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

Stark and minimal beauty pervades this film from the Netherlands about two deafmute youth who fall in love against their parents’ wishes.

May 31st @ 9:00pm, AMC Pacific Place 11
June 9th @ 2:00pm, AMC Pacific Place 11
June 7th @ 7:00pm, SIFF Cinema Uptown

A comedy and light romantic tale about the ups and downs of being a supermarket check-out girl, full of feminine humor.

May 30th @ 4:00pm, Egyptian Theatre
June 8th @ 7:00pm, SIFF Cinema Uptown
June 9th @ 12:30pm, SIFF Cinema Uptown

Jean Reno stars in this comedy about a high-end chef who has lost his flair and a relative nobody whose mind is bursting with ideas.

June 2nd @ 6:00pm, Egyptian Theatre

When a woman sets out to avenge her brother’s murder, she reveals a fantastical, imaginatively shot gothic tale involving mysterious keys, secret hiding places, and the fate of two families who are forever intertwined.

May 28th @ 3:00pm, Harvard Exit
June 2nd @ 8:30pm, Harvard Exit
June 10th @ 4:30pm, Egyptian Theatre

A dry and sardonically witty British espionage thriller.

May 26th @ 9:00pm, Everett Performing Arts Center
May 28th @ 11:00am, Egyptian Theatre
May 29th @ 9:00pm, Egyptian Theatre

In this unlikely romantic comedy, two strangers – who have just met after a one-night stand – find themselves in close quarters after massive alien spaceships arrive in Madrid.

May 25th @ 9:30pm, AMC Pacific Place 11
May 27th @ 2:00pm, SIFF Cinema Uptown
May 31st @ 8:30pm, Everett Performing Arts Center

In this charming ode to 1970s psychedelia, Peppino is an awkward nine-year-old with family issues. While his mother (Valeria Golino) recovers from a betrayal, Peppino’s super-mod aunt and uncle take him to love-ins and demonstrations.

June 2nd @ 1:30pm, AMC Pacific Place 11
June 3rd @ 6:30pm, AMC Pacific Place 11
June 8th @ 8:30pm, Kirkland Performance Center

In this absurdist, deadpan comic debut, a professional driver who lives in his car and delivers honey to a narcoleptic man goes through a mid-life crisis when another driver threatens his very specialized profession.

June 5th @ 8:30pm, SIFF Cinema Uptown
June 6th @ 9:30pm, SIFF Cinema Uptown
June 9th @ Noon, Harvard Exit

A monk played by Vincent Cassel falls from grace deep into temptation.

June 3rd @ 12:30pm, SIFF Cinema Uptown
June 5th @ 6:45pm, SIFF Cinema Uptown

Set circa 1986, this charming end-of-Soviet-era tale (BILLY ELLIOT meets GOODBYE LENIN!) follows an irrepressible youth enrolled at a strict dance academy, who pretends that his father is the famous dissident dancer, Mikhail Baryshnikov.

June 6th @ 6:30pm, Majestic Bay Cinemas
June 7th @ 6:30pm, Egyptian Theatre
June 9th @ 1:30pm, Egyptian Theatre

Set in 1970s Belgium, Bavo Defurne’s FIPRESCI Award-winning film is a sensitively rendered coming-of-age story about an introverted boy’s developing crush on his hunky next-door neighbor.

May 25th @ 6:30pm, Harvard Exit
May 26th @ 11:00am, Harvard Exit

A documentary-like thriller/horror, where a woman chases down a spectre she sees on numerous video cameras. The film remains gripping all the way until the end.

June 9th @ 11:00am, Harvard Exit

Waitress Nana, policeman Niko, and homeless teen Sopo are restless, each dreaming of better futures. When they intersect in a resort town on Georgia’s Black Sea coast, none of their lives will remain the same.

May 28th @ 9:00pm, AMC Pacific Place 11
May 30th @ 4:00pm, SIFF Cinema Uptown
June 4th @ 8:30pm, Kirkland Performance Center

One of Seville’s best drug units does whatever it takes to bust the cities most notorious drug trafficking ring, sometimes taking less than legal actions, in this highly stylized action film.

