FESTIVAL HIGHLIGHTS

All programs are available on-demand any time from Sep. 18-27, 2020,

unless otherwise stated.

Opening Night: Vanishing Seattle Series
Livestream Opening Event: Sep. 18 @ 7:00pm
Or view it on-demand any time Sep. 18–27, 2020

Vanishing Seattle is a project that documents displaced and disappearing institutions, small businesses and cultures of Seattle – and celebrates the histories, spaces, and communities that give the city its soul. All pay-what-you-can ticket purchases above $5.00 will be snail-mailed a Vanishing Seattle x NWFF goodie bag mailing featuring a hands-on activity; all other Local Sightings viewers are encouraged to share their experiences related to places within Seattle — both vanishing and not vanishing — that they hold near and dear to their hearts.

Closing Night: NWFF 25th Anniversary Celebration
One Night Exclusive Livestream Event: Sep. 27 @ 7:00pm

A playful and poignant 90-minute program curated by NWFF board and staff, featuring rare gems from the Film Forum archives, including commissioned “one-shot” films created by now-renowned filmmakers such as the Safdie Brothers, Drew Christie, and Barry Jenkins, plus “The Clouds that Touch Us from Clear Skies,” a short film by beloved late filmmaker Lynn Shelton. The program will be streamed across multiple platforms for a one-time Closing Night engagement, to which viewers can tune in and converse in real-time. Details forthcoming.

ARTIST SPOTLIGHTS

Artist Spotlight: Kiana Harris w/ AJE IJO Series

AJE IJO is a four-part dance film series by Kiana Harris, which centers the humanity, resiliency, vulnerability of Black & African diasporic people [of all genders], interrogates the western gender binary and interrupts accompanying notions of masculinity and femininity. Shot over the course of two years, AJE IJO elicits elements of spiritual cosmologies of the African diaspora, particularly those that emerge from the Yoruba divine consciousness, Ifa, and the Orisa (deities) that comprise it.

Artist Spotlight: Neely Goniodsky Retrospective

A special presentation of animated films spanning the course of 13 years by Seattle-based filmmaker Neely Goniodsky. Using ink, paint, and cut-out animation, Goniodsky creates ethereal visual enactments of poems, songs, daydreams, nightmares, and true stories. Her work has won awards at past editions of Local Sightings Film Festival as well as Cadence: Video Poetry Festival. 

Artist Spotlight: Danny Denial’s CONDiTiONER

Join filmmaker and musician Danny Denial for a screening of CONDiTiONER, a surreal short film about a dysphoric musician who takes a mysterious drug that erases his identity and gets caught in a bisexual love triangle with his two best friends. Paired with a special curation of content by Seattle musicians/visual artists which were involved in the film or inspired it.  (Featured image)

Artist Spotlight: BeautyBoiz: The Collective

Hosted by Kimber K. Shade, a lineup of queer talent will feature drag, spoken word, live music, queer culture! Performances from CarLarans, LüChi, Kimberly Michelle Westwood, DaQween, Guayaba, Kayla Carrington, Boujee Cherry, and many more. BeautyBoiz is a nonprofit queer production company based in Seattle.

NARRATIVE FEATURE FILMS

Borrufa 
(Roland Dahwen, Portland, OR, 2019, 110 min)
Shot on 16mm film in long, thoughtful takes, Roland Dahwen’s debut feature tells the story of an immigrant family in Oregon whose life is disrupted when it’s revealed that the father has a second family.

Fall Back Down 
(SB Edwards, Vancouver, BC, 2020, 104 min)
In a stylish, colorful punk rock exploration of love, sex, and murder, a depressed ex-activist takes a job in a sweatshop, where he and his co-worker make a grim discovery.

EXPERIMENTAL FEATURE FILMS

Home in the Woods 
(Brandon Wilson, Scotts Mills, OR, 2019, 97 min)
Filmed over the course of two years in Marion County, Oregon, the film contemplates the cycles, patterns and relationships that exist in the forest near the filmmaker’s home.

małni—towards the ocean, towards the shore 
(Sky Hopinka, Vancouver, BC, 2020, 80 min)
Sweetwater Sahme and Jordan Mercier’s wanderings through each of their worlds as they wonder through and contemplate the afterlife, rebirth, and the place in-between. Spoken mostly in chinuk wawa, their stories are departures from the Chinookan origin of death myth, with its distant beginning and circular shape.

