Category: Cinema

Cinema Media Visual Arts

Gary Hill’s Glossodelic Attractors

Even among my friends and associates who tend to consider themselves more cultured than most, very few have heard of Gary Hill. Behind this lack of knowledge, I suspect, is the typical disdain with which Seattle often treats its own artists, preferring to fantasize that nothing good ever happens here and the real world is always somewhere else, probably New York.

Cinema Comix Culture Literature

A Few Clumsy Words about Jeffrey Brown

When I first moved to Boston from Seattle in my early twenties, I was filled with confusion, excitement, and the terrifying thought that I had no idea what I was doing when it came to relationships, jobs and the other mysterious workings of the world. Around that time my good friend Laura introduced me to Brown’s first graphic novel, Clumsy. In his book, Brown so realistically painted a portrait of young love–in all of its awkwardness, earnestness and blind idealism–that it all felt immediately familiar.

Cinema Media

Lenin in October has Seattle Jewish Film Festival audiences rolling in the aisles

What could be more fraught with hilarious peril than a scenario in which a man, with lofty dreams of owning his own restaurant, comes into a large inheritance with a stipulation that goes against, if not his own beliefs and ideals, then certainly those of the community around him. Alright, this may not sound so funny, but add some Bolshevik revolution into the equation, and trust me, it’s a knee slapper.

Cinema Media

Nicky’s Family: The Untold Story of “the British Schindler”

I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t been dreading the inevitability of a Holocaust film coming up on my docket for this year’s Seattle Jewish Film Festival. Having read the synopsis for Nicky’s Family, I was looking forward to the screening in theory but I could not ignore the nagging fear that it was going to be the same old story, different screenwriter. Prior to this year’s SJFF, I hadn’t heard of Sir Nicholas Winton or his harrowing tale of saving hundreds of Czechoslovakians during the days ramping up to World War II. I was unprepared for the impact the film documenting his life would have on me.