Northwest Film Forum

At the Paramount Theatre!
Co-Presented by Seattle Theatre Group

STG presents Trader Joe’s Silent Movie Mondays First Academy Awards at The Paramount Theatre featuring TEMPEST on January 23, STREET ANGEL on January 30, LAST COMMAND on February 6 and WINGS on February 13, 2012. This all-classic film series, First Oscars, is accompanied by live music from the historic Mighty Wurlitzer organ, one of the last three remaining organs of its kind to reside in its original environment, played by critically acclaimed organist Jim Riggs.

Interest in the Academy Awards has always run high, though not at today's fever pitch. The first ceremony was a black-tie banquet that drew 270 people to the Blossom Room of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel and received little media attention. There were no "and the envelope, please" moments as the recipients were announced three months earlier - quite a difference from today.

The Academy’s first president, silent film actor Douglas Fairbanks, handed out the statuettes to winners, who included Janet Gaynor for Best Actress, for three different films including STREET ANGEL. German-born Emil Jannings won for Best Actor for twon films including THE LAST COMMAND. Best Picture honors went to WINGS, the World War I drama directed by William Wellman. Even art direction had its own category, with TEMPEST, a lavish and beautifully produced Hollywood confection. While the films that won that year remain well regarded, many have virtually disappeared from sight. This silent film series First Academy Awards returns these statue winners to their original glory by presenting them once again on the big screen! 

"'Don't Expect Too Much' may well have been the most advanced and audacious film of the era! The fact that it has been invisible for decades and is only now becoming available makes a viewing—and its release—all the more essential. To quote a now familiar line: It isn’t that Nicholas Ray was ahead of his time; he was in step with it when others were behind it." —Richard Brody, The New Yorker

“Cinema at the end of its tether” —Jonathan Rosenbaum

FEBRUARY 14–16, TUESDAY–THURSDAY AT 8PM

Jonathan Rosenbaum suggested that, “Movie trilogies can be created by either filmmakers or critics.” In the case of Abbas Kiarostami's Koker Trilogy it's the latter. Kiarostami denies the connection, yet the three films are united by their exquisitely poised balancing of fiction and reality, opening the medium to new formal experiences that have now become par for the world cinema course. Made between 1987 and 1994, these films portrayed a layer of Iran that had remained untouched by politics. They were created as tributes to the preciousness of life and shifted the focus to the everyday and the mundane. Floating between reality and fiction, they explored universal concepts such as innocence, courage, desire, belief, life and death.

FEBRUARY 17-23

We know that for audiences, film festivals can be overwhelming experiences; too many films, too many decisions, so much diversity, not enough time. We also know that even though Seattle has dozens of festivals, the experience for filmmakers is that too many films slip through the cracks. We’ve decided to make it easy and bring some unrecognized gems to the spotlight with American.Film.Week., a festival of bold American films, offering you just one choice a night. Hailing from Albuquerque to Philadelphia and all points in between the program offers up some of our favorite domestic pleasures, preceded by recent amazing local short films. 

Special support provided by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences 
Support for the project provided in part by the National Endowment for the Arts

September 2011 - May 2012

Live At The Film Forum artists seem to be drinking some truth telling serum in our third commissioned series expanding the field of film and video art from the single screen to multi-screen, immersive, performance-based live-projections. Once again we asked these artists to expand their practice and activate the live context of watching, transforming cinema's historical and cultural architectures of reception into sites of cinematic experience that are performative. The results, centering in on a theme of truth, or the search there of, will amaze, astound, and inspire awe. 

This year's lineup includes the pop-musical musings of The French Project, comfort-food choreography by the multi-talented Alice Gosti, sensory dance instrumentation from Ezra Dickinson and Paurl Walsh and a new statistical musical from the Film Forum's longtime poetic pals The Vis-A-Vis Society. The 2010-11 season promises to be fresh, exciting and, as always, a little daring.

Season Passes $40/Film Forum members, $50/General
(Choose from Thursday Opening Nights Package, Friday Nights Package or Saturday Closing Nights Package)

Individual Tickets $12/Film Forum members, $15/General

"consistently innovative and engaging" —Zee Grega

Sponsored by The Stranger
Special support provided by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences 
Support for the project provided in part by the National Endowment for the Arts

MARCH 2–4, FRIDAY–SUNDAY AT 8 (SHORT FILMS 1 screens at 6 on SAT)

Seattle Premiere!

Sponsored by the Goethe-Institut and TheSunBreak.com

Two years after the wonderful British crime series Red Riding Trilogy comes another trilogy of intersecting crime stories from overseas. This time we take you to Germany, under the direction of Berlin filmmakers Christian Petzold (Yella, Jerichow), Dominik Graf (Germany 09) and Christoph Hochhäusler (The City Below, Germany 09). Defined by Hochhäusler as "sibling films rather than a trilogy," these are three separate-but-linked takes on the same manhunt story. Graf’s Don’t Follow Me Around tells the story of a police psychologist who meets old acquaintances while investigating a case. In Petzold’s Beats Being Dead, a young man doing alternative national service experiences a love story without a future. And in Christoph Hochhäusler’s One Minute of Darkness, an indefatigable policeman hunting an escaped prisoner begins to doubt false certainties. Three films, three styles, three exciting approaches, variations and analyses.

Special ticket price: $15/Film Forum members, $25/general 

This special series commemorates the work of three notable experimental and underground filmmakers who left us in 2011. Those in the program include campy, low-budget filmmaker George Kuchar,  experimental animator Richard Breer and Jonas Mekas under-appreciated brother Adolfas.  Films screen in their original 16mm format.  

MAY 4–27, FRIDAY–SUNDAY

The biennial Festival of Preservation from the UCLA Film and Television Archive showcases their masterful restoration and preservation achievements with a broad sampling of the works they have rescued over the past few years, preserving cinema’s heritage, allowing us to experience cinema as it was meant to be seen—and heard—in glorious 35mm prints! Among the pristine prizes from the Festival of Preservation is a Cecil B. DeMille epic, vintage episodes of This Is Your Life, Robert Altman's little-seen masterpiece Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, a Paul Strand-photographed docudrama, early Douglas Sirk in blazing black-and-white, silent star Leatrice Joy in a cross-dressing role, Zero Mostel in Waiting for Godot and the premiere of a resurrected gem, Barbara Loden’s Wanda. Described by The Los Angeles Times as “the city’s most surprising, most stimulating, most invigorating film event,” the festival now heads to Seattle! 

"Forget Blu-Ray discs and plasma TVs.  For true cinephiles, nothing lets a movie really sing like a pristine celluloid print.  In which case, UCLA's Festival of Preservation is a veritable opera." —Matt Sussman, Flavorpill