June 8th @ 9:15pm, Egyptian Theatre
June 9th @ 3:30pm, SIFF Cinema Uptown

Retired janitor Hannes is brusque and distant with his wife and grown kids, but is compelled to re-examine his familial relationships following his wife’s stroke in this moving, delicately played drama about love that has grown old.

May 23rd @ 6:30pm, SIFF Cinema Uptown
May 25th @ 3:30pm, SIFF Cinema Uptown
May 30th @ 6:30pm, Harvard Exit

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Related posts:

1. SIFF 2012 Festival Preview: European Film Picks, Part One
2. SIFF 2012 Festival Preview: Latin American & African Film Picks
3. SIFF 2012 Festival Preview: U.S., Canadian, South Pacific Film Picks

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SIFF 2012 Festival Preview: European Film Picks, Part Two

The brutality of her enslavement is presented in both sexual and moral contexts. Hyun-Jae is forced to act as an escort, donning a fake Asian accent and ridiculous pseudonym, “Eden,” in order to please her customers. But she is also forced to time and time again sacrifice the well-being of her fellow captors in order to grow closer to Vaughan, who adopts her as an assistant and gives her extra leeway. It’s when she is forced to make these choices that the film stands still and lets us soak in the depravity of her situation. Bridges and O’Leary both do wonderful jobs portraying despicable managing men, giving the audience a proper vent for the anxiousness that Hyun-Jae’s trials ably generate. But these characters are not shades of grey, and that gives the film an unfortunate theatrical slant that takes away from the impact of the story. Bob and Vaughan are both caricatures of evil, well-presented and entertaining to watch, but not real in any sense.

Chung is able to play well with others in this film, taking the script’s only three-dimensional character and showing incredible amounts of depth and emotion through exquisite silent shots and pained expressions. In a film tackling such
heavy subject matter as this, it is important for the main character to never break kayfabe, and Chung does an exquisite job of selling it whole-heartedly.

Director Megan Griffiths’ film The Off Hours was a deserved success of the last year’s SIFF, and it is a pleasure to see her tackle a completely different type of film with the same nuanced hand. She loves her characters, and it shows; not many filmmakers would choose to bring character dynamics to the forefront when the issue at hand (human trafficking) is so overbearing. Eden is an excellent next step for both Griffiths and Chung’s careers, and a solid film to boot.

SEATTLE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL SCREENINGS 2012
May 21st @ 4:30pm, SIFF Cinema Uptown
May 29th @8:30pm, Everett Performing Arts Center

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Related posts:

1. Family Portrait In Black And White Documentary Film Review (2012)
2. Bestiaire Documentary Film Review (2012)
3. SIFF 2012 Festival Preview: Asian & Middle Eastern Film Picks

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Eden Film Review (2012)

Directed by Julia Ivanova

After a slightly threatening visit from Ukranian inspectors who point out that Nenya has improper sanitation facilities in her home, Nenya pities herself and says in tears, “I’ve committed a terrible crime. I’m raising children no one else wants.” One certainly applauds her efforts to parent otherwise unwanted children, but one quickly gets the sense that she has bitten off much more than she should chew.

Family Portrait In Black And White shows both the negative and the positive aspects of Nenya’s parenting, and
the children respond in similarly negative and positive ways. Nenya raises her children with plenty of love — but it is, in a sense, love that is dominated by authoritarian control. The more obedient of Nenya’s children share tales of being abandoned and sacrificed to other unloving foster families, and when they swear allegiance to Nenya, her strong points become evident.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, however, Nenya’s more free-spirited children find themselves constantly smothered by her overbearing nature. In the name of good parenting, Nenya decides for her two boys, Kiril and Roman, that playing music and soccer are against their best interests. She goes as far as commanding Kiril not to whistle inside her house, lest he desire to be kicked out. Kiril is later disowned by his mother for his desire to leave the family and pursue higher education, while Roman waits desperately to be old enough to be reunited with his biological Ugandan father.

FILM REVIEW CONTINUED BELOW

Kiril shares his views by saying, “We don’t have rights to our own thoughts. We have no rights at all. We are not like children in other families,” and his relationship with Nenya only fragments more from that point. Toward the end of the film, Kiril compares Nenya to an authoritarian leader like Stalin and the family to a herd, while Nenya calls Kiril “a student” but “not a good person.”

