As Bees in Honey Drown: Víctor Erice's Directorial Debut The Spirit of the Beehive

The Spirit of the Beehive / El Espíritu de la Colmena
(Víctor Erice, Spain, 1973, 35mm, 95 minutes)

 

 

 

Before Guillermo del Toro (The Devil's Backbone, Pan's Labyrinth) or Alejandro Amenábar (Open Your Eyes), there was Víctor Erice.

While The Spirit of the Beehive isn't a conventional horror film or even a psychological thriller, it uses horror--specifically James Whale's 1931's Frankenstein--as a jumping-off point into a reckoning with Franco-era Spain wrapped in a story about the mysteries and wonders of childhood. 

 

Erice's stunning debut would have a profound effect on Mexico's Del Toro, and I wouldn't be surprised if this dreamy, yet menacing movie didn't also serve as inspiration for Spanish filmmakers Amenábar and J.A. Bayona, whose work Del Toro has championed, especially 2007's The Orphanage.

Set in rural Spain in 1940, the film begins with a village screening of Whale's masterpiece. Afterwards, six-year-old Ana (soulful Ana Torrent, who will later appear in Amenábar's 1996 Tesis) asks sister Isabel (impish Isabel Telleria) why the monster killed the girl. Isabel tells her it's just a movie, then contradicts herself by claiming she's actually seen the monster or "spirit." Ana is more convinced by the second story than the first, and her world starts to echo that belief to the extent that she loses herself in it. It's only one echo among many; the film is full of them.

Their father, Fernando (Fernando Fernán Gómez), for instance, is a beekeeper and his study features a honeycomb-patterned window. 

 

Is Erice suggesting, like A.S. Byatt in Angels and Insects, that these people are trapped by their biology--or their country's political regime? The question is left lingering in the air as other echoes, from both Frankenstein and the natural world that surrounds them--friendly dogs, creepy cats, poisonous mushrooms, etc.--build on top of each other.

Over the years, the elusive Erice, who has issued only three full-length features in over three decades, has been compared to everyone from Werner Herzog to Terrence Malick, but to my mind, The Spirit of the Beehive plays more like the film one-shot director Charles Laughton would have made had he moved to Spain, switched to honey-hued color stock, traded German Expressionism for magical realism, and made another film as miraculous as 1955's Night of the Hunter. Erice has done just that.

 

The Spirit of the Beehive in a brand new 35mm print plays Mar 24-30, Fri-Thurs, at 7 and 9pm (Sat and Sun at 3pm) at the Northwest Film Forum. The NWFF is located at 1515 12th Ave. For more information, please click here. You can also call (206) 329-2629 for general information or (206) 267-5380 for show times. Images from the IMDb and Another Gaze.

The Higher the Hair...in New Plymptoon

HAIR HIGH
(Bill Plympton, USA, 2004, 35mm, 75 minutes)

Imagine a cross between cartoonish, live-action musical Grease, Finnish show-band crazies the Leningrad Cowboys, and violently twisted video game Stubbs the Zombie, and there you have it: Hair High, the latest full-length blast of looniness from I Married a Strange Person animator Bill Plympton.

Naturally, that analogy, colorful as it may sound, is a mite reductive. Plympton's work is both more surrealistic and more scatological, although this animated feature is set in the 1950s, the rockabilly soundtrack does feature Hasil Adkins, the characters do sport madcap hairstyles, and central couple Cherri and Spud (voiced by Sarah Silverman and Eric Gilliland) do return from the dead just in time to make a "killer" entrance at the prom.

As with other "Plymptoons," Hair High can be pretty gross, as when the wheezy biology teacher (voiced by David Carradine) coughs up a lung--among other organs--and it's the visceral stuff I find least appealing. 

The surrealistic flights of fancy, on the other hand, are as creative as ever, while the scatological material generates the biggest laughs. 

Granted, the jokes can be rather obvious--the Echo Park football team are called the Cocks--but a laugh is a laugh, and I was unable to suppress one when the announcer (actor and voiceover artist Jay O. Sanders) exclaimed, "That Cock is full of spunk!" 

Other voice actors include Keith Carradine, Craig Bierko, Beverly D'Angelo, Dermot Mulroney, Tom Noonan, fellow animators Matt Groening and Don Hertzfeldt, and producer Martha Plimpton, Keith Carradine's daughter.

