The Northwest Film Forum opened its spacious new digs Thursday night with a surrealistic, nearly Fellini-esque party.
Outside, there were big searchlights, a small red carpet, and a dozen beauty-queen hostesses. Each wore a sash reading “Welcome to NWFF” in a different language. Inside, the smaller of the two auditoria displayed short, strange film clips played at half-speed. In the tall-ceilinged but somehow claustrophobic lobby, big-bucks donors hobnobbed with scruffy artist types.
Among the live performers: Drag-queen rock band Cross Dress for Less (above), and our current fave Japanese-inspired pop combo the Buttersprites.
The new space is a big achievement for NWFF, whose operations had been split among two or three smaller storefronts. It originally began as WigglyWorld Studios, which took over the film production and editing equipment of 911 Media Arts when that longstanding cultural-empowerment group decided to phase out that side of its operation.
The 911 folks chose to concentrate on video production, particularly digital video. Their choice seems to have been wise, from the standpoint of supporting DIY creativity. Across North America, digital video has become the overwhelming format of choice for documentaries, no-budget shorts, and at least a few indie feature films, such as Thirteen.
The new NWFF’s theaters are equipped for both film and video projection. But its production/editing facilities, classes, grant program, and forthcoming distribution entity (The Film Company) are religiously devoted to celluloid.
Even here in Software City USA, communities of artisans continue to preserve older ways of making things, such as letterpress printing and analog music recording. Motion-picture film is another technology that’s more cumbersome than its modern successors, but which offers its own distinct qualities.
Film’s lighting and exposure settings are more persnickety than those of digital video, but can produce more stunning results. Film’s slower frame rate gives it a less realistic, more fantastical quality. Most pairs of eyes can tell the difference between film and video, and most still associate the look of film with the look of “a real movie.” Shooting on film, when it’s done right, can give an indie director more credibility, both among audiences and within the marketplace.
Film remains a viable option for moviemakers. But it’s among the most complex art forms around, with many different skills and disciplines to be learned. So it needs places where its secrets can be passed on, where its aesthetics can be learned. Places like the Northwest Film Forum.
As a sidebar, the new NWFF is an anchor for an emerging “arts strip” along Twelfth Avenue on Capitol Hill. Indeed, the Buttersprites followed their NWFF opening-night gig by performing the same set an hour later, a block away, at the Capitol Hill Arts Center. The Photographic Center Northwest and Aftermath Gallery are a few blocks south of NWFF; the offices of Artist Trust are two blocks north. Richard Hugo House holds its literary events and programs a block away on Eleventh. Several storefront galleries have opened nearby on Pike and Pine streets.
Capitol Hill may have lost Cornish College and Fred Meyer this past year, but at least it’s still the heart of Seattle’s arts infrastructure.
