, and explores the growing subculture obsessed with repurposing old games and computers as new artistic tools. With both nostalgia and irreverence, artists are transforming old devices into video synthesizers and musical instruments and obsessing over Pac Man and Super Mario Brothers the way Warhol mused over Campbell's Soup and Marilyn Monroe. Shot in NYC, LA, Paris and Tokyo, 8 BIT weaves together arcane histories of digital subterfuge, audio-visual concerts, the best digital artwork, and interviews with cutting-edge artists including Cory Arcangel, Bit Shifter, Bodenstandig 2000, Bubblyfish and many others. Do not miss these special screenings!

Filmmakers scheduled to attend Friday and Saturday screenings.

www.8bitmovie.com

Cast:

Cory Arcangel - http://www.beigerecords.com/cory
Isabelle Arvers - http://www.isabelle-arvers.com
Bit Shifter - http://www.8bitmovie.com/cast/bit.shifter.net
Bodenstandig 2000 - http://www.bodenstandig.de
Bubblyfish - http://www.bubblyfish.com
Mary Flanagan - http://maryflanagan.com/default.htm
Alex Galloway - http://cultureandcommunication.org/galloway
Gameboyzz Orchestra - http://mikroorchestra.com
Glomag - http://www.glomag.com
Rachel Greene - http://www.glomag.com
Ed Halter - http://www.edhalter.com
Paul Johnson - http://www.pauljohnson.com
John Klima - http://www.cityarts.com/lmno
Johan Kotlinski - http://blog.johankotlinski.com
Nullsleep - http://www.nullsleep.com
Joe McKay - http://homepage.mac.com/joester5/art/index.html
Tom Moody - http://www.digitalmediatree.com/tommoody, http://www.8bitmovie.com/cast/digitalmediatree.com/tommoody
Christiane Paul - http://transliteracies.english.ucsb.edu/post/conference-2005/participants/christiane-paul
Akiko Sakaizumi - http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/reviews/davis/davis1-24-06_detail.asp?picnum=11
Eddo Stern - http://www.eddostern.com
teamtendo - http://teamtendo.com
Treewave - http://www.8bitmovie.com/cast/treewave.com


Original Music and Performances by:

Bit Shifter
Bodenstandig 2000
Bubblyfish
Covox - http://www.covox.net
Gameboyzz Orchestra
Glomag
HUORATRON - http://www.huoratron.com
Nullsleep
Role Model
teamtendo
Treewave
Chiaki Watanabe - http://www.nicknack.org


And the work of:

Eboy - http://eboy.com
jodi - http://wwwwwwwww.jodi.org
Velvet Strike - http://www.opensorcery.net/velvet-strike
John Simon

March 10 Sat at 4pm

BY DESIGN 07

SEATTLE MOVES: Screening and Panel Discussion

Join us for this special forum in which Seattle motion graphics designers Will Hyde (Fad), Matt Mulder (Digital Kitchen) and others will screen recent projects, discuss creative and technical process, and answer questions. The program includes a look at the making of trailers for the Sundance Film Festival and Seattle International Film Festival.
This event is free for NWFF and AIGA members.

March 10 Sat at 6:30, 9:30pm

LIGHTER THAN AIR: THE FILMS OF JAQUES RIVETTE

IMPORTED 35MM PRINT

THE GANG OF FOUR

(Jacques Rivette, France, 1989, 35mm, 140 min.)

Rivette Series Sponsored by Center for West European Studies at The Henry M. Jackson School at U of W and Seattle Alliance Francaise

Four aspiring young actresses and their seasoned coach (Bulle Ogier) are pulled into one of Rivette’s fantasy-realm plots, this time involving national terrorism. While the film interweaves a mystery plot with rehearsals of plays by Marivaux, Corneille, Racine and Moliere, most of its three-hour narrative quietly observes the quartet’s daily lives. Typical of Rivette, essential truths are revealed through metaphor as the four women learn the rules vital to their adult lives.

March 11 Sun at 1, 7pm

LIGHTER THAN AIR: THE FILMS OF JAQUES RIVETTE

LA BELLE NOISEUSE

(Jacques Rivette, France, 1991, 35mm, 238 min.)

Rivette Series Sponsored by Center for West European Studies at The Henry M. Jackson School at U of W and Seattle Alliance Francaise

Shown with 15 min intermission.

