Not only do love watching movies here in the Northwest, we love making them, too. Local Sightings is an entire festival of Northwest films, brought to you by Northwest Film Forum.
The festival kicks off this Friday night, October 3, with a package of short films at 7pm, followed by an opening night party at 9. As is appropriate for an opening night, Friday’s package is entitled “Stories of Reach”. In Seattle director Curtis Taylor’s Bachianas No. 5, three women dream about love in a Tacoma Strip Bar. A.J. Eaton from Boise bring The Mix-Up, about a retired construction expert whose TV Mr. Fix-it job turns out to be a little different than he expected. Vancouver, BC’s Jennifer Halley asks “What do you do when the little voice in your head is not so little?” with her film Sarah in the Dark. Four other films–Skies Falling, Orbita del Verano, 30-Love, and Stumble and Fall complete the set.
You can win a pair of tickets to Opening Night at Local Sightings. Just send an e-mail indicating your interest to seattle.metblogs@gmail.com no later than Thursday, October 2, at 5pm, with your full name. Winner will be notified that night.
There’s still plenty more to come after opening night. Saturday includes another shorts package – “The Rose City Revue” – a series of new works by filmmakers from, you guessed it, Portland. Popular at this summer’s SIFF Festival, Good Food is a film about the comeback of family farms as part of a focus on sustainable food growing practices and it screens at 7pm Saturday, as does GPS, a thriller about a group of college friends on a GPS treasure hunt turned seriously creepy. Later that night are two more shorts programs: “Stories of Circumstance” and “Fast, Cheap & Out of Control”. The latter includes a film called Aerogeddon, a homemade retelling of the blockbuster film Armageddon, filmed in less than 30 days and for less than ‘$100.
Sunday features a panel discussion on works in progress, a presentation by Jim Ball about his Post Alley micro theater where he screened independent and experimental films back in the 1970s,
the documentary High and Outside, and shorts program “Movement in Place”.
Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday bring still more shorts, features, documentaries and discussions. Highlights for me include: Arid Lands on Monday, a documentary about the Columbia Valley, and Wednesday’s March Point, a film in which three teens from the Swinomish Tribe named Cody, Nick, and Travis, want to make a gangster movie but instead end up making a film about the impact of two oil refineries on their tribal community. Reluctant investigators who join the project initially because it sounds like more fun than drug court, the trio eventually come to understand a lot more about themselves, the environment, and the threats to their environment and their people from the refineries.
For full schedule, check out the website and don’t forget to enter to win tickets for Friday night.