The cirumstances which are most telling of Nenya’s possessiveness, however, come with regards to the adoption of her children. Every summer, seven of Nenya’s children are given the opportunity to live abroad with other families. Ana and Maxim are both given adoption offers from their Italian host families — but Nenya denies Ana permission, though she is a teenager old enough to make her own decisions, and goes as far as attempting to hide Ana’s passport.

A pair of contradictory statements are also telling. In the first, Nenya says almost heroically into the camera, “I tell them, ‘Grow up, fly away, make your own nest.’” In the second, when discussing Maxim’s adoption, she calls his host family “strangers with good hearts,” despite the fact that they have known him for four years. When the interviewer proposes that Maxim might now have two families, Nenya hums and says, “A baby bird should only have one nest” — and one is quite certain that the one nest is to be one roosted by Nenya, and Nenya only.

Family Portrait In Black An White is punctuated slightly by commentary on the state of racism in Ukraine, but that setup is a misleading one. The only portrait one truly sees in the film is that of the difficulties of foster parenting, as found mostly within Nenya’s household.

SEATTLE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2012
May 21st @ 6:30pm, Harvard Exit

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1. SIFF 2012 Festival Preview: Documentary Film Picks
2. Bestiaire Documentary Film Review (2012)
3. School Days With A Pig (2008) Film Review

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Family Portrait In Black And White Documentary Film Review (2012)

Directed by Denis Côté, Canada

In the preview trailer for Bestiaire, multiple horses crowd about in a stable, standing vividly before a brightly colored blue wall. The shot is beautiful in its simplicity, but the horses do exactly what one might expect horses to do when sitting in a stall by themselves — next to nothing.

Director Denis Côté turns uses extended sequences, often looking more like still images than moving film, to study animals and human beings living and working in their native habitats. For minutes on end, Côté trains his gaze upon still zoo and barn walls long past the moment when animals have left the camera’s frame. He eyeballs single bolt locks with only the tip of a horned goat peeking into sight, and many of the shot are more focused on non-moving objects than moving ones.

Though very little happens throughout Bestiaire, the film is a minimal visual delight made all the more compelling by its lack of dialogue and its accurate display of the mundane. Despite the warm subject matter, Côté’s choice of blue-toned visuals and capture of metallic ambient sounds seem to remove all animism from the moving, living beings, and it is only in the rare moments where the film swells in activity that one can connect to the subjects on a more carnal level. When a pair of zebras begin to battle within their confines, previously gentle mechanical reverberations bouncing off of metal walls turn into a raucous clamourings of noise, almost like industrial tracks created from ambient sounds.

Every sound and image in Bestiaire, isolated or lonely as it might seem as set within the walls of captivity, is natural — beautifully natural. Even when man-made objects dominate the foreground, there is a sense of naturalism to be found in the unfolding of everyday objects, just as they will. Human intervention and interaction are minimal in Bestiaire, but where they are found, are far from flagrant or eye-catching, just as untrained and uncalculated as those of the other animals.

Whether Côté desires to send home such a message is unclear, but one concludes a viewing of Bestiaire with the keen sense that, regardless of what cages all beings have made for themselves, or have had constructed around them, they all move at their own biological and instinctual rhythms, each singularly worthy of attention.

May 18th @ 7:00pm, SIFF Film Center
May 19th @ 6:00pm, SIFF Film Center

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1. SIFF 2012 Festival Preview: Documentary Film Picks
2. Family Portrait In Black And White Documentary Film Review (2012)
3. Portland International Film Festival 2012: Documentary Film Preview Guide

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Bestiaire Documentary Film Review (2012)

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

This critically acclaimed imaginative film comes from the eyes of a six year old who refuses to leave her home in the Louisiana Delta, even as an apocalyptic storm comes to town.

May 31st @ 6:30pm, Egyptian Theatre
June 2nd @ Noon, SIFF Cinema Uptown

A semi-fictional tale about an ex-con’s attempt to reintegrate with society, with a focus on interpersonal relationships.

