It's that time of the year again! SIFF once again arrives a week earlier than usual bringing a spectrum of cinema from across the world. This year, like the string of years since 2009, sees a qualitative diversity-dip in the percentage of foreign cinema, arthouse, auteur and all things challenging or adventurous. These were content genres that once dominated the festival, making it of a caliber to challenge Toronto and New York. Those times, I fear, look to be officially over.
As a consequence we again get the thematically titled Pathways with the conceptual hand-holding of themes like "Love..." for the disproportionately large romance selection, "Thrill Me" obviously for adventure and action, "Make Me Laugh" signifying comedic content, the infantile "Open My Eyes" for documentaries and the once-predominant New Global Cinema section is now categorized as "Show me the World". You decide how you feel about all this. Last I saw, it was adults a good bit mature (and senior) to myself that were attending International Film Festivals across the country. I wasn't quite aware the self styled clever-and-quirky' "Glee" tv demographic were going out of their way to seek out unknown cinema experiences in North America's urban centers. Makes one curious as to where SIFF are getting their demographic statistics, doesn't it?
Nonetheless, this year's fest isn't as painfully omissive as 2011 or 2010 for that matter. As a a hopeful hint of things to come, the lackluster programming described above waned a bit in 2012, thankfully. Nonetheless we're again seeing a glut of middle-ground contemporary romances, clever quirky dramas for the sub-Sundance sect and a lot of filler seemingly there to entice some imagined suburban demographic out of their Bellevue hobbles and into the city. But there's a good bit of legitimate, original, challenging, crafted cinema to be found in here too. SIFF in the past has existed as a focal-point of visionary cinema curatorialship, with the resources, funds and legacy to be hugely influential. This year I found some 16-20 films of interest, curiosity or gravitas that I plan to attend, by both directors of note and new developing artists. Overall not a bad year, but like I've been beating into the ground, not on par with the stellar run we'd seen spanning the decade of 1998 - 2008.
They've got a long way to go to gain back that lost ground, but I continue to be enthused about their new home at the SIFF Cinema at the Uptown and expanded screens between that venue and their Film Center. As always though, venue resources, influence, and legacy in the arts are all about what you do with them. That said, glad to have a international film festival of it's stature in my city. Anticipating the likely highlights of the festival in Ulrich Seidle's new trilogy of austere, unflinchingly brutal takes on the subjects of faith, hope and love, Sion Sono's second melodrama set in the wake of the Tōhoku earthquake/Fukushima disaster and the eradication of the 'safety' of moral distancing on the part of the viewer, in response to Joshua Oppenheimer's surreal reenactment by the murderers of over a million alleged Communists under Indonesia's Suharto regime.
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Friday, May 17
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6:30 PM - Peter Greenaway "Goltzius and the Pelican Company"
Egyptian Theatre
GOLT1713
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Saturday, May 18
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11:00 AM - Alex Gibney "We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks"
SIFF Cinema Uptown
WEST1813
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Saturday, May 18
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4:00 PM - Joshua Oppenheimer "The Act of Killing"
Harvard Exit
ACTO1813
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Sunday, May 19
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10:30 AM - Thomas Riedelsheimer "Breathing Earth"
AMC Pacific Place 11
EART1913
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Sunday, May 19
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9:00 PM - Kim Ki-Duk "Pieta"
AMC Pacific Place 11
PIET1913
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Tuesday, May 21
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6:30 PM - Ulrich Seidl "Paradise: Love"
SIFF Cinema Uptown
LOVE2113
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Tuesday, May 21
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9:30 PM - Sion Sono "The Land of Hope"
Egyptian Theatre
HOPE2113
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Wednesday, May 22
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6:30 PM - Ulrich Seidl "Paradise: Faith"
SIFF Cinema Uptown
FAIT2213
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Thursday, May 23
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6:30 PM - Ulrich Seidl "Paradise: Hope"
SIFF Cinema Uptown
HOPE2313
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Thursday, May 23
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9:30 PM - Sergei Loznitsa "In the Fog"
SIFF Cinema Uptown
FOGX2313
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Saturday, May 25
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11:30 AM - Richard Rowley "Dirty Wars"
SIFF Cinema Uptown
DIRT2513
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Sunday, May 26
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8:30 PM - Jessica Woodworth/Peter Brosens "The Fifth Season"
AMC Pacific Place 11
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Tuesday, May 28
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9:30 PM - Joachim Lafosse "Our Children"
AMC Pacific Place 11
CHIL2813
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Sunday, June 02
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5:30 PM - Shohei Imamura "A Man Vanishes"
SIFF Cinema Uptown
MANV0213
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Tuesday, June 04
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3:30 PM - Fernando Guzzoni "Dog Flesh"
SIFF Cinema Uptown
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Tuesday, June 04
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7:00 PM - Thomas Vinterberg "The Hunt"
Harvard Exit
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Saturday, June 08
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10:00 PM - Sophie Fiennes "The Pervert's Guide to Ideology"
AMC Pacific Place 11
PERV0813
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Sunday, June 09
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2:00 PM - Saul Bass "Phase IV"
SIFF Cinema Uptown
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Sunday, June 09
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9:00 PM - Adrián García Bogliano "Here Comes the Devil"
AMC Pacific Place 11
HERE0913
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