Man oh man. The Seattle International Film Festival’s Northwest Connections showcase ALWAYS thrills me, as I love to see what innovative NW filmmakers they’ve picked from the talented submitters, as well as who shot films here, and what I can recognize in them. Here are few top picks from the long, long list!

The Catechism Cataclysm apparently involves a priest on sabbatical and a pair of Japanese tourists recreating the river journey in Huckleberry Finn (what the), it’s been gaining steady word-of-mouth for massive hilarity, and was produced by Seattle-based filmmaker Megan Griffiths—who also directed Sundance favorite The Off Hours (which is here in the NW Connections program too). And Late Autumn follows a pair of ill-fated lovers through the streets of Seattle.

WWU graduate, poet, photographer, songwriter and filmmaker Caleb Young directed the touching Do You See Colors When You Close Your Eyes? about coping with family tragedy, and horror-master John Carpenter hauled his cast & crew to Eastern WA in order to shoot his first film in nine years, The Ward: a spooky atmospheric tale about a woman in a haunted asylum. Also filmed in Washington is Marrow, a psychological thriller that frankly, looks all kinds of MESSED UP, and Without—a haunting debut from Seattle native Mark Jackson, set on Whidbey Island. And then of course, there’s Treatment: the directing debut of our own beloved Sean Nelson (co-directed with Steven Schardt), about an LA filmmaker who lies about addiction to check himself into rehab in order to land an A-list actor being treated there. Nelson also has a role (+ a bit part in The Off Hours! That guy is all over the place…), and we know he’ll light up the screen. Treatment also has a score by Robyn Hitchcock!!!

NW Documentaries include Holy Rollers: The True Story of Card Counting Christians, in which we learn how Seattle-based Churchteam reaps serious profits from casinos for the lord (how did I NOT know about this before?), How to Die in Oregon about a woman’s choice to end her life under OR's Death with Dignity clause (bring some tissue, folks), and A Lot Like You, which follows Seattle filmmaker Eli Kimaro back home to Tanzania as she uncovers some long hidden family secrets (yeesh. Mebbe go to Costco and stock up on a palette of Kleenex). In addition to all these and tons more, there’s a package of shorts called Seattle Stories to get through, which covers everything from buskers and street artists to retinas (ew).

Huzzah! Support local filmmakers by getting out to see at least a few of these during SIFF's 2011 run.

Photo from: Late Autumn

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Photo Credit: Victoria Holt

Another favorite of mine at SIFF this year was the charming road trip movie Bass Ackwards. I grabbed some time with Director Linas Phillips and his co-star, co-writer and friend Davie-Blue to talk about the experience of making this film.

While Linas is a self-described brat and I was never sure what was true and what was said in fun, the interview was fantastic and I can’t wait to see what these two do next.

I thought Bass Ackwards was great, and the thing that really made it great (in my opinion) is that Linas’s character was so loveable that you want him to be okay. You’re really rooting for him to make it.

Linas: He doesn’t seem annoying? Because he’s not getting his shit together?

No. I feel like everybody’s been lost like that at some point…

L: Everyone’s been annoying? Annoying doesn’t exclude empathy, maybe.

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Just when you thought SIFF 2010 was a thing of the past, SIFF Cinema has announced a special three-day, 14-program selection of festival award winners and audience faves, set to unspool this weekend.

SIFF-fatigued as I still am, I'm actually glad to have another chance to check out a few films my calendar couldn't accommodate during SIFF proper. Namely the big-buzz documentaries that tied for the Golden Space Needle award, Waste Land and Ginny Ruffner: A Not So Still Life.

Anything you missed at this year's local cinema-bration but wish you hadn't? Or did SIFF not make it onto your calendar at all this year? Here's your chance to catch up!

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{Beautiful Darling screens at the Seattle International Film Festival at 6:15 at SIFF Cinema.}

"People who I interviewed said she was the most genuine person they had ever met" director James Rasin told me in an interview about Candy Darling, the transgendered actress who died in 1974 and is the subject of his engrossing documentary Beautiful Darling: The Life and Times of Candy Darling, Andy Warhol Superstar. He added he "I thought was weird because she's a person who is a complete construct, everything is intentionally, layer upon layer, an artifice but becomes someone so completely genuine."

That is one of the central themes and ironies that runs through Rasin's fascinating film, which played at the Seattle International Film Festival this year. Candy Darling was one of the Warhol superstars featured in the Lou Reed song "Walk on the Wild Side" (Reed's band, The Velvet Underground, also had a song about her called "Candy Says") where Reed sings in the second verse "Candy came from out on the Island, in the backroom she was everybody's darling; she never lost a head, even when she was giving head". While not exactly the most positive description one could hope for, Rasin's documentary is far more kind and thorough.

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"Basically, I told her I want to blow Samantha Jones into tiny little pieces" Keith Bearden, the writer and director of the often very funny new film Meet Monica Velour told me in an interview. By "her", he was, of course, referring to Kim Catrall, who plays Samantha Jones in the now much-maligned "Sex and the City" franchise and who plays the title character in his debut film that recently played at the Seattle International Film Festival.
 