June 6th @ 4:00pm, SIFF Cinema Uptown
June 9th @ 9:15pm, AMC Pacific Place 11

Following the “grandmother of performance art” throughout her quest for recognition and her eventual achievements.

June 6th @ 6:30pm, AMC Pacific Place
June 8th @ 4:00pm, SIFF Cinema Uptown

The first film ever shot in Samoa, The Orator follows a pygmy taro farmer who must stand up for his own way of life.

May 23rd @ 6:00pm, Renton IKEA Performing Arts Center
May 29th @ 6:00pm, Harvard Exit
May 31st @ 3:30pm, Harvard Exit

“When three Seattle Times journalist attempt to write a story about an eccentric store clerk who believes he has solved the mystery of time travel, they end up on a much more unexpected journey than planned.”

May 23rd @ 7:00pm, SIFF Cinema Uptown
May 25th @ 4:30pm, SIFF Cinema Uptown

Frequent THIS AMERICAN LIFE contributor Mike Birbiglia uses impressive visual and verbal wit to bring his hilarious and heartbreaking one-man-show to the screen.

May 23rd @ 9:00pm, SIFF Cinema Uptown
May 19th @ 9:00pm, Harvard Exit

Prolific sperm donor Starbuck made a few too many visits to the clinic, and twenty years later, 142 of his children wish to meet their absent father.

May 31st 8:00pm, Kirkland Performance Center
June 1st @ 6:30pm, Egyptian Theatre
June 7th @ 9:00pm, Egyptian Theatre

10-year-old Daniel is growing up in a remote Aboriginal community and slowly starts to get drawn into drug and criminal activity surrounding his life.

June 4th @ 6:30pm, AMC Pacific Place
June 5th @ 3:30pm, Harvard Exit

A relationship drama infused with comedy? Aka a rom-com? The difference between Lynn Shelton’s tale of romantic interests between two sisters and a best friend is that it is actually really clever and really good.

May 17th @ 7:00pm, Marion Oliver McCaw Hall (Opening Night Gala)

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1. SIFF 2012 Festival Preview: Latin American & African Film Picks
2. SIFF 2012 Festival Preview: Documentary Film Picks
3. SIFF 2012 Festival Preview: European Film Picks, Part One

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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

A gruff Argentine truck driver is displeased when the woman he agreed to drive 900 miles to Buenos Aires shows up with a baby, but during the journey they develop a touching, hesitant connection. Winner, Camera d’Or, Cannes Film Festival.

May 28th @ 5:30pm, SIFF Cinema Uptown
May 19th @ 4:30pm, Egyptian Theatre
May 26th @ 4:00pm, Harvard Exit

In early 1930s Jalisco, a state ravaged by violent conflicts for hundreds of years, a small band of men resisted the Mexican army, refused to accept amnesty, and continued to fight valiantly against religious persecution.

May 21st @ 9:15pm, Harvard Exit
May 23rd @ 3:30pm, Harvard Exit
May 30th @ 8:30pm, SIFF Cinema Uptown

A South African boy is orphaned and survives thanks to a friendship with an elderly woman.

May 25th @ 4:00pm, AMC Pacific Place
May 29th @ 6:00pm, SIFF Cinema Uptown
June 10th @ 3:15, Kirkland Performance Center

“A compelling metaphor for Argentina’s treatment of its indigenous people, this study of the events surrounding a girl’s 15th birthday captures the tiny ways that marginalized communities struggle to maintain their spiritual identities.”

June 3rd @ 8:30pm, Harvard Exit
June 10th @ 11:00am, Harvard Exit
June 9th @ 6:00pm, SIFF Cinema Uptown

Three black South Africans embrace surfing as a means of freedom within the societal turbulence of the late 1980s in a beautiful coming-of-age film infused with the archetypes of Shakespeare’s OTHELLO.

May 27th @ 6:00pm, Everett Performing Arts Center
June 8th @ 3:30pm, AMC Pacific Place 11
June 9th @ 6:30pm, AMC Pacific Place 11

A paranormal thriller involving a group of soldiers who find themselves at an abandoned outpost filled with dead bodies and ritualistic markings.

