The 2012 Seattle International Film Festival begins on May 17th, 2012! In the next few days, we will be providing film previews for our top SIFF picks of the year. Times and dates are subject to change, so please visit siff.net before heading to theatres, or see HERE for all film preview coverage, including film selections from other regions of the world.
4 DAYS IN MAY
Germany/Russia/Ukraine
Directed by Achim von Borries
Set in 1945 and based off a true story, 4 Days Of May follows the days before the official end of World War II. The Germans have already lost, but as soldiers and civilians both learn how to deal with the change, drama and unconventional decision-making ensue.
May 31st @ 4:00pm, SIFF Cinema Uptown
June 7th @ 9:00pm, Harvard Exit
June 9th @ 4:30pm, Egyptian Theatre
Based on the real life story of survivor-activist Chong Kim, Eden pulls no punches while following through with its dramatic premise of a young woman abducted and forced into prostitution. Jamie Chung plays Hyun-Jae, a first-generation Korean-American high school student looking to get into some innocent trouble. But she finds more than her share when she is abducted and sent to a sex slavery facility run by corrupt warden Bob Gault (Beau Bridges) along with his second-in-command, the vermin-esque Vaughan (Matt O’ Leary).
The film pivots not on Hyun-Jae’s trials and suffering, but rather on the relationship between the three leads. It’s an almost Shakespearean triangle: Bob is commanding, domineering, an absolutist with no conscience. Vaughan is power hungry, tired of being used, unstable. And Hyun-Jae is the survivor, biding her time with absolute ruthlessness until Bob and Vaughan let their guard down.
In Family Portrait In Black And White, middle-aged single mother Olga Nenya decides to brave social stigmas to foster 17 orphans, many of whom are Ukranian-African. As the film opens, one sees third-party interviews with Ukranian skinheads that immediately couch the film in a setting of acial discrimination. Given the film’s title, its synopsis, and these opening sequences, one expects the entire film to be about the struggles of foster parenting in a mixed race family — but this expectation would be wrong.
Nenya and her seventeen foster children live and work on a farm, slightly removed from the mainstay of Ukranian society. Through the use of minor anecdotes, the film asserts time and time again that racism and discrimination are wildly prevalent in Ukraine — but this narrative is not the primary focus. The film is, in fact, less sociological than it is an intimate look at the psychology of foster family life and the complexities of motherhood both outwardly inflected upon Nenya, and self-inflicted and self-perpetuated.
“If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”
If one were to pose this classic philosophical question to the director of Bestiaire, Denis Côté, Côté would probably respond with an emphatic yes. Bestiaire, centered around Montreal’s open-air zoo, Parc Safari, seems to be a long and slow-paced response to this exact question.
The 2012 Seattle International Film Festival begins on May 17th, 2012! In the next few days, we will be providing film previews for our top SIFF picks of the year. Times and dates are subject to change, so please visit siff.net before heading to theatres, or see HERE for all film preview coverage, including film selections from other regions of the world.
JOSHUA TREE, 1951: A PORTRAIT OF JAMES DEAN
United States/France
Directed by Matthew Mishory
Inspired by the facts, and perhaps some fictions, about James Dean’s too-short life, this boundary-stretching film imagines the cinematic icon’s bisexual pre-fame days and ruminates about the steep costs that come with being a star. Black and white and color.
May 24th @ 6:30pm, Egyptian Theatre
May 25th @ 4:00pm, Harvard Exit
The 2012 Seattle International Film Festival begins on May 17th, 2012! In the next few days, we will be providing film previews for our top SIFF picks of the year. Times and dates are subject to change, so please visit siff.net before heading to theatres, or see HERE for all film preview coverage, including film selections from other regions of the world.
FOUND MEMORIES
Brazil/Argentina/France
Directed by Julia Murat
A youthful photographer decides to open up her eyes and mind to the stories of older individuals in a small Brazilian town, giving new perspectives on life and death.
May 22 @ 9:00pm, Harvard Exit
May 24 @ 3:30pm, SIFF Cinema Uptown
The 2012 Seattle International Film Festival begins on May 17th, 2012! In the next few days, we will be providing film previews for our top SIFF picks of the year. Times and dates are subject to change, so please visit siff.net before heading to theatres, or see HERE for all film preview coverage, including film selections from other regions of the world.
