Walking Against The Wind

Sep 27, 2013

Brendan Flynn - Seattle, WA
2013 - Blu-ray - 90 min

Local Sightings opening night!

Opening night party at 10pm!

Seattle filmmaker Brendan Flynn's debut feature, Walking Against The Wind, uses brooding black and white cinematography to mirror the stark contrasts and the carnivalesque lower depths of life. Frank (played with astonishing authenticity by Tom Ricciardelli) lives in world of lifelessness and disappointment. His day job as a mime isn't working out as planned and his wife's sudden death leaves him and his daughter Aspen to fend for themselves. While pursuing a day job at a restaurant, Frank tries to make ends meet. When his sister-in-law arrives unannounced to help plan memorial arrangements, his life takes some unexpected turns. 

The story is wonderfully (ridiculously) minimal, banal even, in its archetypal contours, but Flynn's film often seems to crest and climax, creating hypnotic suspension that is perfectly expressed by the serial soundtrack (brilliantly designed by composer Ian Becker). Flynn's camera is often not stationary as it tracks with delicious slowness, revealing, reframing and often surprising the viewer. Bleak, mysterious and not without a certain gallows humor, Walking Against The Wind might be Seattle’s cinematic discovery of the year.  

SPECIAL OPENING NIGHT INSTALLATION

The Seattle Experimental Animation Team presents Bloodbath & Beyond: The Little Shop of Animated Horrors. This SEAT collective film, based on the 1960 film The Little Shop of Horrors, retells the classic tale of a plant that came from outer space and got a taste for blood.

For this collective film, SEAT split the original film into sections and approached the project in the classic style of the game “exquisite corpse.” Each animator took a 9 minute segment of the film and condensed it into 1 or 2 minutes of animation.

This film will be screening in an installation, in the lobby of the Film Forum, during opening night of Local Sightings. Do you dare to stick your head inside the Audrey 2 and enjoy the sights!?

Read more about SEAT and Seattle’s thriving animation community!

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