So, Hair High isn't for everyone, but it's packaged with the quite wonderful, thoroughly un-"yucky" animated short Fan and the Flower (narrated by Sideways' Paul Giamatti). Plus, Plympton will be producing an original drawing for each audience member on opening night. Talk about spunk!

Hair High plays Mar 23-29, Thurs-Wed at 7 and 9pm (Sat and Sun at 5pm) at the Northwest Film Forum. The NWFF is located at 1515 12th Ave on Capitol Hill between Pike and Pine. For more information, click here or call (206) 329-2629 for general info or (206) 267-5380 for show times. Cherri and Spud images from Animation World Network and SensaCine.

Histoire(s) du Metal: Part Two

METAL: A HEADBANGER'S JOURNEY
(Sam Dunn, Scot McFadyen, & Jessica Joy Wise, Canada, 2005, 35mm, 96 minutes)

I miss the innocence I've known
Playing KISS covers
Beautiful and stoned.
--Wilco, "Heavy Metal Drummer" (2002)

Once Metallica moved towards the mainstream--and metal and hip-hop parted ways--I lost interest. For awhile, though, I thought speed metal was the most exciting thing going. I suspect Sam Dunn feels the same way as he mostly focuses on the crunchier stuff in the excellent new documentary Metal: A Headbanger's Journey.

While Penelope Spheeris, in 1988's The Decline of Western Civilization, Part II: The Metal Years looked at platinum-selling acts like Aerosmith, KISS, and Poison and while Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, in 2004's Some Kind of Monster, looked exclusively at the monolithic Metallica, Dunn takes a different tack. Although The Metal Years is ridiculously entertaining, Spheeris doesn't present a history of the form, but rather a series of colorful, if occasionally disturbing interviews. Her tone is, at times, condescending or  critical. Berlinger and Sinofsky, on the other hand, take a more sympathetic approach, but they're just looking at one band, not an entire genre.

Lifelong headbanger Dunn, along with Jessica Joy Wise and Scot McFadyen (Ginger Snaps), paint what may be the most comprehensive portrait of metal yet. From the outset, we learn that Dunn's background is in anthropology. Consequently, he doesn't just trace the "histoire(s)" of heavy metal, but breaks it down into its constituent parts. 

Some may consider it a fault that he didn't interview big names like Ozzy Osbourne and Steven Tyler, but they've already gotten chances to talk about metal on film--and TV in the case of Ozzy. Whether Dunn failed to secure their services or chose not to, I couldn't say, but the result is less overlap between the three films than I expected. Granted, he also chats with Lemmy and Cooper, as Spheeris did, but who wouldn't want those legends in their metal opus? (Motörhead, guesting on a 1984 episode of The Young Ones, made almost as much of an impression on me as Garage Days Revisited.)

Dunn, who also narrates, starts at the beginning and moves up to the present, using interviews, timelines, and a bounty of archival footage. 

During the course of the film, the filmmaker starts in his hometown of Victoria, BC before traveling to Birmingham, UK (to interview Black Sabbath's Tony Iommi), Wacken, Germany (to attend the metal fest and chat with Ronny James Dio), Los Angeles (Mötley Crüe's Vince Neil), and Bergen, Norway (a crop of Norwegian black metallists). Other subjects include Geddy Lee (Rush), Bruce Dickinson (Iron Maiden), Dee Snider (Twisted Sister), and filmmaker/musician Rob Zombie (White Zombie), along with members of Girlschool, Voivod, and Slipknot--in masks the entire time--while topics include class, gender, sexual orientation, and censorship.

Unlike Spheeris, Dunn wasn't looking for the most outrageous soundbites, but for speakers who could really articulate what metal means to them. There are exceptions, of course. He gives the Norwegian crew ample opportunity to explain themselves, but they don't do much with it--and their English appears to be pretty good, so you can't blame the language barrier for their hostile mumblings. (Mayhem and the rest are simply seething with rage against the Lutheran Church and several are now behind bars for arson. As one delightful gentleman notes, he has no regrets and looks forward to resuming his church-burning ways upon release.)

By seeking out well-spoken individuals like Dickinson and Snider, it may sound as if Dunn is attempting to defend metal from its detractors. He is. Fortunately, his tone isn't defensive, and he gets an assist from such non-stuffy academic/journalists as Deena Weinstein (Heavy Metal) and Chuck Klosterman (Fargo Rock City).

