Tag: SIFF Cinema Egyptian

by Sean Axmaker, Contributors, Seattle Screens

Seattle Screens: Italy! Morocco! Wiseman!

Written by Sean Axmaker November 10, 2016

The 8^th Cinema Italian Style series plays through the week at SIFF Cinema Uptown. It opens on Thursday, November 10 with Paolo Virzi’s Like Crazy with Valeria Bruni Tedeschi and ends a week later on Thursday, November 17 with closing night feature Opposites Attract, a romantic comedy directed by Max Croci, who is scheduled to attend the screening and the closing night party. Among the 15 features and documentaries are Anna (For Your Love), which earned Valeria Golina the Best Actress award at the Venice Film Festival, the romantic comedy Solo, written and directed by actress Laura Morante, the award-winning documentary Libera Nos about the continued practice of exorcism on the Italian Catholic Church, and a new restoration of Ettore Scola’s A Special Day (1977) starring Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni. It continues for a week. Series and individual ticket available. Complete schedule and tickets here.

The 6^th Seattle Shorts Film Festival opens on Friday, November 11 at SIFF Film Center with a feature film: Before I Disappear is Shawn Christensen’s feature-length adaptation of his 2012 Oscar-winning short film Curfew. The rest of the festival, which plays through the weekend at SIFF Film Center, presents 49 short films and music videos, including numerous Seattle premieres and works by local Seattle and Pacific Northwest filmmakers, and two panel discussions. Complete schedule and other information at the festival website here.

The Seattle Sephardic Network presents The Midnight Orchestra (2015) from Morocco, a drama about the son of a Jewish musician returning home to Morocco to bury his father. One show only on Wednesday, November 16 at The Majestic Bay in Ballard.
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by Sean Axmaker, Contributors, Seattle Screens

Seattle Screens Halloween weekend: ‘The Hunger,’ ‘The Pit,’ ‘Rocky Horror,’ and Carpenter’s ‘Halloween’

Written by Sean Axmaker October 27, 2016

Park Chan-Wook’s The Handmaiden, a con artist scheme by way of a steamy erotic thriller, opens at multiple theaters this week, including SIFF Cinema Uptown and Guild 45.

The Canadian coming of age comedy Closet Monster plays for a week at SIFF Cinema Egyptian.

Miss Hokusai, an animated Japanese feature from director Keiichi Hara and the creators of Ghost in the Shell, opens for a week at SIFF Cinema Uptown.

Archival and revival screenings:

Grand Illusion presents two contemporary twists of the vampire film on 35mm this weekend and on Halloween night: The Hunger (1983), the feature debut of director Tony Scott featuring Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie, and Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive (2013) with Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston.

by Sean Axmaker, Contributors, Seattle Screens

Seattle Screens: Japanese horror in 35mm and ‘The Battle of Algiers’ restored

Written by Sean Axmaker October 21, 2016

The Japanese horror classic Kuroneko (Black Cat) (1968), directed by Kaneto Shindo, is both an eerie ghost story and a ferocious horror tale of righteous revenge. Set in feudal Japan, in a bamboo forest perpetually shrouded in fog and shadow as ethereal as the ghosts that seem to float through it, the film chronicles the spirits of two women, raped and murdered by scruffy samurai who are more like feral bandits, driven to revenge themselves on all samurai, which they lure to their ghost house, itself a spirit that moves through the forest like a supernatural creature. It’s one of the greatest of Japanese ghost stories, a horror film of elemental drive, feminist rage and visual grace. It plays three shows at Grand Illusion this week from a 35mm print.

Also at Grand Illusion in 35mm is Masaki Kobayashi’s Kwaidan (1965), a quartet of ancient ghost stories. It may not be strictly speaking a horror film—it’s not scary or particularly unsettling apart for a few exquisitely created images—but it is breathtakingly lovely, visually composed like a painting, scored and sound designed by Toru Takemitsu with a spareness that leans on silence, and suffused in sadness, regret, and loss. The 160-minute film plays twice this week.