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE FILMS

24 Hours in the CHOP w/ Short Film: Hope is Not Guaranteed 
(Tajuan LaBee, Seattle, WA, 2020, 60 min)
A documentation of 24 hours spent in the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest zone of Seattle, WA.
Another Word for Learning w/ Short Film: Dzunuḵ̓wa  
(Jadis M. Dumas, 2019, 72 min)
A unique documentary about the freedom to choose one’s own education and how it can pave a way to broader decolonization, even if that means leaving the school system altogether.

Eddy’s Kingdom
(Greg Crompton, Vancouver, BC, 2019, 85 min)
In this stranger-than-fiction tale, an entrepreneur’s obsessive dream of developing an island in Okanagan Lake into a Middle Eastern-themed amusement park leads to a spiraling path of legal turmoil and financial ruin, with hostage-taking and bomb plots along the way.

From Here
(Christina Antonakos-Wallace, Seattle, WA, 2019, 89 min)
A hopeful story of artists and activists based in Berlin and New York whose lives hang in the balance of immigration and integration debates, filmed over a decade in two of the world's largest immigration countries.

The Invisible Father w/ Short Film: Taky Kimura - The Heart of the Dragon
(Thérèse Heliczer, Seattle, WA, 2020, 57 min) - World Premiere!
In the 1960s, beat poet and experimental filmmaker Piero Heliczer helped shape New American Cinema, and was enmeshed with iconic filmmaker Andy Warhol and The Velvet Underground at the very start of their careers. His daughter wonders if she can make peace with her absent father by finding a connection to him through his art.

The River: A Documentary Film
(Rick Walters, Seattle, WA, US, 2020, 91 min) - U.S. Premiere!
The River is a documentary about how communication and purpose play into the success and failures of managing the homeless encampment in Aberdeen, Washington. Director Rick Walters goes to The River Camp to live with and talk with the displaced inhabitants, learn about their perspectives and histories, and to find catharsis for his own battles with addiction and security.

Spawning Grounds
(Nils R. Cowan, Seattle, WA, 2020, 54 min)
In an effort to save a rare native salmon in one of America’s only Urban Wildlife Refuges, a community of scientists, landowners, elected officials and Tribal leaders bands together around science and Indigenous knowledge.

THE WORLD IS BRIGHT
(Ying Wang, Richmond, BC, 2019, 115 min)
When an elderly Beijing couple receives notice that their only son has allegedly committed suicide and has been buried on Canadian soil, they travel to Vancouver to investigate the mysterious circumstances of his death. Made over the course of ten years, Ying Wang’s docu-thriller guides the viewer down a rabbit hole of mental illness, the crushing wheels of bureaucracy, and the vulnerability immigrants can face without cultural coping mechanisms.

SHORT FILM PROGRAMS

AFTER DARK
If there’s something strange in your neighborhood… it might be this assemblage of oddities from the underworld!

COLORBURST
Multicultural and multifaceted: traverse the globe in high vibes, fashion, and style.

FACE2FACE
In a time of loneliness, human connections transcend distance, spaces, and screens.

FEM-POW!
Uplifting the feminine – be it divine, irreverent, sassy, or any powerful persona in-between.

HOLD ONTO THE MOVING SKY
Sweet, tender, rich, and poignant tales of longing, belonging, and place.

MAD WORLD
Confronting the ghosts of our present, as humanity grapples with the current zeitgeist.

MINDSCAPES
Experimentation is the manifestation of the MINDSCAPE, expressed through abstractions of landscape, visions of the self, and interactions of image and space.

NOTES ON CAMP
Reject philistinism! Embrace extravagance! Transcend the good-bad axis of ordinary aesthetic judgement! Because in these films, style is everything.

PLANET PNW
The Great Outdoors comes inside through these tales of open air adventure and environmental stewardship.

REQUIRED VIEWING
Ruminate to illuminate through this collection of sociopolitical and interpersonal analyses of our country.

UNEASY COMPANY
Awkward moments and aggravating relationships that are guaranteed to make you squirm in your seat.

ABOUT NORTHWEST FILM FORUM

Founded in Seattle in 1995 as an independent film and arts nonprofit, Northwest Film Forum incites public dialogue and creative action through collective cinematic experiences. Each year the Forum presents hundreds of films, festivals, community events, multidisciplinary performances, and public discussions. As a comprehensive visual media organization, the Forum offers educational workshops and artist services for film and media makers at all stages of their development.
nwfilmforum.org

ABOUT LOCAL SIGHTINGS FILM FESTIVAL

The 23rd Annual Local Sightings Film Festival [Online] virtually showcases creative communities from throughout the Pacific Northwest. The 2020 program, which runs from September 18-27, features a competitive selection of curated shorts and feature film programs, inviting regional artists to experiment, break, and remake popular conceptions around filmmaking and film exhibition.