the seattle international film festival has officially started and runs until june 12, 2011. i am very exciting because this will be my very first year to attend! i have eagerly been making my film choices along with a detailed schedule for the next few weeks to maximize my siff viewing. it is so easy to go online and buy tickets to any film and siff members get a discount. i volunteered this year and received some free vouchers so i was able to expand my choices a bit more.

siff picks – part II           siff picks – part III

submarine

Oliver Tate is a cool literary genius…at least in his head. To others, he’s a misunderstood teenage boy attempting to stand out against the busy backdrop of 1980s Wales. Never lacking for ambition, this fifteen-year-old boy sets himself two tasks for the summer: to lose his virginity before it becomes legal to the unromantic pyromaniac bully Jordana, and to extinguish the flame between his mother and her former lover, who is also a New Age psychic performing strange rituals in the house next door. Thanks to the clever use of slow-motion and freeze frames, as well as a novel use of voice-over narration to capture the main character’s unique sensibilities, this debut feature film is a breath of fresh air, melding together New Age British arts and an ironic fairytale. Adapting Joe Dunthorne’s cult novel and citing Woody Allen as his greatest inspiration, comedian-turned-filmmaker Richard Ayoade offers a hilarious tale about teen love with all the cleverness and subtlety of British humor. (source)

Director Richard Ayoade is scheduled to attend!!!!!!

the future

A cat named Paw-Paw narrates from within his cage at the animal shelter. A young man stops time and has a conversation with the moon. A woman is coerced into a bizarre dance by a suddenly sentient t-shirt. From these moments it should be clear that we are once again in the world of artist, author, and filmmaker Miranda July (Me and You and Everyone We Know). Sophie (July) and Josh (Hamish Linklater), are a young couple who realize that their plans to adopt a pet could mean a big step forward in their lives. So they make a pact to take thirty days and simply follow their dreams. While their experiment starts out lighthearted, they both soon uncover insecurities that threaten to ruin their relationship. July’s second feature is as assured and inventive as her much acclaimed debut, filled with droll humor and pathos, and punctuated by surprising moments of magical realism. The story of Sophie and Josh is a reflection of our fears of romance, aging, stagnation, and all the other uncertainties of the future. Director Miranda July scheduled to attend. (source)

perfect sense

Recently heartbroken, Susan (Eva Green) devotes herself to her medical practice, where she encounters a peculiar patient: following an intense, yet inexplicable bout of grief, he’s lost his sense of smell. Soon afterwards, she discovers other similar cases emerging throughout the globe. While the number of victims swells to epidemic proportions, Susan meets Michael (Ewan McGregor), a talented chef at a local restaurant, and commences upon a sudden, intense affair. Meanwhile, the mysterious disease progresses—first causing ravaging hunger, before robbing people of their sense of taste. Even as they succumb to the disease, the newly forged couple embarks on an increasingly sensual adventure, experiencing head-spinning, stomach-tightening moments of pure connection. Influenced by such recent films as Blindness and Children of Men, director David Mackenzie, a SIFF 2008 Emerging Master, fashions an intimate apocalyptic drama, aided by McGregor and Green’s erotic on-screen chemistry, in which love blooms anew even as the world outside their bedroom window wilts away. (source)

There is a tribute to Ewan McGregor this Sunday that includes a Q&A session with him and SIFF will present the Golden Space Needle Award for Outstanding Achievement in Acting to McGregor. (info)

love

In 2007, rock band Angels & Airwaves approached writer/director William Eubank to collaborate with them on a visual work inspired by their music. LOVE, the resulting film, perfectly captures the intense, dreamlike quality of their music, while offering so much more. Beginning during the American Civil War, Lt. Lee Briggs embarks upon a secretive mission to report on a mysterious object found in a Western desert canyon. Following Briggs’s discovery, the action jumps ahead to the near future where astronaut Lee Miller is nearing the end of his service onboard the International Space Station. However, contact with Earth grows erratic, as he’s told, Something is going on here. When all communication stops, Miller finds himself stranded alone, his life-support systems and his sanity dwindling away, until he makes an unexpected, strange discovery aboard his ship. Drawing inspiration from such films as 2001: A Space Odyssey, Solaris, and the recent Moon, Eubank fashions a visually dazzling piece of cerebral science fiction that explores the fundamental human need for connection and the limitless power of hope. Director William Eubank, Producers Tom DeLonge and Mark Eaton, and actor Gunnar Wright scheduled to attend May 21 and May 22 screenings. (source)