From Lee Isaac Chung's Minari to Chloe Zhao's Nomadland, Asian American filmmakers have gained widespread recognition over the past year for their ability to tell stories that are universal. Running from March 4-14, 2021, the 9th Annual Seattle Asian American Film Festival does what it has been doing for years:...
"By courageously looking, we defiantly declared: 'Not only will I stare. I want my look to change reality.'" - bell hooks Launched in February 2021, Our Right to Gaze: Black Film Identities is a short film distribution and mentorship series curated in joint partnership between Full Spectrum Features (Chicago), The Luminal...
Hailing itself as Slamdance Film Festival's "largest and most accessible festival yet," Slamdance 2021 runs virtually from February 12th through 15th, and can be accessed with an impressively cheap $10 festival pass. With its long-time focus on emerging artists, the 27th edition of the festival boasts 25 features plus 107...
In the Criminal Justice Club at Horizon High School in El Paso, Texas, students bond and gain camaraderie while also rigorously training for careers in law enforcement. Horizon's program is the subject of At the Ready, filmmaker Maisie Crow's enthralling yet challenging documentary that premiered at Sundance Film Festival in...
In February 2020, artists Anida Yoeu Ali and Shin Yu Pai, served on the Arts Innovator Award (AIA) juror panel for the Seattle-based grantmaking organization, Artist Trust (AT). The AIA is the largest unrestricted award presently available for Washington State artists, funded by the Chihuly family and administered by AT....
In the powerful new documentary, Since I Been Down, a swastika-tattooed man named Chad Walton explains that Taking Education and Creating History (T.E.A.C.H.) -- an initiative of the Black Prisoners' Caucus -- is best described as "prisoners lifting up prisoners." Officially founded in 1972, the Black Prisoners' Caucus is an...
In the directorial debut of their feature film, Borrufa, Portland-based artist, performer, and filmmaker Roland Dahwen presents a quiet portrait of the trials and tribulations faced by immigrant families in the United States. Poetically and ambiguously named, Borrufa is shot on Super 16mm film stock and unconventional by most mainstream filmmaking...
Two months following the tragic and unexpected passing of independent filmmaker Lynn Shelton -- known for such films as Sword of Trust (2019), Laggies (2014), and Humpday (2009) -- Duplass Brothers Productions and Seattle's Northwest Film Forum announced the Lynn Shelton Of a Certain Age Grant in July 2020. In...
Welcome to Virgo season. It’s a time of transition, fraught with the frisson of both inevitable endings and fresh beginnings. There’s a pervasive undercurrent of things needing to be done. Virgo’s symbol, the maiden, is quite possibly one of the most misunderstood in the zodiac. After all, what exactly is the...
In the cinematic music video for “Wine,” Canadian Chinese singer Carson Cheng — also known as KICCC (pronounced “kick”) — emerges from hot ashes like a phoenix and finds himself face-to-face with a white wolf in the woods. The dramatic result of a creative exchange between KICCC and director Brock...
Some artists are prolific, churning out project after project at a speed that leaves onlookers wondering about their superhuman pace. Some have a much slower process -- painstaking in intricate detail -- and Eric Beltz is one of the latter. A drawing teacher at University of Santa Barbara, Beltz is a...
Strangers, Marissa Nadler's second record for Brooklyn-based Scared Bones and seventh overall, mixes elements both familiar and unfamiliar to create an uneven, but often rewarding listen. As with the best of her prior work, the songs that hit still retain the ability to steal your breath. And while...