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...
When Moroni Benally signs the paperwork to run for Navajo Nation president, he giggles. Moroni For President, a charming documentary profile of his 2014 campaign, captures the high stakes of the race to become the leader of the Navajo Nation, the largest Native American territory by landmass and population. Moroni,...
At The Atlantic Festival, a 2019 conference put on by The Atlantic, an interviewer asked Maria Ressa, CEO of the Filipino news site, Rappler, why Americans should care about the deteriorating political situation in the Philippines. Her response? "What happens in America happens in the rest of the world." Ressa...
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...
For Seattle-based Black artist Zahyr Lauren -- also known as the artist L.Haz, or more concisely, Z -- discovering their personal connection to art came as an unexpected blessing. It was 2015 when the shift began; they were living in New York, working at the Sylvia Rivera Law Project as...
All May, posters have abounded in Seattle's historically gay-friendly neighborhood of Capitol Hill, advertising Transgender Arts Month. Lumped within that was Translations, a five-day Transgender Film Festival, now on its eleventh year. In smaller cities with a less prominent LGBTQ crowd, a Transgender Arts Month might be relegated to only having...
As per usual, we here at REDEFINE have done the hard work of going through SIFF 2016 (Seattle International Film Festival)'s extensive three weeks of programming to bring you a carefully curated short-list of films you should actually go out and see. Additionally, this year's SIFF boasts some new and exciting...
Backwoods folk music plays quietly as visitors enter The Mistake Room, and they find themselves in the midst of a manufactured landscape. Pathways demarcated by rubber tires lead towards a simple architectural structure, and TV sets are strewn about the terrain, running loops of silent video clips. One set focuses...
According to Death Play writer and performer Lisa Dring, grief, in its most violent throes, can be so consuming that one who is experiencing it can hardly feel anything at all. Dring would know. Having lost her estranged father, beloved mother, and half-understood Japanese grandmother by the wee age of 25,...
"We spent ten days crossing a thousand nautical miles. It was the first time we have properly been to sea in the open ocean. It was so remote that we wouldn't see another ship or plane for days, and yet, every time we trawled, we found plastic and evidence of...