Adam Hart doesn't like to use the word "experimental" when talking about the New Pioneers Program in the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF).
"Experimental has the same association as 'broccoli'-it's good for you but not too exciting," he said.
But the shorts and the two features packaged under the New Pioneers banner are anything but boringly good for the watcher, Hart said. "These films are quirky, weird, stylistic; the sort of films that can't be pigeonholed into the normal slots of the film festival. This is really the future of cinema."
For the first time, SIFF and the Northwest Film Forum have teamed up to present those indefinable films in one program. All the films, including a selection of shorts packaged as "Experimental Voices," will run from Saturday, May 22, to Wednesday, May 25, at the NWFF, 1515 12th Avenue.
"We've wanted to collaborate with SIFF for a long time," said Hart, who serves as a publicity director and programmer for NWFF and as a programmer for SIFF. "Both organizations hope that this program will expand over the years."
"We want to cover as many types of cinema as possible," said SIFF director Helen Loveridge about this new venture. "These films take a more ambitious approach to what they choose to show on screen than more traditional approaches."
While many of these films and filmmakers are new to SIFF, it's old hat to NWFF, which specializes in showing the cutting edge of cinema year round at its Capitol Hill space.
"We've already shown several of the filmmakers that are in the shorts program as well as people like Deborah Stratman," Hart said.
Stratman's latest feature, "Kings of the Sky," will be shown on Saturday, May 22, and again on Wednesday, May 25. In the documentary, Stratman follows a troupe of Mongolian tightrope walkers through Turkestan.
"Filmmakers like Stratman are creating a new kind of exhibition for films," Hart said. "Rather than looking for a national distributor, they are taking their films on tour and finding their own audiences. This is letting them do their own distribution in a way that encourages innovation."
"Joy of Life," the other feature in the New Pioneers Program, follows the spoken diary of a butch lesbian and goes from an attempt to soothe the pain of a friend's death into a history of the suicides using the Golden Gate Bridge. The 65-minute film was a hit at the Sundance Festival, said Loveridge, and will be shown with the shorts "How Not to Kill Yourself" and "We are the Littletons."
The shorts in the New Pioneer Program were selected by several different SIFF programmers, said Hart.
"All the programmers had been putting stuff aside that was exciting but we didn't quite know what to do with it. We realized that we had so much of that stuff that we could turn it into its own program," he said.
The resulting "Experimental Voices" will contain "something for everybody," Hart said, no matter what their film tastes.
Based on his own viewing at NWFF, Hart doesn't expect the "experimental" parts of the films to remain all that unusual for too long.
"We see it all the time. These different types of narrative or filming will get picked up by the commercial or music video filmmakers and then make their way into the mainstream features," he said.
Hart does hope that people who sample the New Pioneers program will remember what they like and come back to NWFF after SIFF ends. "It's always hard to show experimental stuff," he said. "These are not the type of films that come with a national ad budget."
Instead, NWFF relies on strong word-of-mouth to build up audiences for its programs.
"People should keep an eye out for some exciting new developments at NWFF over the summer," said Hart.
On May 26, NWFF will host their own film festival, the third-annual Seattle Student Film Festival complete with "fancy schmancy production-related prizes."
Because New Pioneers is part of SIFF, advance ticket information can be found through the SIFF Web site, www.seattlefilm.org, or by stopping by the SIFF single-ticket outlet at the Broadway Performance Hall, 1625 Broadway.
Rosemary Jones writes about arts and entertainment for the Capitol Hill Times. She can be reached at editor@capitolhill times.com.L[[In-content Ad]]