Dunn also speaks with a few fans to bring their perspective into play, but there's no way he can cover everything in 96 minutes. While he does an admirable job, for instance, in looking at women in metal, sexual orientation gets short shrift--the openly gay Halford can't be the whole story--and race isn't mentioned at all. It should be. There are few persons of color featured in the film, and that's a subject worth exploring. Also, it really would've made his "journey" complete if Dunn could've traveled to Brazil to speak with Latin rockers like Sepultura, who are featured on the soundtrack, but I'm still impressed he hit as many countries as he did.

I'm no metalhead, but I dug Metal: A Headbanger's Journey. Those looking for non-stop jokes at metal's expense are sure to come away disappointed as Dunn takes this stuff seriously. Nonetheless, there were a couple of women behind me who laughed through the whole thing, so I guess even a straightforward examination is gonna strike some as innately hilarious. Go figure. I got a few giggles out of the film to be sure, but most were intentional--like the dude at the Wacken fest who kept trying to get his toddler to make "devil horns" (the tyke was having none of it).

Because I grew up on metal, at least to some extent, I've always felt embarrassed that there are people who find it so hysterically funny--with the exception of Rob Reiner's so-funny-it's-true Spinal Tap, of course. In this case, it was almost as if these ladies were laughing at me. So kudos to Dunn and his compatriots for crafting a film that treats the object of his affection with such dignity and respect. It's the ultimate fuck you to the haters.

Note: A two-DVD set release is scheduled for May 23, 2006.

Metal: A Headbangers Journey plays Mar 17-23, Fri-Thurs, at 7 and 9pm at the Northwest Film Forum. Opening night features a concert by local metal band Grey at 11pm. The NWFF is located at 1515 12th Ave on Capitol Hill. For more information, please click here or call (206) 329-2629 for general info and (206) 267-5380 for show times. Image of Lemmy from the IMDb.  

3/28/06 update: Due to popular demand, the run of Metal has been extended. The new dates are Sat and Sun, April 1 and 2, at 7 and 9pm.

Histoire(s) du Metal: Part One

METAL: A HEADBANGER'S JOURNEY
(Sam Dunn, Scot McFadyen, & Jessica Joy Wise, Canada, 2005, 35mm, 96 minutes)

What about the voice of Geddy Lee
How did it get so high?
I wonder if he speaks like an ordinary guy?
(I know him and he does!)
And you're my fact-checkin' cuz.
--Pavement, "Stereo" (1997)

Although I was born in Hartford, Connecticut, home of refined individuals like the late Katharine Hepburn, I spent most of my childhood in Anchorage, Alaska, the same city that brought the world the late party animal producer Don Simpson (Flashdance, Top Gun). To me, that says it all. When punk hit in the late-1970s, we were aware of it--hey, the 49th state has newspapers, too--but we didn't really care. It wasn't getting played on the radio and it's not as if the Sex Pistols were about to grace us with their spiky presence anytime soon. But we didn't mind--we had the rock.

Yes indeed. In the 1980s, metal was king. It got played on the radio and on TV--specifically MTV's Headbanger's Ball, which I watched as religiously as 120 Minutes (especially when Rob Halford or Wendy O. Williams were the headbanging hosts). In fact, I got paid to play the stuff myself when I took a post-collegiate gig at AOR station KWHL--everything from Richard Marx to Judas Priest. Guess where my sympathies lay? With the 'Priest, of course! (There's a reason Beavis and Butthead adopted "Breaking the Law" as their unofficial theme song.) And once the George M. Sullivan Arena was erected (huh-huh) in the mid-1980s, internationally renowned rockers, like Alice Cooper and the Scorpions, started to make the trek up North.

So this whole time, I was listening, but I wasn't really a fan. While my junior high friends were obsessing over KISS, I was getting into David Bowie and Elvis Costello. By high school, AC/DC and Rush were the biggest bands around, but I was more interested in the Talking Heads and the Police. True story: At a West High talent show, a band of students ripped through a scorching version of Rush's "Red Barchetta." Shortly afterwards, my classical music-loving stepfather bought a copy of Exit...Stage Left (1981). Well, I had a babysitting job after school most days, but one day I came home earlier than usual. I opened the door and the unmistakably melodramatic sounds of Rush leaped out at me. At first I didn't see anyone, but then I noticed something on the floor. It was my stepfather lying flat on his back while high-volume waves of Rush-ness swirled around him. I tell you, I've never stumbled across greater contentment in all my days.

