SEPT 7
Thin Skin Fundraiser ft. Charles Mudede, Ahamefule J. Oluo, and Lindy West
Ahamefule J. Oluo's one-man show Now I'm Fine was a sell-out smash hit in Seattle. Later, the show was performed in New York, and Ben Brantley at the New York Times wrote that Oluo expanded the format of stand-up autobiography "to dizzying proportions." Now Oluo, author and journalist Lindy West, and our own film editor Charles Mudede are working on a new movie loosely inspired by Now I'm Fine. They've got a list of incredible collaborators including comedian Hari Kondabolu and Stranger Genius Zia Mohajerjasbi. And at this event, Mudede, Oluo, and West will share short clips from the upcoming film and lead a discussion about the project.
The Cloud Room
SEPT 8–10
Seattle Erotic Cinema Society Festival
What do I want to see? Shapeshifters by David Bloom. It's one of the films in this year's erotic festival at the Grand Illusion. It's "Part Three of the Sex & Space Trilogy." And the space in this work is not outer space but the space in which people move, dance, and fuck. CM
Grand Illusion
SEPT 10
50th Anniversary of the Seattle Chapter of the Black Panther Party
The Seattle chapter of the Black Panther Party was created in 1968 (one of the first authorized chapters outside California) and lasted in an official capacity for 10 years—now, almost 50 years later, you can mark the occasion with a film screening and discussion.
Northwest Film Forum
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan 35th Anniversary
Celebrate the 35th anniversary of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (considered by some the best in the Star Trek franchise) at this special anniversary screening. They'll show the director's cut plus an exclusive introduction by William Shatner.
Varsity Theatre
SEPT 14
Seattle filmmaker SJ Chiro spent nine years making her first feature, Lane 1974, which debuted at SXSW and played to eager audiences at the Seattle International Film Festival. It's a beautiful coming-of-age period piece, full of meticulous details and a firmly rooted 1970s Northern California aesthetic. Like Captain Fantastic, a SIFF favorite from 2016, the plot deals with an "alternative" family subject to the whims and principles of an idealistic parent. But unlike Captain Fantastic, which Chiro described as "a beautiful fairy tale," Lane 1974 embraces the unpleasant reality. JR
Northwest Film Forum
SEPT 20
Watch E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, about a disease-ridden alien who briefly befriends a young boy before being brutally exterminated in a heroic joint effort by NASA and the CDC.
Varsity Theatre
SEPT 22–30
20th Annual Local Sightings Film Festival
Northwest Film Forum's 20th Local Sightings Film Festival, which showcases films from our dusky region, the Pacific Northwest, will also include the production of a documentary by Criterion Channel's FilmStruck on the Northwest Film Forum. The doc will appear on the Criterion series about art-house theaters, Art-House America. After the collapse of the online indie-film platform Fandor, FilmStruck is certainly the next big next thing in the indie and art film distribution world. (I also have to admit that a shortish film I made in 2008, North American, that was never released because of reasons relating to the market crash of that year, will be screened for the first time in a theater. It's not a great film, but it's not bad.) CM
Northwest Film Forum
SEPT 28–OCT 5
French Cinema Now Mini-Festival
This annual mini-festival celebrating new French movies is one of Seattle's best film festivals.
SIFF
SEPT 28–DEC 7
As Charles Mudede says, "if you love cinema, then you must love film noir," a category he describes as full of "spiderlike women, lots of long knives, lots of rooms with dark curtains, lots of faces of the fallen, and lots of existential twists and turns." Celebrate the best of the genre at SAM's 40th Film Noir Series.
Seattle Art Museum
SEPT 29
This is Luc Besson's futuristic semi-classic, starring Bruce Willis, the musician Tricky, and love.
Central Cinema
Waiting for Guffman
Waiting for Guffman is Christopher Guest and company's very funny take on Waiting for Godot, in which a group of amateur actors anxiously await the arrival of a man who they believe could make them famous. Sean Nelson called the film a "hilariously cruel vivisection of community theater—the only thing the characters have done to deserve this cruelty, it seems, is want to be creative."
Central Cinema
OCT 6
Blade Runner 2049
Here is the problem. The original Blade Runner is not just about the future; it's about how the year it was made, 1982, saw the distant year that the film is set, 2019. And so a remake is in a really complicated situation. It's not only has to be about how 1982 saw 2019, but how 1982 might have seen or imagined the year the sequel is set: 2049. This will not be an easy thing to do for the director, French-Canadian Denis Villeneuve, and the film's star, Ryan Gosling. CM
Wide
A great film is much like a great party, and what makes a party great is not the host or even the location but whom the host invites. North by Northwest, one of my favorite movies, is great because of the guests invited by the director, Alfred Hitchcock. There is the screenplay provided by Ernest Lehman (Sweet Smell of Success), the stunning title sequence by the graphic artist Saul Bass (Anatomy of a Murder), the faces of Cary Grant, James Mason, and a young Martin Landau. And, of course, there's the big, brassy, bold, and lusty score by Bernard Herrmann. Hitchcock knew how to throw a great party. CM
Central Cinema
OCT 6–9
Head to Orcas Island for this film festival—with 30 feature-length and short films—featuring progressive plots and directors highlighting "films of the avant-garde, art house, trans-media and emerging edge film culture from around the world."
Orcas Island
