Peele

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In honor of 2024's Black History month and of Bellingham's enduring love for horror, this February, we'll be celebrating the unique cinematic art of Jordan Peele, who with just three feature films has knocked each and every one of them out of the park, and with Get Out in 2017, he became the first African-American screenwriter to win an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.

Prior to 2017, Peele was well-known for his hilarious, inventive, and often socially-conscious comedy in Key & Peele, but as a longtime horror-aficionado and founder of Monkeypaw Productions, he wore his love for horror on his sleeve as well. With Get Out, as his stunning feature film debut, Peele offered a wonderfully inventive new entry in the horror genre, a brilliant marriage of horror, comedy and social commentary and, thus, a showcase of Peele's passions and unique sensibilities. His subsequent features, Us and Nope, have offered the same brilliance in the marriage of tone and subject, while also showcasing ever-deeper thematic elements and new explorations of genre conventions.

Join us, this February, for the pleasure of seeing all three films — Get Out, Us and Nope — back on the big screen again and to consider them together, as part of Peele's approach to film and filmmaking.

SPECIAL GUEST INTRODUCTIONS

Professor Felicia Cosey of Western Washington University will be introducing Get Out and Nope. Professor Cosey is currently teaching a class on Elevated Horror -- "Elevated horror film—also called slow horror, art horror, and indie horror—is a subgenre that embraces storytelling and character development to evoke a profound sense of dread in the spectator" -- and she is "a film, television, and media studies scholar. Her research and teaching interests focus on representations of race, gender, and sexuality in various forms of popular culture. Her current scholarship investigates post-apocalyptic fantasies in film, television, video games, and literature."

Gary Washington will be introducing Us. Beloved Pickford Board member and co-founder of Bellingham's very own horror film festival, Bleedingham, Gary is our resident expert on horror. Whatcom Talk, profiling Bleedingham in 2023 notes, the festival takes "place each year on the weekend before or of Halloween, the film festival provides creative opportunities for local filmmakers and horror enthusiasts to bask in gore and jump scares, among other creepy delights."