Around the same time, I remember digging through my Mom's cassettes; looking for something or other--my copy of the Smiths' Louder Than Bombs, most likely--when I came across Night Ranger's Midnight Madness (1983) amongst all the classical and folk tapes (I suspect insanely catchy power ballad "Sister Christian" was to blame).

Bottom line: In Anchorage, you couldn't escape the rock. Even the most unlikely music fan would eventually embrace it in some form. I was one, too, although it took me awhile to come around. What changed everything was The $5.98 EP: Garage Days Revisited (1987) by an up-and-coming speed metal quartet from California. All of a sudden, the link between metal and punk became clear to me, and I was hooked. No one would confuse Metallica for a punk band, but their ferocious covers of classic cuts by the Misfits and Killing Joke opened my ears to the heretofore unknown possibilities of metal and also to the harder end of the alterna-rock spectrum (Big Black, Helmet, the Laughing Hyenas, et al). Not long afterwards, I would add releases by Megadeth, Death Angel, and Guns 'n' Roses to my collection.

Once I moved to Seattle in the late-1980s, I started to go see all of these bands live: Metallica, Slayer, Anthrax, etc. Of course, I was also just starting to get into hip-hop, which meant shows by LL Cool J, Ice Cube, and Public Enemy--both with and without Anthrax. Meanwhile, the Beastie Boys' Licensed to Ill (1986) and Paul's Boutique (1989), with all those great Sabbath and Zeppelin samples, combined with the smash hit Run-DMC/Aerosmith reimagining of "Walk This Way" (1986) had opened the doors between metal and hip-hop. Suddenly, anything seemed possible.

Next: I actually review the film!

Image of Ronnie James Dio and band from the IMDb.

Histoire(s) du...Jean-Luc Godard's Histoire(s)

HISTOIRE(S) DU CINEMA
(Jean-Luc Godard, France, 1989-1998, BetaSP, 315 minutes)

histories of the cinéma
with an s
all the histories that might have been
that were or might have been
that there have been
--Jean-Luc Godard, Histoire(s) du Cinéma

I can only talk about what has moved me or intrigued me. I can't really be objective here.--Martin Scorsese, A Personal Journey With Martin Scorsese Through American Movies

In 1995, Martin Scorsese issued an ambitious documentary series timed to coincide with the centennial of cinema. It arrived with the unwieldy, yet accurate title A Personal Journey With Martin Scorsese Through American Movies. Commissioned by the British Film Institute, the 225-minute, five-part series consists of film clips, interviews, and on-screen commentary. 

I've watched it three times now--in the theater, on video, and on DVD--and I've made an effort to see as many of the films he mentions as possible, from Force of Evil to Bigger Than Life. (The BFI also commissioned a 51-minute doc from Jean-Luc Godard called 2X50 Ans de Cinema Français.)

The entire time I was watching the eight-part Histoire(s) du Cinéma, I kept flashing back to the Scorsese series. 

If I had to pick a favorite, it's the one I'd choose, but that isn't really fair, because whenever I found myself making the mental comparison, it was because of the differences between the documentaries rather than the similarities. At heart, A Personal Journey is a Ken Burns-style documentary. Godard and Scorsese look at some of the same films, most of which are from the 1920s through the 1960s--Duel in the Sun, The Searchers, The Band Wagon, etc.--and yet the results couldn't be more diametrically opposed. In other words: apples and oranges.

I can't, for instance, refer to the Godard series as a film, because it was shot on video, and JLG uses the format as if it were a canvas. While he has described Histoire(s) as an "essay," he cuts between film clips, paintings, and newsreel footage as if each were a daub of paint. (He uses music in the same way.) He superimposes some images, doesn't identify the bulk of them--so you can't always tell what's "real" and what's "fake"--and sprinkles a bewildering array of words over the entire concoction. As with his narration, most aren't translated. I know a little French, but it didn't help much. Sometimes I could tell what he was getting at, sometimes not.

Here's an example. During the montage created by combining footage of concentration camp victims with Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift in A Place in the Sun (1951), Godard notes that "if George Stevens hadn't been first to use / the first sixteen milimetre colour film / at Auschwitz and Ravensbruck / there's no doubt that / Elizabeth Taylor's air of wellbeing / would never have found a place in the sun." Sounds disturbing, doesn't it? It is. There are many more such purposefully jarring juxtapositions throughout the series. What's real, what's fake, and what's simply Godardian indeed.