May 30th @ 9:30pm, Egyptian Theatre
June 8th @ 11:59pm, Egyptian Theatre
June 10th @ 9:30pm, SIFF Cinema Uptown

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1. SIFF 2012 Festival Preview: U.S., Canadian, South Pacific Film Picks
2. SIFF 2012 Festival Preview: Documentary Film Picks
3. SIFF 2012 Festival Preview: Asian & Middle Eastern Film Picks

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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

A period piece about love, seduction, power, and deception, as a former soldier seduces Paris’ most influential women. Based off a book by Guy de Maupassant and featuring Robert Pattinson, Christina Ricci, and Uma Thurman, amongst others.”

May 20th @ 9:00pm, Egyptian Theatre
May 27th @ Noon, SIFF Cinema Uptown

A comedy and light romantic tale about the ups and downs of being a supermarket check-out girl, full of feminine humor.

May 30th @ 4:00pm, Egyptian Theatre
June 8th @ 7:00pm, SIFF Cinema Uptown
June 9th @ 12:30pm, SIFF Cinema Uptown

After his fiancé tells him she can’t marry him, Diego attempts to solve his problems in most unconventional and tragicomic of ways.

May 24th @ 6:00pm, Harvard Exit
May 28th @ 8:30pm, Harvard Exit
May 26th @ 12:30pm, SIFF Cinema Uptown

Reserved drama student Josephine is chosen for a leading theatre role as a destructive temptress. As she attempts to understand the complexities of her character, Josephine herself takes on the character’s qualities, to her own dismay as well as enlightenment.

May 18th @ 9:30pm, AMC Pacific Place 11
May 22nd @ 9:00pm, Egyptian Theatre
May 25th @ 9:30pm, Everett Performing Arts Center

France’s second-highest grossing film of all time follows the comedic and true story of an unlikely friendship between Philippe, a wealthy, quadriplegic millionaire, and his live-in caretaker Driss, a young Senegalese immigrant from the projects. Certainly a feel-good story.

May 18th @ 6:30pm, Egyptian Theatre
May 20th @ 4:00pm, Egyptian Theatre

Incapable of killing herself, an adolescent girl finds opportunity through an escaped and injured murderer hiding on the family farm. She offers to help him escape if he promises to kill her. As they flee and bond, she begins to have second thoughts.

May 19th @ 6:30pm, Harvard Exit
May 20th @ 3:00pm, Harvard Exit
May 22nd @ 4:00pm, SIFF Cinema Uptown

A bizarre comedy in the vein of The Big Lebowski, disgraced curling champion mounts a comeback to pay for his former coaches medical costs.

May 23rd @ 9:30pm, SIFF Cinema Uptown
May 30th @ 4:30pm @ SIFF Cinema Uptown
May 26th @ 9:45pm, Egyptian Theatre

A professor and student find themselves strangely trapped, naked, in the same bathroom, and forge a peculiar bond as a result.

May 20th @ 1:30pm, AMC Pacific Place 11
May 22nd @ 6:00pm, SIFF Cinema Uptown
May 30th @ 9:00pm, Harvard Exit

“Recovering addict Anders searches over 24 hours in Oslo for meaning in old haunts, broken connections, and new possibilities in this beautifully haunting exploration of what it takes to be a living person. A masterpiece.”

May 19th @ 9:30pm, Harvard Exit
May 22nd @ 3:30pm, SIFF Cinema Uptown

Winner of the Jury Prize at the 2011 Cannes, Polisse tells the story of the French Police’s Child Protective Unit through a sprawling narrative in this character-driven drama.

May 18th @ 9:00pm, SIFF Cinema Uptown
May 20th @ 2:30pm, Harvard Exit

A gripping love story centered around the WWII persecution of the Mazurians, an indigenous people in Poland.

May 20th @ 1:30pm, Egyptian Theatre
May 22nd @ 9:00pm, SIFF Cinema Uptown
May 25th @ 8:30pm, SIFF Cinema Uptown

Bodybuilder Dennis has an impressive physique that masks his socially awkward nature. When his uncle marries a Thai girl, Dennis tries the same path in his search for love in this unlikely yet charming romantic adventure.

