Northwest Film Forum

Max Bill – The Master’s Vision

Director in attendance!

Co-Presented by University of Washington

Feb 02

(Erich Schmid, 2008, Switzerland, 35mm, 93 min)

This film about Max Bill (1908-1994) moves between the dynamic fields of art, aesthetics and politics. Max Bill was probably the most important Swiss artist of the 20th century and the most famous student to come out of the legendary Bauhaus in Dessau. He was an ardent anti-fascist and all his avant-garde work as an artist, sculptor, architect and typographer showed a social responsibility and environmental awareness right through his life. His views have become incredibly topical.

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A Good Man

Northwest Premiere!
Special introduction by former Bill T. Jones dancer Catherine Cabeen

Feb 09

(Gordon Quinn, Bob Hercules, 2011, USA, 86 min)

Commissioned by the Ravinia Festival, renowned choreographer Bill T. Jones sets out to create a contemporary dance piece in honor of Abraham Lincoln’s bicentennial. In a documentary that covers two years of artistic process, A Good Man portrays Jones grappling to express the legacies of Abraham Lincoln, the Civil War and slavery. In a film both personal and political, the viewer is privileged to watch Jones create movement out of the contradictions of a “post-race” society.

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We Can't Go Home Again

Seattle premiere!

Friday show free for members
Special introduction by author David Spaner on Saturday (beginning at 6:30)

Feb 10 - Feb 16

(Nicolas Ray, 1973-1979, USA, Blu-ray, 90 min)

On the occasion of Ray’s centenary, we are proud to present the most complete version of this one-of-a-kind film in a stunning digital restoration undertaken by Ray’s widow, Susan Ray. Made by the one-eyed legendary director and his students during his stint as a film professor at State University of New York, Binghamton, under abysmal financial conditions, the film records Ray’s groundbreaking use of multiple images as a way of telling more than one story simultaneously, and of colorization as a way to heighten emotional expression. 

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Andrew Bird: Fever Year

Director In Attendance
Followed by an opening night party!

Feb 17

(Xan Aranda, 2011, USA, HD, 81 min

Filmed in the final months of Andrew Bird’s grueling 165-date tour, Andrew Bird: Fever Year emerges as a concert documentary as much about Bird’s creative process as the performances shown. Featuring inside looks into Bird’s studio barn and electronic looping process, rehearsals and revision, the film delicately portrays how Bird makes music.

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Free Land

Director in attendance!
Co-presented by Longhouse Media

Feb 18

(Minda Martin, 2010, USA, 62 min)

Beginning with her own childhood experience of relocation, filmmaker Minda Martin traces itinerancy throughout her family history, beginning with the forced Cherokee relocation of the 1800s. With found footage, historical documents and personal interviews, Free Landbinds together questions of ancestry, home, land, culture and identity. Lauded for its powerful sound design, this memoir documentary not only tells a heart-wrenching story, but tells it with profound craftsmanship. 

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The Dish and the Spoon

Director in attendance!

Feb 19

(Alison Bagnall, 2011, USA, Blu-ray, 92 min)

Directed and co-written by Alison Bagnall, best known as a co-writer of Buffalo 66, The Dish and the Spoon tells the story of two unlikely friends. Fleeing in her pajamas after finding out her husband is cheating on her, protagonist Rose, played by Greta Gerwig, meets a teenage boy in a winter beach town. With nowhere else and no one else to turn to, the pair forms a friendship. 

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Okie Noodling II

Director in attendance!

Feb 26

(Bradley Beesley, USA, Blu-ray, 68 min)

A documentary sequel? You read correctly! Bradley Beesley follows up his beloved portrait of "noodling," the world’s wildest sport, returning home to Oklahoma to see how the sport has evolved over the last decade. The film explores the legal issues and commercialization of this once backwoods practice. Beesley revisits the colorful original cast and meets some new and eccentric fishermen en route to the largest noodling tournament in the nation.

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California Company Town

Director in attendance!

Mar 02

(Lee Anne Schmitt, 2008, 16mm, 76 min)

Over the past 125 years, dozens of corporations such as Occidental Petroleum, Sierra Pacific and Borax Energy have bought huge parcels of land to establish their private operations, which included stores, schools and homes for their workers. In doing so, the companies superseded their roles as employers to become the towns' landlords, merchants and educators as a way to control and placate their employees. However, when the profits stopped rolling in the companies sold out or abandoned the properties, leaving detritus: industrial warehouses, dilapidated homes and businesses, clear-cut, sterile land—and the occasional tourist trap. The bleached tone of the footage, meditative shots of wrecked landscapes and the deadpan narration add to the film's solemnity.

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Short Films of Lee Anne Schmitt: Program 1

Director in attendance!

Mar 03

Program includes: The Wash (Lee Lynch and Lee Anne Schmitt, 2005, Super 8, 20min); Three Stories (Lee Anne Schmitt, 2011, 16mm, 14 min); Bower's Cave (Lee Anne Schmitt, 2010, 16mm, 20 min); Las Vegas (Lee Anne Schmitt, 2000, DigiBeta, 7 min).

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Short Films of Lee Anne Schmitt: Program 2

Director in attendance!

Mar 03

Program includes: Awake And Sing (Lee Anne Schmitt, 2003, 16mm, 42 min); Nightingale (Lee Anne Schmitt, 2002, 16 mm, 14 min).

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The Last Buffalo Hunt

Seattle Premiere!
Director in attendance!

Mar 04

(Lee Anne Schmitt, 2011, USA, Blu-ray, 78 min)

After a decade working together on evocative pieces such as Bower's Caveand The Wash, Lee Lynch and Schmit have released The Last Buffalo Hunt. This documentary is the result of a five-year observation of the last wild buffalo herds in the south of Utah. Schmitt and Lynch follow the trail of a hunter who is in charge of selecting and controlling the number of this species. The impressive landscape of the Henry Mountains stands in contrast with the town of Hanksville, with its one gas station, casino and motels. Through its images of America’s West, The Last Buffalo Hunt questions the authenticity of its myths and the basis of its ideologies.

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How to Make a Book with Steidl

Special Guest Jayme Yen, Graphic Designer for Henry Art Museum, at Friday 7pm show
Seattle Premiere!

Mar 09 - Mar 15

(Gereon Wetzel and Jörg Adolph, 2010, Germany, Blu-ray, 88 min)

For those of us who love the sensuality of a physical book—its heft, the whispered flick of a turned page, the comfortably musty smell of a long-loved library—How to Make a Book with Steidl is a timely celebration of a fading art form. Directors Wetzel and Adolph accompany German art-book publisher Gerhard Steidl on a trip to America to observe his close collaboration with artists such as Jeff Wall, Ed Ruscha, Joel Sternfeld and the usually reclusive Robert Frank. It's a fascinating and privileged look behind the curtains of a rarely seen aspect of the art world.

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Gerhard Richter Painting

Seattle Premiere!
Special guest Sara Krajewski, Curator at Henry Art Museum, at Friday 7pm show

Mar 23 - Mar 29

(Corinna Belz, 2011, Germany, 97 min)

Gerhard Richter, one of the most significant contemporary artists of our times, granted filmmaker Corinna Belz access to his studio in the spring and summer of 2009 as he worked on a series of large abstract paintings.Gerhard Richter Painting offers rare insights into the artist’s process with a quiet, fly-on-the-wall perspective. The paintings themselves become the protagonists. Gerhard Richter Painting is the penetrating portrait of an artist at work—and a fascinating film about the art of seeing.

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