Film will be introduced by Ph.D. Candidate Fabrizio Cilento, U of W.

With a story loosely based on Balzac’s LE CHEF D’OEUVRE INCONNU, LA BELLE NOISEUSE re-introduced Rivette to the wider art-house audience. Edouard Frenhofer (Michel Piccoli in a career-defining role) plays an ageing artist who long ago abandoned the title painting, for which his wife (Jane Birkin) was the model. Despite initial reluctance, he is persuaded to resume work on his masterpiece, now using a young painter’s girlfriend (Emmanuelle Béart) as the model. A stately, sexy rumination on the process and real-life effects of artistic creation and collaboration, it is also the only Rivette film focused primarily on a man.

March 15 Thurs at 8pm

SPECIAL PRESENTATION:
JAMES BROWN LIVES!

Are you really ready for some super-dynamite soul? Introducing the world's greatest entertainer, Mr. Dynamite, the amazing Mr. Please Please himself, the hardest-working man in show business, ladies and gentlemen, the star of the show, JAAAAMES BROWWWN! News reports and photos of his Apollo Theater wake were not enough to process the recent passing of this great American entertainer. Brown's genius never revealed itself so powerfully than in his live performances. Join us as we raise a glass to the Godfather of Soul and present a collection of great 1960s performance footage, including his legendary, rarely seen 1968 Boston Garden show.

March 16 Fri at 6:30, 9:30pm

LIGHTER THAN AIR: THE FILMS OF JAQUES RIVETTE

IMPORTED 35MM PRINT

HAUT BAS FRAGILE

(Jacques Rivette, France, 1995, 35mm, 169 min.)

Rivette Series Sponsored by Center for West European Studies at The Henry M. Jackson School at U of W and Seattle Alliance Francaise

Paying tribute to MGMs low-budget musicals of the 1950s, specifically Stanley Donenas GIVE A GIRL A BREAK, HAUT BAS FRAGILE is a work which lovingly defies all expectations of the genre. The film follows three women who are each at a turning point in their lives. One has just awoken from a five-year coma, the second is trying to escape her criminal boyfriend and the third seeks her long-lost birth parents. They dance about the Paris streets before the film makes a surprising, genre-bending transformation. Many of the songs performed in the film were written by the actors themselves and infuse the film with a seemingly incongruous pairing of verite style and fantastic plotting. Rivette glories in the summery settings, the vivaciousness of his actresses, and the sheer joy of narrative in this most diverting of divertissements.

MARCH 16-22 Fri-Thurs at 7, 9pm

SEATTLE PREMIERE

CLIMATES

(Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Turkey, 2006, 35mm, 101 min.)

Compared by some to the work of John Cassavetes or Michelangelo Antonioni, the mournfully droll Turkish analyst of male melancholy Nuri Bilge Ceylan (DISTANT) moves metaphorically and meteorologically from the warmth of western Turkey to the snowy cold of its eastern border in a visually stunning tale of a couple's break-up and its aftermath. The director himself plays the lead role of Isa, a man who selfishly splits with his girlfriend (played by Ebru Ceylan, the director's wife) and then travels across Turkey as he comes to terms with his need for her. CLIMATES also marks a step forward in the quickly evolving world of digital filmmaking, as Ceylan employs the unique textures and possibilities of the digital image to create subtle emotional effects.
In Turkish with English subtitles.

WATCH THE TRAILER

"Brings to mind Antonioni at his peak! Moments like the two-minute shot of a woman quietly weeping are sublime enough to sustain the belief that you're watching a cineaste in full command of his art." —David Fear, TIME OUT, NEW YORK

MARCH 17 Sat at 4pm FREE

ITVS Community Cinema and Northwest Film Forum Present:

BLACK GOLD

(Marc Francis & Nick Francis, UK/USA, 2006, DVD, 78 min.)

Cosponsored by Langston Hughes African American Film Festival and KBCS 91.3 FM

Starbucks doesn't want you to see this movie! Multinational companies have made coffee the second most valuable trading commodity in the world. But as westerners revel in designer lattes, impoverished Ethiopian coffee growers suffer the bitter taste of injustice. Tracing one man's fight for fair trade, BLACK GOLD is an eye-opening expos̩ of the eighty-billion-dollar coffee industry.
Admission free with RSVP to rsvp @ communitycinemaseattle.org or (800) 930-6060.

