John Lewis gets stopped in airports. A lot. In John Lewis: Good Trouble, a new documentary by director Dawn Porter, there’s a scene where we follow Lewis through an airport terminal as strangers approach him to call him a hero and an inspiration. His son says, with a rueful laugh,...
Thirty years ago (July 12, 1990, to be exact), Northern Exposure premiered on network television. The six-season series depicts life in a fictional small town called Cicely in the wilds of Alaska. It does not shy away from the spiritual nor the surreal, in employing extended dream sequences, fairy tale...
LA-based musician and visual artist Vinyl Williams -- born Lionel Williams -- explores ontological realities and connecting nexuses of sound, harmony, digital world-building, and higher consciousness. Tapping into Aldous Huxley’s realm of “mystical insight,” Williams puts it succinctly that, “If you have a vision of the music you love, you...
Welcome to Cancer season! The Sun is now in the sign ruled by the Moon. This is a time with real spiritual weight, where our ego meets our inner child and the energy of the moment feels positively tidal. Cancer is the soil that feeds our roots, the feathers that...
When filmmaker Matt Wolf (Recorder, Wild Combination) first saw photos of eight scientists dressed in red jumpsuits and standing beside a glass pyramid in the Arizona desert, he assumed they were characters from a sci-fi movie. He soon discovered that between 1991 and 1993, the scientists lived in a gleaming,...
Restless and inquisitive, communicative and provocative, and above all endlessly entertaining, Gemini energy is a far cry from the sturdy, some-might-say stubborn sensuality of its predecessor Taurus. So buckle up, buttercups! It’ll be a month for asking lots of questions, feeling pulled in opposing directions, and exploring our connections. Here...
Based upon a true story, Nancy Kelly's Thousand Pieces of Gold is an affecting and slow-building narrative exploring issues of autonomy, captivity and dependence in the economy of the Gold Rush. The film calls attention to the hardships faced by Chinese Americans in the 19th century, such as human trafficking,...
Desolation Center's genealogy of anti-commercial sound takes us to West Berlin, where Einstürzende Neubauten (translation: Collapsing New Buildings) create a new musical lexicon around the use of heavy machinery. It also gives us a glimpse of the New York No Wave scene, where groups like Sonic Youth and Swans are...
Despite Kadazia Allen-Perry's youth, her cystic fibrosis has forced her to confront her own mortality. In her autobiographical documentary, Chronic Means Forever, the African-American first-time filmmaker provides an intimate exploration into the feelings of alienation and frustration which accompany her life-long diagnosis. Allen-Perry is faced daily with the perpetual struggle to...
In the same way that my 13-year-old self once fretted over who might eventually receive my postcard collection when I passed away (morbid, I know), a younger adult me used to wonder what it might look like when this day came, and how I would be certain that it had...
Oh, North Korea. The mechanics of filmmaking are lost upon you, are they not? You may have read about it -- which is why you probably attempted to control the script of Under The Sun and escorted the filmmakers to a number of pre-determined filming locations -- but what you...
Another year has come and gone for the Seattle International Film Festival, and this year, our top selections include a lot of black comedies and films that capture the power of human emotion, in all of its positive and negative facets. Here are some favorites from 2016. BURN BURN BURN (United...