May 18th @ 4:00pm, SIFF Cinema Uptown
May 24th @ 9:00pm, Egyptian Theatre

Desire and deception abound in a fascinating connection between a novelist, played by Ethan Hawke, and a mysterious woman, played by Kristin Scott Thomas, whose role in his life he is to decide.

May 18th @ 9:30pm, Harvard Exit
May 21st @ 4:00pm, SIFF Cinema Uptown

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1. SIFF 2012 Festival Preview: Latin American & African Film Picks
2. SIFF 2012 Festival Preview: U.S., Canadian, South Pacific Film Picks
3. SIFF 2012 Festival Preview: Asian & Middle Eastern Film Picks

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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.

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2. Prince Of Tears (2010) Film Review
3. Gromozeka (2011) Film Review

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Loverboy Film Review (2011)

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

A Chinese film that follows an 11-year-old boy through his life. Set during the waning years of the Cultural Revolution and Mao Zedong’s rule, acquaintance with a fugitive from the law. Set during the

May 18th @ 4:30pm, Harvard Exit
May 21st @ 6:00pm, Harvard Exit

Struggling to meet the financial needs for his much-desired life-long journey to Mecca, a religious man must decide how to make his important religious pilgrimage happen without sacrificing his own dignity or steering away his own moral compass.

May 24th @ 8:30pm, Harvard Exit
May 30th @ 9:00pm, SIFF Cinema Uptown

Materialism and status in lower middle class South Korea are filtered through the experiences of Kwon Youn-ho, tasked with resolving his family’s descent into debt hell.

June 3rd @ 5:45pm, Harvard Exit
June 7th @ 4:00pm, Harvard Exit
June 10th @ 8:30pm, SIFF Cinema Uptown

Cambodia produced 400 films between 1960 and 1975, but only a handful of these artistic works survived the Khmer rouge’s devastating reign. Filmmaker Davy Chou awakens the once-magnificent industry through archival material and deep insight.

May 30th @ 6:00pm, SIFF Cinema Uptown
May 31st @ 3:30pm, SIFF Cinema Uptown

Dark and sinister, the portrait of Iranian injustice through the character of Noora, a beautiful young lawyer denied an increasing number of rights.

May 20th @ 11:30am, SIFF Cinema Uptown
May 21st @ 6:30pm, AMC Pacific Place 11
May 26th @ 1:30pm, AMC Pacific Place 11

Cop, monk, or assassin? In this riveting cinematic noir spectacle, a cop-turned-hitman is struck in the head by a bullet and sees the world upside-down with a flashback and forward blur of drug busts, scheming lawyers and seductive women.

May 24th @ 9:00pm, SIFF Cinema Uptown
May 27th @ 4:00pm, AMC Pacific Place 11

A moving study of two brothers, divvied up by divorced parents, who dream of reuniting their family through a bullet-train line. A children’s film with a touch of adult supervision that miraculously holds a lifetime’s range of experience.

June 3rd @ 6:30pm, Egyptian Theatre
June 6th @ 4:00pm, Egyptian Theatre

Divorced and demoted, taxi driver Yousef struggles to make ends meet. When a health crisis looms, he tries to reconnect with his estranged family in this subtle, understated drama, tinged with black humor and stylish minimalism.

May 25th @ 6:00pm, SIFF Cinema Uptown
May 27th @ 11:00am, AMC Pacific Place 11
June 2nd @ 9:30pm, Harvard Exit

Watch Trailer on SIFF Website

Sun Yu’s 1933 silent, starring silent screen queen Ruan Lingyu as a toymaker in a highly political climate, offers a rare glimpse into the Chinese leftist film movement. Legendary musician Donald Sosin performs a live piano score.

May 26th @ 2:30pm, Harvard Exit

The Mirror Never Lies provides a close look at Indonesian island life.

June 9th @ 9:00pm, Harvard Exit
June 10th @ 2:30pm, Harvard Exit

A previously unreleased animation from Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli, Only Yesterday runs throguh the memories of a young 20-something-year-old girl.

May 19th @ 11:00am, Renton IKEA Performing Arts Center
May 23rd @ 6:30pm, Egyptian Theatre

A gender-bending horror-comedy.