March 17 Sat at 6:30, 9:30pm

LIGHTER THAN AIR: THE FILMS OF JAQUES RIVETTE

VA SAVOIR

(Jacques Rivette, France, 2001, 35mm, 154 min.

Rivette Series Sponsored by Center for West European Studies at The Henry M. Jackson School at U of W and Seattle Alliance Francaise

In his most commercially successful film in the US, a Luigi Pirandello theater production and Rivette’s beloved Paris form the backdrop to a warm roundelay of six characters falling in and out of love.

"Serene and witty, it's a cerebral farce in which doors are for-ever opening and closing, sometimes on another world," writes J. Hoberman in THE VILLAGE VOICE.

March 18 Sun at 6:30, 9:30pm

LIGHTER THAN AIR: THE FILMS OF JAQUES RIVETTE

IMPORTED 35MM PRINT

THE STORY OF MARIE AND JULIEN

(Jacques Rivette, France, 2003, 35mm, 151 min.)

Rivette Series Sponsored by Center for West European Studies at The Henry M. Jackson School at U of W and Seattle Alliance Francaise

Film will be intorduced by Asst. Prof. James Tweedie, U of W.

A fantasy film for grown-ups and incurable romantics, THE STORY OF MARIE AND JULIEN follows the haunted love affair of two isolated Parisians, but its ghosts and phantoms extend far beyond the screen. Taking its cues from Cocteau’s poetic fantasies and Poe’s uneasy tremors (there’s even a cat named Nevermore), Rivette’s not-so-straightforward narrative is alternately told from the point of view of the solid, time-fixated Julien, who fixes clocks for profit and blackmails a mysterious woman for fun, and the ethereal Marie, his obscure object of desire. Their dreamlike meeting, trance-like living and legend-like loving at first seem romantic, but soon a certain strangeness fills the air, as if some events have been lived or told before. Anchored by the earthy performances of Jerzy Radziwilowicz and Emmanuelle Béart as the star-crossed couple, this ephemeral tale hints that all love affairs are haunted by the loves that have happened before and adds the Rivettian idea that the same is true of all stories.

MARCH 20 Tues at 7pm

SPECIAL PRESENTATION

An Evening with John Jeffcoat

FREE FOR MEMBERS / $3 GENERAL

Presented with support from Seattles Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs

Join Seattle filmmaker John Jeffcoat as he shares stories of his experience making the documentary film BOLLYWOOD AND ME (currently in production) and his debut narrative feature film, OUTSOURCED, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and recently won the John Schlesinger Award for Outstanding First Feature at the Palm Springs International Film Festival. Many of Jeffcoats experiences making the documentary inspired the writing of OUTSOURCED. He will talk about crossing the line from documentary to narrative work and the experience of working overseas, as well as present sneak peaks at his films before their Northwest premieres.

MORE ON JOHN JEFFCOAT

MARCH 22 Thurs at 8pm

THURSDAYS WITH BECKETT

SEATTLE PREMIERE

ENDGAME

(Alan Mandell, USA/France, 1988,16mm, 96 min.)

SAN QUENTIN DRAMA WORKSHOP Founder RICK CLUCHEY in attendance

"Endgame" is the term used in chess to describe an ending where the outcome is already known. In this, his favorite play, avid chess fan Beckett draws a parallel between the chess endgame and the final stages of life. Death is the final outcome, regardless of how a person plays the game. The relationship between the characters, which alternates between slave/master and son/father, is mutually beneficial as well as destructive. The film was shot on 16mm color film and released in both color and black-and-white versions. Beckett’s chosen aesthetic was the latter, the version NWFF presents here.

March 23-25 Fri-Sun at 5pm

A FESTIVAL OF FAIRYTALES

NEW 35MM PRINT, NOT AVAILABLE ON VIDEO

THE PIED PIPER

(Jacques Demy, France, 1972, 35mm, 90 min.)

