While the details of the directive are unclear, it has caused alarm across the global film industry — including at the Cannes Film Festival, which kicked off on Tuesday. On opening night, honoree Robert De Niro condemned the proposed tariffs, adding to what’s surely a major topic of conversation at the esteemed French festivities.
Some film insiders contend the federal focus should shift to increasing tax incentives for domestic movie-making — a subject Seattle filmmakers know well.
Due to significantly better tax breaks, Vancouver, B.C., often plays stand-in for our city in film and television. That includes the new season of fungus-apocalypse hit The Last of Us, where an abandoned King County Metro bus sporting a Seattle Aquarium ad is one of many attempts at creating a convincing “Seattle.”
Amid this flurry of film debate — aka right on time — arrives the 51st Seattle International Film Festival (May 15 - 25; encore streaming May 26 - June 1). Opening tonight, the fest remains devoted to showcasing movies made in the Pacific Northwest, as well as a boatload of films from “Foreign Lands.”
There is one key difference this year: No films or events will take place at SIFF’s Egyptian Theater, as the historic venue is still undergoing repairs after significant water damage from a pipe leak in November. But the SIFF show must go on, and it does, with 245 films from 74 countries.
Among the wealth of intriguing international voices: Happyend (Japan), a near-future dystopian tale about an alarming surveillance policy; Drowning Dry (Lithuania), portraying sudden tragedy and slow destruction within a family on vacation; The Balconettes (France), in which a trio of female roommates moves from a sexually charged heat wave to blood-soaked thriller; and Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight (South Africa), based on Alexandra Fuller’s bestselling memoir of Rhodesia.
All of which suggests: Do let’s go to the movies tonight.
Jaime Roberts as the titular owner of Seattle’s first disco in Wes Hurley’s ‘Shelly’s Leg.’ (Wes Hurley)
SIFF also features five locally based feature films, gathered under the Northwest Connections banner (see my preview of the new Cascade PBS documentary Wolf Land in last week’s newsletter), and an engaging package of nine local shorts called Sound Visions.
Included in the shorts is the endearing and deeply researched documentary Shelly’s Leg, by Seattle filmmaker Wes Hurley (who earned acclaim for his autobiographical film Little Potato, about growing up gay in Russia). The new film (screening May 22 at SIFF Cinema Uptown) tells the ill-fated but fabulous story of Seattle’s first disco and openly gay bar, which ran from 1973 to 1977.
Hurley says he was inspired by the socio-historical book Gay Seattle: Stories of Exile and Belonging (2003) by Gary Atkins. Within the pages was the story of Shelly Bauman, a dancer who, after suffering a gruesome and bizarre antique-cannon accident during a local Bastille Day parade, won a settlement that helped finance the Pioneer Square venue.
“I didn’t know what I was getting into when I started my research almost three years ago,” Hurley recently told me. “I was hoping to find footage of the club, footage of people talking or folks who are still alive. Unfortunately, almost everyone closely involved with the club passed away.”
Undaunted, Hurley dug into old news stories and recorded interviews, and read more than 1,000 pages from Bauman’s trial. He then used animation, clips from the University of Washington’s oral history archive and verbatim reenactments — plus narration by Kathleen Turner — to bring Shelly’s Leg alive.
Hurley wanted the reenactments to feel as if the subjects had been interviewed immediately after the club closed, so he studied TV news footage from the time, and set the scenes in rainbow-hued rooms (shot at Seattle bars including Sisters and Brothers, the Velvet Elk and Supernova) that look like something from a Peter Max poster. It’s a quirky and compelling touch.
Adding to the verisimilitude in this slice of gay history, Hurley was able to incorporate a notable relic from the era: “I tracked down the actual fire engine that towed the cannon that shot Shelly’s leg off,” he told me. “The owner Charles is a former fire chief and he let us stage a one-car parade with it.”
‘View from the Floor,’ animated by Joe Garber, is a memoir-doc about “rock-n-roll without legs.” (SIFF)
As always, SIFF is overwhelming in its options. In local shorts, see also the cringe-humor sketch Late for the Orgy; and View from the Floor, Megan Griffiths’ animated profile of Seattle musician Mindie Lind, a singer without legs who confronts “inspiration porn.” And in features, Suburban Fury, by local documentarian Robinson Devor (Zoo), offers a first-person profile of single mother Sara Jane Moore, who attempted to assassinate President Gerald Ford in 1975.
Even if you only get out to see a single film, it’s worth reacquainting yourself with the simple joys of the movie-theater experience — and important to do so with the industry in flux.
Also of note: There’s a great deal of good music happening this weekend! If you aren’t joining the crowd for Kendrick Lamar and SZA at Lumen Field (May 17), you have plenty of other options.
• The Fisherman’s Village music festival in Everett (May 15 - 17) features an awesome lineup of local indie bands including The Black Tones, The Dip, Telekinesis and Spirit Award.
• Emerald City Music presents Evolution of the Flute (May 16 in Seattle, May 17 in Olympia). As a former flutist I may be biased here, but all the incarnations of ECM’s “evolution” series have been fantastic, with classical musicians tracing the changing instrument across the ages.
• The Royal Room is hosting a Roberta Flack tribute night (May 17), featuring talented local musicians including Rani Weatherby, Ayesha Brooks and Sari Breznau.
• After Life (May 18 at Benaroya Hall), presented by Music of Remembrance, is a chamber opera that imagines a ghostly confrontation between Gertrude Stein and Pablo Picasso. The main characters are long gone but the subject matter is timeless: the role of artists in a troubled world.
Lastly, there’s some kind of celestial puppet convergence happening in this city and I think we’d better just lean into it.
< Hamid Rahmanian’s Song of the North (Meany Center, May 17) presents the ages-old art of Persian shadow puppetry, augmented with animation. This is a rescheduled performance after all the troupe’s puppets were stolen last year. (Who steals puppets?)
< In Untitled (The Moore Theater, May 17 - 18), Seattle-founded contemporary dance company Zoe | Juniper explores Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, misogyny and Jordan Peele’s horror films with help from creepy puppets by Joe Seely.
< Fussy Cloud Puppet Slam (Theater Off Jackson, May 23 - 24) presents the 27th edition of this popular parade of puppets, featuring 10 local acts embracing the theme “Monster of the Week.” Expect comedy and oddities galore for the 18-and-older set.
< And back to SIFF: One of the festival’s “archival” presentations, The Dark Crystal (from 1982, by Jim Henson and Frank Oz), is a fantasy world featuring adorable elfin “Gelflings.” This screening gives the trippy puppet epic a fresh live soundtrack, courtesy of DJ NicFit. (SIFF Cinema Downtown, aka Cinerama, May 20)
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