 

Watching Histoire(s) is a bizarre experience no matter how you approach it, and I can't quite compare it to any other I've ever had. 

 

While Jonathan Rosenbaum has likened it to reading Finnegan's Wake, to me it's more like staring at a Jackson Pollock painting. For hours. The more you look, the more you see. But what does it all mean? Consequently, it isn't for the casual film fan and, at the NWFF press screening, there were a few walkouts--one gentleman left after 40 minutes, two others left around the two-hour mark. While watching it, I felt more frustrated than anything else, but it's the kind of sensory overload that really gets the old synapses firing.

Part of that frustration came from Godard's cheap shots at America, television, and Steven Spielberg--see In Praise of Love for more on the latter. Yet he has a point: "but otherwise the cinema is an industry / and if the first world war / had enabled the American cinema / to ruin the French cinema / with the birth of television / the second would enable it to finance / that is, ruin / all the European cinemas." Ouch. Later he says, "the two big stories / have been sex and death." Better yet: "stories of beauty, in a word / beauty, makeup / at bottom the cinema isn't part / of the communications industry / or of show business / but of the cosmetics industry / the mask industry." He's got a point there, too. (Thanks to the NWFF for the translations; according to Rosenbaum, Histoire(s) is in seven languages.)

So my first reaction was negative, but the more I think about it, the more impressed I am with Godard's achievement. His series may not be personal in the same way as Scorsese's, but it's just as passionate--if one can use such a word to describe the notoriously prickly Godard. When he says "if there were no cinema / I wouldn't know that I had a history," you know he means that literally. And Scorsese probably feels the same way. 

 

I still haven't decided whether I liked Histoire(s), but it definitely provided me with new ways to look at the films he explores--of which there are hundreds--and, more importantly, new ways to look at cinéma in general.

Note: Histoire(s) du Cinéma has never played Seattle before. Due to rights issues, this may be your only chance to see it on the big screen. Next up: Sam Dunn, Scot McFadyen, & Jessica Joy Wise's Metal: A Headbanger's Journey, another monumental achievement--in very different ways!  

 

4/10/26 update: Histoire(s) is now on video thanks to Radiance Films. 

 

Histoire(s) du Cinéma plays the Northwest Film Forum on Mar 17-18, Fri. at 7pm (Part 1, 148 mins); Sat. at 7pm (Part 2, 117 mins). Between Mar 17-22, they'll also be screening Godard's Band of Outsiders, Weekend, In Praise of Love, and Every Man for Himself, which isn't available on video and features one hell of a cast: Jacques Dutronc, Isabelle Huppert, and Nathalie Baye. The NWFF is located at 1515 12th Ave on Capitol Hill. For more information, please see www.nwfilmforum.org. You can also call (206) 329-2629 for general info and (206) 267-5380 for show times.

All images from Histoire(s) du Cinéma by way of the IMDb.  

A Feast of Short Films

Oscar-nominated Short Documentaries

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"Brotherhood is not so wild a dream as those who profit by postponing it pretend."
-- Norman Corwin, "On a Note of Triumph" (1945)

"Every school kid should know that."
-- Studs Terkel, A Note of Triumph: The Golden Age of Norman Corwin (2005)

Some people like to be prepared. If you belong to that group, you can catch this year's Oscar-nominated live-action and animated shorts beforehand, but you'll have to wait until after Sunday's Academy Awards broadcast to catch the documentary shorts. (See below for show times.) Although I haven't seen any of the former, this year marks the first time I've caught all of the short docs prior to the Oscar telecast. Of course, that doesn't mean I can predict the winner any better than those who haven't--seems like it's always a crap shoot--but I'll give it a shot.

First up is The Mushroom Club (35 minutes) directed by Steven Okazaki. In his third Academy Award-nominated film (he won in 1991 for Days of Waiting), Okazaki looks at Hiroshima 60 years after the blast that devastated the city. He starts by examining the ways in which Hiroshima has changed since that horrific event before turning to 10 survivors (hibakusha), all between the ages of 59 and 85. Some were orphaned by the bomb, other were injured or born with disabilities. Although the title implies that Okazaki is making light of a dark subject, The Mushroom Club (Kinoko Kai) is the actual name of a support group. While I admired the director's clear-eyed approach, I wondered if his tone wasn't a little too detached. According to the IMDb, he plans to follow up by looking at Nagasaki, with the goal of combining the two into a feature-length film.