BREATHING
Austria
Directed by Karl Markovics
A jailed teenager finds a renewed sense of purpose after parole officer gives him a new job and new responsibilities. A film lauded for its day-to-day quality and appropriately posited scenes and shots, Breathing is less mind-blowing than it is simply a solid tale of what happens when life exerts pressure on an individual.
May 20th @ 8:00pm, SIFF Cinema Uptown
May 23rd @ 3:30pm, SIFF Cinema Uptown
Human trafficking is one of those things that it seems the world overall turns a blind eye to. Minus a few well-to-do NGOs and agencies desperately trying to create awareness, each year hundreds of thousands of individuals are illegally trafficked across the globe. Some are sent for labor, some are sent for other reasons, but the great majority are sent for sexual purposes — as that is where the real money is. In Catalin Mitulescu’s film Loverboy, he explores the psychology that goes into the whole recruitment process.
Luca (George Pistereanu) is a cool as ice 20-something who recruits girls by thoroughly emotionally manipulating them and sending them off to his friends at the Black Sea port of Constanta. When Luca meets the beautiful Veli (Ada Condeescu) and falls in love, his way of living starts to become compromised the more engrossed she gets in his life.
Loverboy succeeds on the psychological development of this tale, as you can never really tell what Luca’s true emotions are. Is he truly in love with Veli? Or will Veli end up as another faceless whore in a brothel courtesy of Luca? Luca goes through extraordinary lengths to keep his story going and to keep Veli emotionally dependent upon him. The film is an interesting look at human trafficking, as it almost humanizes the whole thing. If this were a documentary, Luca would be the biggest scumbag on the planet — but throughout Loverboy, in an odd way that is never really explained, Mitulescu creates Luca as a borderline sympathetic character.
He is borderline sympathetic because the story never really establishes why he is involved in the sex trade to begin with. But maybe in Romania you don’t need good reasons for why people sell their souls to a terrible devil. Luca doesn’t really appear to grow too much throughout the film — and the acting of Pistereanu is fantastically wooden and incredibly hard to read. Luca’s emotions are off-limits throughout the film, but the point isn’t his emotions; the point of Loverboy is its emotional state, and of Veli and how she deals with her deteriorating ability to judge other characters.
The 2012 Seattle International Film Festival begins on May 17th, 2012! In the next few days, we will be providing film previes for our top SIFF picks of the year. You can see all of this year’s coverage HERE. Times and dates are subject to change, so please visit siff.net before heading to theatres, or see HERE for all SIFF-related coverage.
A CUBE OF SUGAR
Iran
Directed by Reza Mirkarimi
An extended family gathers for the youngest daughter’s wedding, but not all goes as planned. A glowing pastel canvas and sensual score are dreamy counterpoints to the anxieties and celebrations of three generations.
May 22nd @ 6:00pm, Renton IKEA Performing Arts Center
June 1st @ 6:30pm, SIFF Cinema Uptown
June 6th @ 9:30pm, Harvard Exit
This post highlights some of our favorite multi-disciplinary arts events (centered mainly around music) coming up from like-minded co-conspirators in Seattle, Portland, and Los Angeles. More events for the next post, including two installments of REDEFINE’s Intuitive Navigation in Seattle and Portland (see last year’s HERE), and Seattle’s ambient music festival Substrata.
Signify, Sanctify, Believe
Portland, Oregon
Presented by Xhurch and Open Engagement
Multiple days – FREE
A traveling troupe of performance art semi-spiritualists, Sanctify, Signify, Believe, are now on the road to conduct a series of head-scratching events that will leave you wondering about your connection to the spiritual world and religion.
The party kicks off May 15th @ 1:00pm at repurposed church venue Xhurch, with an open house and healing service that runs until 4:00pm. Other events taking course throughout the week, until May 20th, include plenty of lectures, performances, musical acts, and REDEFINE involvement in the form of Prince Rama-inspired Now Age tracts for the group’s Library Of Sacred Technologies.