This rarely screened 1970s cult musical oddity by Jacques Demy (THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG) offers a dark retelling of the Pied Piper of Hamelin legend. The cast is headed by two English pop-culture icons of the era: Donovan (who not only sings some lovely songs, but composed the compelling soundtrack) and OLIVER child star Jack Wild. Donovan plays the titular minstrel, hired to rid the town of its plague-carrying rats. Wild is apprentice to the town's outcast, a Jewish alchemist. A strong supporting cast of great British character actors include Donald Pleasence as the venal mayor, Richard Lester movie stalwart Roy Kinnear as the duplicitous burgermeister and a young John Hurt. Demy's arresting visualization of his 14th-century setting recalls the Brothers Grimm—a squalid, superstitious place beset by plague and bad government, ill-served by a corrupt, anti-Semitic church.
Recommended for ages 10 and up.

MARCH 23-29 Fri-Thurs at 6:30, 8, 9:30pm

SEATTLE PREMIERE

MATTHEW BARNEY: NO RESTRAINT

(Alison Chernik, USA, 2006, DV-CAM, 70 min.)

Sculptor, performance artist and filmmaker Matthew Barney has produced some of the more striking images in contemporary cinema. This beautifully shot documentary follows the creation of Barney's recent film project, DRAWING RESTRAINT 9—his first creative collaboration with Icelandic musical innovator (and romantic partner), Björk. Director Alison Chernick finds the two aboard a massive Japanese whaling ship off the coast of Nagasaki, along with 45,000 pounds of petroleum jelly, spectacular costumes and a slightly befuddled Japanese crew. Mixing verit̩ footage of Barney's unusual filmmaking process with photographs and film clips from his previous CREMASTER and DRAWING RESTRAINT series, NO RESTRAINT presents a very real and accessible portrait of one of the most groundbreaking and celebrated American artists of the past decade.

"Absorbing! Those who savor Matthew Barney's beguiling films will relish watching the creative process that produces such cryptic, mysterious raptures." —TIME OUT, NEW YORK

WATCH THE TRAILER

March 26 Mon at 8pm

NWFF AND THIRD EYE CINEMA PRESENT:

LAST REFUGE FOR THE SENSES

Film/videomaker and itinerant psychoacousticgeographer, Ben Russell rides into town to present a program of post-psychedelic noise and light from Providence, RI's wildly creative DIY art, film and music scene. Equal parts image-maker, inventor, and escape artist, Russell has created works screened at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival and the Museum of Modern Art as well as such exotic locales as Tokyo, Cologne, Ghent, Rotterdam and Iowa City. He is founder of the Magic Lantern Cinema www.magiclanterncinema.com in Providence, RI, a showcase for innovative experimental film, video and performance work.

"We've got Noise Band Concert Footage, Direct Dumpster-Dive Animation, History Through the Eyes of Bats, Cut-Up Eyeballs, Single Frame Collectives, Puppet Chaos, Analog Transcendence and So Much More. This is the cinema of deliverance, the theater of psychic hearts and radical love—bleeding your eyes and ears clean of the sorrow of the everyday, swelling your body full of hope for the possibilities of today." —Ben Russell

MORE ON BEN RUSSELL

MARCH 29 Thurs at 8pm

THURSDAYS WITH BECKETT

WAITING FOR GODOT

(Walter Asmus, USA/France,1987, BetaSP, 137 min.)

Film will be introduced by Richard E.T. White, Theater Dept. Chair at Cornish College of the Arts

The first American staging of WAITING FOR GODOT was in 1956 for a Miami audience expecting slapstick. Unfortunately, the play immediately bombed. A year later it was performed in California’s maximum-security prison at San Quentin, and the 1,400 inmates who viewed it reportedly loved it—especially empathizing with “the wait.’’ The prison newspaper awarded it a glowing review. The production inspired the San Quentin Drama Workshop, and it can be said San Quentin is where GODOT got its actual American launch. Thirty years later, an SQDW-performed version was captured on film in Paris. Another twenty years on, NWFF is pleased to present this work to local audiences.

"Perhaps the best GODOT of all time." –NEWSWEEK

MARCH 30-APRIL 5 Fri-Thurs at 7, 9pm

NEW 35MM CINEMASCOPE PRINT

TWO OR THREE THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER

(Jean-Luc Godard, France, 1966, 35mm, 90 min.)

