Pickford patrons will remember John Crowley's wonderful Brooklyn, a hit on our screens back in 2015, and Crowley’s new film, We Live in Time, certainly has the potential to burrow its way into Pickford hearts, too -- and make audiences reach for the tissues. It certainly made me reach for mine, becoming something of a teary mess at least twice during the film’s runtime.   

Starring Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield, We Live in Time is a romance in the vein of The Fault in our Stars, indicating to us very early on that tragedy waits in the wings for the two lovers, Tobias and Almut. But before we can dwell on that too long, the film sets about making us fall in love with them ourselves, telling the story of how the two met and lived a life together, using a beautiful, fluid narrative structure and moving backwards and forwards in time, a structure that emphasizes how precious and fleeting every moment is. 

It's, quite simply, a lovely, warm-hearted film with unsurprisingly excellent performances from Pugh and Garfield, who have loads of romantic chemistry.  And, without giving anything away, I must also note it has one of the best “movie scenes in a gas station” of all time (I’d rank it up there with the scene in Reality Bites). And I suspect, overall, given the film’s warmth and catharsis, it’ll be a film I return to again and again, much like I do with the infinitely rewatchable (but too rare) classic weepies -- Beaches, Terms of Endearment, Steel Magnolias --those films that might break our hearts, but we love them for it. 

In addition to our theatrical run films, we also have several standalone events, including a special screening of our Doctober Audience Award winner,  Porcelain War.  We had so many unique and marvelous films this Doctober, it’s hard for me to choose my own favorite, but I could not be happier that you as our audience have honored this film. 

It’s a film where the urgency is palpable: the protagonists, Slava and Anya and their sweet dog Frodo, living their lives in a war zone, where life and death intertwine every single day.  But the beauty of the film is just as palpable: Slava and Anya’s art, their love for one another, their love for Ukraine, and the unutterable beauty of the natural world. Porcelain Waris the kind of rare war film that, while never eliding the pain, emphasizes the warmth, joy, resilience of what it means to be human.  

It was also an incredibly special moment in Doctober this year, when Slava, Anya, Frodo, and film producer Paula got to join us live over Zoom, to talk about their story and their lives and about what Slava and Anya will face when they return home this fall to Ukraine, after traveling in the U.S. with their film. I know our hearts will go with them when they do.    

Join us on Saturday, November 2 at 3:45 pm in honor of the Audience Award for one last chance to see Porcelain War, and join us, too, on Sunday, November 3 at 3:30 pm for a special screening of Fish War, the brilliant film that won the runner-up spot for the Doctober Audience Award. 

I am also delighted to say that our Exhibition on Screen series returns, after a two year hiatus, with Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers.  Exhibition on Screen is a beautifully produced documentary series in which each film explores the history behind various works of art.  Previous films have featured Frida Kahlo, Pissarro, Delacroix, Gauguin, Mary Cassatt, Edward Hopper, and many others. Van Gogh, made in close collaboration with the National Gallery, currently hosting its biggest ever Van Gogh exhibition, focuses on Van Gogh’s electrifying years in the south of France, where he developed his revolutionary, unique style. 

Join us on Wednesday, November 6 at 5:30 pm or Sunday, November 10 at 11 am for a chance to escape into the fascinating and beautiful world of Van Gogh’s art.

Finally, this Thursday, in a screening co-presented by WWU’s Black Student Coalition, we are playing the terrific new film Know Your Place, written and directed by Seattle filmmaker Zia Mohajerjasbi.  Mohajerjasbi and producer Rhett Taylor will be in attendance for the screening and for a conversation following the film, a conversation which will be hosted by none other than Charles Mudede, the Seattle filmmaker, writer, and cultural critic whose film Thin Skin we had the honor of playing here in 2022.    

Know Your Place follows the story of "Robel Haile, an Eritrean-American boy of 15, [who] embarks on an errand to deliver a huge and heavy suitcase across town destined for a sick family member in his parents' homeland. He enlists the help of his best friend Fahmi Tadesse, [but] an unexpected turn transmutes his simple task into an odyssey across the rapidly gentrifying city of Seattle,” an odyssey on which he faces the challenges of “familial responsibility, self identification, and dislocation amid the ongoing redevelopment and economic displacement of the only community he's ever known as home."

It's a beautifully told story, both intimate in its details and propulsively intense in its narrative, and in his review for The Stranger, Mudede compares Know Your Place to one of my favorite films, Abbas Kiarostami's Where Is the Friend's Home, an achingly lovely and apt parallel. Mohajerjasbi's sensibilities do indeed remind me a great deal of Kiarostami's, and it makes me all the more eager to see where his film career will lead next. 

What a pleasure it will be to host Know Your Place and Mohajerjasbi, Taylor, and Mudede for a post-film conversation here at the Pickford; it’s a conversation that promises to be deeply thought-provoking.     

Join us on Thursday, November 7 at 7:45 pm!

See you at the movies, friends! 

Melissa