Notes From The Program Director | Week of November 8th, 2024,

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Notes From The Program Director

Week of November 8, 2024

Melissa Tamminga

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November 8-14, 2024

Hello, friends,

I confess it is difficult to write this newsletter today in the wake of November 5. Writing my weekly missive as if all is normal is not something I really feel up to.

But I am also aware that art as we find it in the cinema is something we need now perhaps more than ever, a testament to what is good, to what human creativity can accomplish, and it is -- or can be -- a testament to what is true even in the darkest times. Filmmakers ranging from Oscar Micheaux, Charles Burnett, and Julie Dash; to Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio De Sica, and Gillo Pontecorvo; to Charlie Chaplin, Frank Borzage, and Michael Curtiz; to our Doctober filmmakers this year--and so many others--have known this.

And one of the beautiful things about cinema is it makes space for so many thoughts and so many feelings, space we need particularly when we live in times when there is no clear right way to respond to the world in which we find ourselves.

Cinema will not have the answers for us, but it is an expansive space many might find solace in, and our doors will stay open and our lights will stay on for you, as always.

Conclave will be here as will We Live in Time, both finishing out their final weeks with us before they leave on November 14.

Third Eye will be here, too, on Saturday at 10 pm, with the horror catharsis some may be looking for in the brilliant Let the Right One In, a pick from one of our longstanding staff members, Ryan Uhlhorn.

There’s one more chance to see the beauty of Van Gogh’s work in Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers from our Exhibition on Screen series; it plays Sunday at 11 am.

And Missing from Fire Trail Road, a documentary more urgent than ever, plays Thursday at 5:30 pm, a film co-presented by CASCADIA International Women’s Film Festival. Director Sabrina Van Tassel will be joining us as will producer, activist, and Tulalip tribe member Deborah Parker.