Considered by many critics and scholars to be Godard's masterpiece, TWO OR THREE THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER has not been available in North America for over a decade. The director based his film on a newspaper report about suburban housewives turning to prostitution to pay for the latest consumer goods. Punctuated by looming CinemaScope close-ups of soap boxes and everyday items—the "cosmos in a coffee cup" sequence is legendary—Godard's vision of a world in which "dead objects are always alive and live people are already dead" focuses on the daily routine of a housewife-cum-prostitute who moves with studied indifference between husband, pimp and john, kitchen, cafe and whorehouse. The "her" of the title is also Paris, which was undergoing traumatic "urban renewal" at the time of the film's production. A pivotal film in Godard's career and in the intellectual and political life of France, TWO OR THREE THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER speaks as acutely and movingly about our own time as it does about the 1960's.

In French with English subtitles.

"One of the top ten films of the twentieth century." —J. Hoberman, VILLAGE VOICE

MORE ON JEAN-LUC GODARD

APRIL 3-4 Tues-Wed at 7, 9pm

CLANDESTINE TRUTH: THE CANADIAN NEW WAVE

LE CHAT DANS LE SAC

(Gilles Groulx, Canada, 1964, BetaSP, 74 min.)

Seminal to the development of Quebecois and Canadian cinema, LE CHAT DANS LE SAC is seldom seen outside Quebec. The film recounts the problematic romance between intellectual journalist Claude and his Anglo-Jewish actress girlfriend, Barbara. Combining Brechtian techniques via Godard and a quasi-documentary feel, LE CHAT is visually beautiful, intellectually incisive and probing. Not only does the film clarify the relationship between the emerging Qu̩b̩cois cinema of the early Sixties and the French New Wave, but it also pre-figures many of the debates that would consume Quebecois intellectuals for the coming decades, presenting them in an irresistibly innovative framework. No wonder LE CHAT is revered by younger Quebecois filmmakers and everyone else who's ever seen it. With a score by John Coltrane.
In French with English subtitles.

"Essential...as important to le Qu̩b̩cois as its contemporary NOBODY WAVED GOODBYE was to English-Canadian filmmakers." —TAKE ONE

APRIL 6-8 Fri-Sun at 8pm

$10 MEMBERS / $15 GENERAL

VIS-A-VIS SOCIETY LIVE!
WE ARE YOU: A STATISTICAL MUSICAL

Drs. Ink and Owning of the Vis-A-Vis Society (a.k.a. Rachel Kessler and Sierra Nelson of the Typing Explosion) scientifically examine the highs and lows of human life in this interactive, interdisciplinary show. Featuring field data on secret songs, secret dances and the emotional life of coats, as well as research presentations using 16mm educational films, tear-drinking moths and live audience surveys, the doctors will clog, graph and sing each night's findings to statistically present the hidden life of you to you.

ADD VIS-A-VIS SOCIETY TO YOUR MYSPACE PAGE

APRIL 10-11 Tues-Wed at 7, 9pm

CLANDESTINE TRUTH: THE CANADIAN NEW WAVE

NOBODY WAVED GOOD-BYE

(Don Owen, Canada, 1964, 35mm, 80 min.)

Young filmmaker Don Owen's assignment from the National Film Board of Canada was to make a half-hour docudrama on juvenile delinquency. On the sly, he turned the project into a feature that helped launch modern Anglo-Canadian cinema. Peter Kastner is Peter, a middle-class suburban Toronto teenager whose youthful rebellion against adult values lands him in trouble at home, at school and with the law. Julie Biggs is Julie, his likeminded girlfriend. Owen's rough and ready film, shot with a lightweight, hand-held camera, had a fresh, improvised, intimate feel and a documentary-like immediacy that charmed audiences.

“A remarkable film you should not miss!” NEW YORK HERALD TRIBUNE
“A marvelous movie! A story commensurate with THE CATCHER IN THE RYE!" NEW YORKER MAGAZINE

APRIL 12 Thurs at 7pm

THREE DOLLAR BILL CINEMA PRESENTS SCANDALOUS!: a series of controversial queer films from the 1950s.

TEA & SYMPATHY

(Vincente Minnelli, 1956)

Sponsored by Three Dollar Bill Cinema

A sensitive outsider at an all-boys prep school struggles to fit in among his jock peers and prove his "manhood" with help from the headmaster's wife. Deborah Kerr and Leif Erickson reprised their roles from the hit Broadway play for this colorful adaptation directed by Vincente Minnelli.

TICKETS $10/General, $9/Three Dollar Bill Cinema members
SERIES PASS [three films] $25