Of the four nominees, my favorite was Corinne Marrinan and Eric Simonson's A Note of Triumph: The Golden Age of Norman Corwin (40 minutes), but I should probably admit my bias--if you can call it that--upfront: I worked in radio for 18 years. In the 1940s, Corwin was one of the field's top writer/producers. Folks like Orson Welles, Jimmy Stewart, and Edward G. Robinson clamored to work with him, while Studs Terkel, Norman Lear, and Robert Altman, who'll be receiving this year's honorary Academy Award, attest to Corwin's skill in presenting thought-provoking discourse when a battered nation needed it most. It's too bad this film wasn't bundled with Good Night, and Good Luck. as it would've made for a perfect fit (like Edward R. Murrow, Corwin was a CBS employee). A Note of Triumph marks Simonson's second Oscar nomination.

Directed by Dan Krauss, The Death of Kevin Carter: Casualty of the Bang Bang Club (27 minutes) is undeniably fascinating, but it would've benefited the most from a longer running time. Kevin Carter was a South African photojournalist whose career was made--and unmade--by one amazing photograph. Granted, he took many others over the course of his 33 years, but his picture of a starving Sudanese child being stalked by a vulture earned him the Pulitzer. On the downside, both he and The New York Times were besieged by complaints that he should have done more to help the girl. Krauss argues that this criticism, combined with years of documenting apartheid-era atrocities in his homeland, drove Carter to suicide. I'm sure that's true, but his conclusion is a little too neat (Time, for instance, notes that Carter had attempted suicide before).

Lastly, God Sleeps in Rwanda (30 minutes), from Kimberlee Acquaro and Stacy Sherman, returns a decade after the fact to profile five Rwandan women who are remaking their lives in the wake of the country's 1994 genocide. Since men were the primary victims, women now make up 70% of the population, even though many of those who survived have since died from AIDS (raped by the Hutus who killed their families). One Tutsi lost her husband and seven children and was left for dead, but survived and gave birth to a daughter. Though a product of rape, that child represents her whole world. Although each story is compelling, this one is the heart of the film. All four of this year's nominated docs could be described as "important" and "serious," but only Rwanda, which is narrated by Rosario Dawson, could also be described as hopeful.

My prediction? A Note of Triumph should take home the gold and Corwin, whose career came to an end with the advent of TV (and now teaches at USC), will most likely be in attendance to help accept the statuette. However, the Oscar will probably go to God Sleeps in Rwanda. For my money, it was the most emotionally involving of the nominated films, although the way in which the five pieces are organized blunts what could have had an even greater impact, i.e. the first story is the most powerful, although filmmakers Acquaro and Sherman wisely return to it at the end.

Oscar Nominated Animated Short Films play at the Varsity Theatre (4329 University Way NE) Mar. 3 - 5, Fri. - Sun. at (4:50) 9:20 and Mon., Mar. 6 - Thurs., Mar. 9 at 9:20.

Oscar Nominated Live-Action Short Films play at the Varsity Theatre (4329 University Way NE) Mar. 3 - 5, Fri. - Sun. at (2:30) 7:00 and Mon., Mar 6 - Thurs., Mar. 9 at 7:00.

Oscar-nominated Short Documentaries play at the Northwest Film Forum (1515 12th Ave.). Program 1 (The Mushroom Club and A Note of Triumph) runs 75 minutes. Program 2 (The Death of Kevin Carter and God Sleeps in Rwanda) runs 60 minutes. Mar. 10-16, Fri.-Thurs., at 7:00 (Prog. 1) and 8:30 (Prog. 2) and Sat. and Sun. at 2:00 (Prog. 1) and 3:30 (Prog. 2).

Darwin's Nightmare Continues at the NWFF

Darwin's Nightmare

Due to popular demand, the Oscar-nominated documentary Darwin's Nightmare has been extended at the Northwest Film Forum. Screenings have been added for Saturday and Sunday, March 4th and 5th, at 12pm and 4:30pm. The NWFF is located at 1515 12th Ave. between Pike and Pine. For more information: www.nwfilmforum.org. General info: (206) 329-2629. Showtimes: (206) 267-5380.