Anytime during this cool, cloudy spring would have been a nice time for a film festival, wouldn’t you say? You could go into a dark theater and not feel guilty about missing the sunlight, the gardening or your daily round of power-walking.
But the Seattle International Film Festival has arranged itself around Memorial Day weekend and thereafter, which apparently has some significance within the global film festival calendar but makes no sense whatsoever for anyone interested in the light.
Whatever: SIFF keeps making money every year, keeps getting bigger, keeps adding new audiences. I guess I can work on my tan in July.
Since 1976, the Seattle festival has been offering a cafeteria-style menu of international cinema; nowadays, it’s the largest and longest film festival in the United States, with more than 250 feature films and a hundred or so shorts.
It kicked off officially Thursday night with the British film “Son of Rambow,” and the rest of the onslaught will be scattered across a batch of different theaters in Seattle and Bellevue, from now until June 17.
What’s it look like this year? Well, chaos, of course. That’s too many movies to get a real handle on, and the character of a festival often doesn’t emerge until it’s over. So here are a few guesses (see accompanying article for previews of the coming week).
Last year’s festival lacked a big tribute, something that had become a SIFF tradition. Not so this year: The first week brings a visit by Anthony Hopkins, whose long career is well worth honoring. That’s Wednesday at the Egyptian Theatre, to be followed by a screening of “The Remains of the Day,” one of Hopkins’ 1990s triumphs. He’s also directed a very eccentric-sounding film, “Slipstream,” which will be shown in the fest.
Visitors come almost every day, from unknown indie directors to mid-level actors (Adam Goldberg, for instance, with “2 Days in Paris”). Directors Robert Benton (“Kramer vs. Kramer”) and Julien Temple (with a new documentary about the Clash’s Joe Strummer) will drop by for conversation, and invariably a few surprise guests are added along the way.
Tonight, SIFF welcomes Lisa Gerrard, formerly of Dead Can’t Dance, whose otherworldly, often language-less singing has been featured in a number of films, famously “Gladiator” (there’s also a new documentary about her, “Sanctuary: Lisa Gerrard,” that tells her story).
Speaking of documentaries, if you’re not already a fan of the current golden age of documentary film, going to SIFF could turn you into one. Along with a clutch of music-related docs, there are features on Darfur (“The Devil Came on Horseback”), the space race (“In the Shadow of the Moon,” “The Fever of ‘57”), a unique soap (“Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soapbox”), postmodern philosophy and movies (“The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema”), and Jessica Yu’s unclassifiable study of maleness, ancient and modern (“Protagonist”).
SIFF also has documentaries with local connections, including two surveys of the nerd-o-sphere, “The King of Kong” (about a Redmond man who dreamed of beating the longstanding high score in Donkey Kong) and “Monster Camp” (a look inside the Seattle chapter of a role-playing game society).
Other locally spawned features include “Outsourced,” a comedy about shipping jobs to India, and “Cthulhu,” an H.P. Lovecraft adaptation. And from the archives, one with a local slant: the 1933 hit movie “Tugboat Annie,” which had location shooting around Puget Sound and the Pike Place Market. The unlikely box-office team of Marie Dressler and Wallace Beery co-star.
The other archival selections include a return visit from film noir aficionado Eddie Muller, whose noir double-bill was one of the highlights of SIFF ‘06. Muller will show Joseph H. Lewis’ “The Big Combo,” which is one of the essential noirs, and “The Damned Don’t Cry,” an overheated Joan Crawford-a-rama. A quartet of swashbucklers on Saturday afternoons will provide an answer to “Pirates of the Caribbean” overload.
Silent films return, with a couple of rarities: a fascinating-sounding Australian film from 1919, “The Sentimental Bloke,” and Anthony Asquith’s “A Cottage on Dartmoor,” a 1929 suspense picture (Asquith was the great-uncle of Helena Bonham Carter, if you must know). And the classic 1927 film “Berlin: Symphony of a City,” will turn up with live music by Seattle band Kinski.
SIFF tends to be busy with sidebar events: the Secret Festival (which requires a special pass and an oath of silence about the films that are screened), Alternate Cinema (a grouping of more experimental works), Emerging Masters (singling out a foursome of moviemakers on the cusp of something), and packages of short films.
New this year is an emphasis called Planet Cinema, which will flag certain movies as focusing on the environment, and encourage discussion and whatnot around that subject.
More discussion happens in the Forum events, with classes for filmmakers and would-be filmmakers, a “case study” on the casting of the Oscar-winning “Crash,” and a panel of film critics wondering about their relevance in the age of the blogger. And much much more.
As for the bulk of the fest, the giant pool of international films, it looks like the usual grab-bag: some American premieres, some well-reviewed pictures from other festivals, a smattering of big titles bowing early (“Knocked Up” and the animated “Surf’s Up”), and a whole lot of movies from everywhere. It’s a crapshoot, with quite a few misses strewn among the hits – one reason SIFF could afford to slim down a bit.
The featured country this year is Germany, on the heels of the Oscar win for “The Lives of Others.” This makes sense, as there’s been a renewed energy in recent German films and much talk of a Berlin film movement. We’ll see.
The fest has added a new venue this year, SIFF Cinema, at McCaw Hall. Other hard-working venues include the Egyptian, Harvard Exit, Neptune, Pacific Place, and Lincoln Square (in Bellevue) theaters.
If the size of SIFF intimidates neophytes, it shouldn’t. There are many ways of approaching the festival, including walking up to the box office and buying a ticket – although advance planning is a good idea, given the number of sellouts. Different-sized passes are available, too, which can save money. You can check out the calendar, with updates, at www.seattlefilm.org.
Anthony Hopkins, shown with Emma Thompson in “The Remains of the Day,” is the tribute artist at this year’s Seattle International Film Festival.
“Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soapbox.”
“Monster Camp.”
Outsourced.”
“Cthulhu.”
“Tugboat Annie.”
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