May 20th @ 8:30pm, Renton IKEA Performing Arts Center
June 1st @ 9:30pm, Egyptian Theatre
June 2nd @ 2:30pm, Egyptian Theatre

When Xu Xian falls into a mountain lake, a beautiful woman comes to his rescue. Unbeknownst to him, she is a centuries old snake demon with the ability to change form, but she cannot hide her true self from the sorcerer Fa Hai (Jet Li).

June 5th @ 9:15pm, Egyptian Theatre
June 8th @ 6:00pm, Kirkland Performance Center

A story of environmental destruction intersecting with love. Winner of Sundance’s World Cinema Audience Award.

May 18th @ 9:00pm, Harvard Exit
May 19th @ Noon, Harvard Exit
June 3rd @ 6:00pm, Kirkland Performance Center

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1. SIFF 2012 Festival Preview: Latin American & African Film Picks
2. SIFF 2012 Festival Preview: U.S., Canadian, South Pacific Film Picks
3. SIFF 2012 Festival Preview: European Film Picks, Part One

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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.

See complete list of Sanctify, Signify, Believe events

Fin De Cinema: Mala Morska Vila

Portland, Oregon
Presented by Holocene
Wednesday, May 16th @ 8:30pm – $5.00

An ongoing film scoring series at Portland’s Holocene, this May 16th event featured the Czech version of The Little Mermaid, the theatrical, wardrobe-heavy Mala Morska Vila. Soundtracking the film will be two REDEFINE favorites — Goodnight Billygoat and Blood Beach — as well as local band Wooden Indian Burial Ground. Former Fin De Cinema events included similar Czech films such as Valerie And Her Week Of Wonders and Daisies, and this is sure to be another shimmering audio-visual spectacle.

Emerald City Visions (A Hip Hop Reinterpretation of The Wiz)

SEATTLE, WASHINGTON
Presented by Seattle International Film Festival
June 1st @ 7:00pm (All-Ages) and 9:30pm (21+)
The Triple Door – $15 advance, $20 door

Every year, the Seattle International Film Festival bunkers down at The Triple Door for an evening of film-scoring fun in a laid-back lounge setting. The films are often silent, and the bands are usually rock bands. This year, KEXP “Street Sounds” DJ has curated an evening with The Wiz, a Wizard of Oz musical that originally features musical arrangements by Quincy Jones and performances by Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, and Richard Pryor. In the case of this year’s SIFF, local Seattle hip-hop artists will be reimagining the film’s soundtrack in a live setting.

An award-winning Broadway production that opened on Broadway in 1975, The Wiz won seven Tony Awards, including Best Musical. The 1978 silver screen adaption was directed by Sidney Lumet, produced by Motown head Berry Gordy, and featured musical arrangements by the legendary Quincy Jones, and performances by Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, and Richard Pryor. Retrospectively revered as a culturally significant, urbanized retelling of L. Frank Baum’s “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”, The Wiz is ripe for reinterpretation by contemporary artists.

Krautrock Classics: An Evening of Cosmic German Music

Los Angeles, California
Presented by DUBLAB & The Goethe-Institut Los Angeles
Friday, June 1st @ 8:00pm

If bands like Can, Amon Düül II, Faust, Cluster, Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk, or Neu! tickle your soul’s funny bone, Krautrock Classics might be the best way for you, 2012 dwelling soul, to revisit 1970s Germany and the krautrock scene of yore. Peep the full lineup below, and get there early for DJ sets! According to Dublab, this will be “an evening that reinforces the belief that all music is interconnected.”

KRAUTROCK CLASSICS LINEUP
Nite Jewel & Friends (Peanut Butter Wolf, Secret Circuit, Cole MNG & Nedelle Torrisi)
Pharaohs (Suzanne Kraft, Ulrich Krieger, David Scott Stone, Cloudland Canyon & Andres Renteria)
Dntel
Carlos Niño & Friends (Gifted and Blessed, Dexter Story & Surya Botofasina)
ESP
Daedelus
Sun Araw
White Magic

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music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Concept-Heavy Events: Fin De Cinema, The Wiz, Krautrock Classics, Signify Sanctify Believe