Monica Velour is a has-been porn star, who may have been remembered for Saturday Night Beaver or Hooked on Hookers, although chances are, she's not remembered at all. She's living in a trailer park in Indiana somewhere and her life is a mess. Sadly, there are few skills that porn stars can take that will help them re-enter the job field and Monica wants to escape the live she has while regaining her former fame. It's like Sunset Boulevard, if, instead of Norma Desmond saying "I'm still big, it's the pictures that got small," she starred in a gangbang.

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Every Spring in China more than 130 million workers jam train stations in desperate attempts to travel home for the New Year holiday -- a mass exodus from industrial cities that constitutes the world's largest human migration. For many travelers the journeys are extremely difficult ones (grueling distances, crammed-beyond-capacity trains) but represent their one opportunity to reunite with family all year.

In the beautifully stark, jaw-droppingly honest, and very moving documentary Last Train Home, director Lixin Fan focuses on one couple, Changhua and Sugin Zhang, beginning as they embark upon a two-day journey to their poverty-stricken rural birthplace to see their children. And it's not a happy holiday for everyone: The Zhangs' dearest wish is to earn enough money to provide their kids a good education, but teenage daughter Qin, resentful of their extended absences (and, in her mind, abandonment), eventually decides to drop out of school to work in a factory herself -- a crushing blow to her parents which leads to a deeply painful confrontation with her dad.

The extraordinarily intimate collaboration with the Zhangs reminded me a lot of the Yung Chang-directed, Lixin Fan-produced Up the Yangtze, which exquisitely observed one of many families displaced by the mammoth Three Gorges Dam project. Last Train Home similarly places a human face on China's rise as a world economic power, illustrating the true cost of progress in a country stuck between its industrial future and rural past.

{Screens Saturday 6/12, 6p and Sunday 6/13, 1:30p, Pacific Place.}

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The immensely entertaining Taiwanese gem Au Revoir Taipei, director Arvin Chen's debut feature (with exec-producer credit to none other than Wim Winders), won my affection in ways I never would've predicted, and I'm happy to see that SIFF has added a late-breaking fourth (!) screening to the schedule. When I attended (on a Sunday night at Pacific Place) the house was packed, with the longest rush ticket line I've seen yet this festival year, and those of us fortunate enough to snag a seat were in for a true charmer. I'm seriously tempted to see it again after the Closing Night film this Sunday.

Chen's film tells a rather complicated story with a feather-light touch. It centers on Kai (Jack Yao), who works at his family's busy Taipei noodle stand by day and hangs out with his always-hungry but very lovable lunkhead of a buddy Gao (Paul Chiang) by night. Hung up on an unseen ex-girlfriend who's recently relocated to Paris, Kai regularly parks himself at his local bookshop to study French textbooks; he's of course oblivious to the subtle longing glances of cute shop assistant Susie (Amber Kuo).

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One of my favorite films at SIFF this year was the beautiful, intuitive drama Cairo Time, written and directed by the equally beautiful and intuitive Ruba Nadda.

In person, Nadda exudes an open friendliness that instantly made me comfortable. We sat down for a few minutes and discussed everything from Patricia Clarkson’s eyebrows to the fiasco of Sex and the City 2. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that I was captivated by everything she said, and that I’d love to be able to sit down with her and do it again.

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I'm a little ashamed to admit that prior to this documentary, the only thing I knew about William S. Burroughs was that he had written "Naked Lunch".

Taking you through a brief history of the Beat Generation, Director Yony Leyser paints an unwavering and fascinating portrait in William S Burroughs: A Man Within through film footage of the author (some with Allen Ginsberg and Andy Warhol), recordings, readings, and interviews with friends.

Celebs and musicians, including Peter Weller (who also narrates), David Cronenberg, John Waters, Gus Van Sant, Patti Smith, Iggy Pop, Thurston Moore, Jello Biafra and more cover what Burroughs meant to them – from his importance to the gay liberation movement to his later credit as "The Godfather of Punk".

After the film, I felt I had a more complete picture of a man whose legendary status as a writer and icon had made him seem almost untouchable. Burroughs was seemingly unaware of why he was famous, lived his life according to his own rules, and by all accounts, was someone who touched the lives of many personally, as well as with his writing.

If you’re curious about him at all, I’d recommend this. It’s good stuff, you guys.

{William S. Burroughs: A Man Within screens at SIFF June 10, 4pm at The Neptune and again June 12, 6:30pm at The Harvard Exit}

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Each year the giddy joy of perusing the new SIFF roster gives way inevitably to a sense of fatigue at trying to differentiate, by 25-word blurbles, the hundreds of movies that begin to blend together into genres and tropes and overlapping plots. There are the family dramas where A Secret Is Revealed that Changes Everything, the coming-of-age tales, the coming-out tales, the ones where a lovely lady gets her groove back by sleeping with a strapping native fellow, tales of foreign oppression, heists gone bad, things with ninjas, and of course the family comedies where A Secret Is Revealed that Changes Everything.

The Wedding Cake is a lovely example of a how it really all comes down to execution. Weddings are so laden with symbolism and ripe for drama that it’s no wonder filmmakers are drawn to them, nor that so many of them ride right off the rails (Rachel Getting Married comes to mind). But here’s a movie with a fairly formulaic premise (it’s a family comedy, see, and a secret is revealed that changes everything) and even somewhat clichéd execution that’s sweet and charming and very satisfying.

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