Nov. 8-15, 2006

Send listings two weeks in advance to film@seattleweekly.com

Oddballs, Events, & Rep

The A/V Room Calling all audiovisual geeks—this event includes short films and performances by new artists from Seattle, Canada, Turkey, and South Africa. Spoken word and a mix of traditional Japanese and experimental electronic music add to the evening's aural atmosphere. (NR) Youngstown Cultural Arts Center, 4408 Delridge Way S.W., 206-935-2999, www.youngstownarts.org. $5. 7 p.m. Thurs. Nov. 9.

Blue November MicroFilmFestBegun in Tulsa by an artist named Captain Chambers, this mini fest arrives for its first Seattle installment, promising as-yet-unannounced local artists, musicians, and "unique" cinema. (NR) Green Bean Coffee House, 210 N. 85th St., 206-706-4587, www.blue-november.com. Free. 7 p.m. Fri. Nov. 10-Sat. Nov. 11.

The Creatures from the Pink Lagoon Seattle Theatre Project's gay zombie comedy centers on a '60s beach holiday turned terror-filled as libidinous flesh-eaters crash a young man's birthday weekend. (NR) Central Cinema, 1411 21st Ave., 206-686-6684. $10. 7 and 9:15 p.m. Thurs. Nov. 9.

Darwin's Nightmare From the slaughter of native species in Lake Victoria was a new industry born: Nile perch fillets, exported by the ton to the polite white tablecloths of Europe. Tanzanians, no surprise, are left with the guts and heads—and the country still can't feed itself. Out fly the fish, in flies foreign aid. In his Oscar-nominated documentary, director Hubert Sauper has done a fantastic job of reporting, and his video footage is worthy of comparison to the photographs of Sebastião Salgado. His Nightmare is like the documentary version of The Constant Gardener: the worst we can imagine about the West pillaging poor Africa, and all of it true. Unfortunately, he pretends not to know what these cargo jets transport in to Tanzania before flying our dinners out, which we can guess in an instant. His limitations of technique and perspective make me angry. His documentary is a work of art, however, because it is so infuriating. (NR)BRIAN MILLER Revolution Books, 1833 Nagle Pl., 206-325-7415. Free. 7 p.m. Fri. Nov. 10.

The General Buster Keaton's classic 1926 silent comedy, about a stolen locomotive during the Civil War, is accompanied by a live electric cello performance from Gideon Freudmann. (NR) Central Cinema, 1411 21st Ave., 206-686-6684, www.central-cinema.com. $6 children 12 and under/$12 adults. 7 p.m. Fri. Nov. 10.

The Ground Truth: After the Killing Ends There are a thousand good reasons to get out of Iraq. Not so many good movies, however. This well-meaning but inept documentary plays like a Post Traumatic Stress Disorder infomercial about vets and their families. The Ground Truth—be wary of any movie with "truth" in its title—will merely reinforce your own views on the war, whether pro or con. Dead-end Bush supporters are unlikely to be swayed by the veterans interviewed here, some with horrific and disfiguring injuries, who all speak in the same chorus of disillusionment. Patricia Foulkrod stumbles over the movie's most interesting idea—that the VA is diagnosing preexisting "personality disorders" rather than PTSD to keep treatment costs down—without interrupting her anti-war rally. Still, you're likely to remember some of the vets. Says one, "Americans want to honor their veterans in a cursory way, like putting a yellow sticker on their car." Or making a movie. (NR)BRIAN MILLER Keystone Church, 5019 Keystone Pl. N., 206-632-6021. Free. 7 p.m. Fri. Nov. 10.

Independent Exposure This hour-long compendium of 13 shorts is preceded (at 7 p.m.) by Kiki Allgeier's Connect With Me, in which the artist combines video and live performance to relate how a girl is abandoned by her mother to be raised by three surrogates. Among the main program's highlights is an eerie three-minute documentary about the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Fire; stills of the 146 dead young immigrant women—many of whom jumped from the burning building to their deaths, anticipating 9/11—are solemn and disturbing. The whimsical (but hardly blasphemous) Dutch Burka Boogie Woogie choreographs two dancers inside one very elastic black burka; it's the sort of thing that'll probably be huge with closet fans of YouTube in the Islamic world. Edited to furious club beats, Aileen McCormack's monologue Carla Cope is an angry, hectoring rant about New York after 9/11, a five-minute distillation of five years' worth of rage. It's like Laurie Anderson on meth. (NR)BRIAN MILLER Central Cinema, 1411 21st Ave., 206-686-6684. $5. 7 and 9 p.m. Wed. Nov. 8.

Kaspar's Kouch Film Festival Last year, local choral music educator and opera tenor Dustin Kaspar screened favorite and passed-over films in his Lake City living room; this year he's got the use of Central Cinema's many couches for his series, which opens with the Seattle premieres of 2005 indies The Milk Can and In Memoriam. 7 and 9:45 p.m. Sat. Nov. 11. An evening of "Semi Thrills" features the1953 thriller Wages of Fear (based on the novel by Georges Arnaud) and Steven Spielberg's David-and-Goliath update, Duel. 5 and 8:15 p.m. Sun. Nov. 12. (NR) Central Cinema, 1411 21st Ave., 206-686-6684. $7-$10 for both showings. Series pass $50. Sat. Nov. 11-Sun. Nov. 19.

Kieslowski Retrospective Self-conscious aesthete, existential structuralist, one of the world's most eloquent conjoiners of metaphysical mystery and sociopolitical critique, and a still-missed fallen soldier in the shrinking ranks of Euro-art-film, Krzysztof Kieslowski was only a well-known global figure for about six years before he died in 1996. But he was a busy cineaste from the mid '60s on, and, eventually, an integral inheritor of not only Antonioni-Tarkovsky monumentalism but the mantle of being Poland's cinematic conscience in the autumn years of Andrzej Wajda. Those who know him from late works like The Double Life of Veronique and Three Colors can here appreciate about a half-dozen features, plus shorts from his apprentice years (all of which are crystalline and powerful). Kieslowski's 1797 Camera Buff is the tragicomic morality tale about a complacent Communist whose 8mm habit begins to control and destroy the very life he seeks to capture "as it is." Blind Chance (1981) has a man live out three differing futures depending on whether or not he catches a train to Warsaw. No End (1985) is a kind of study for Blue, in which a grieving widow seeks solace in the family of an imprisoned labor dissident. Kieslowski's first theatrical feature, The Scar (1976), shows how a factory project decimates the village it seeks to help, just as the project's appointed builder-director is poisoned by the job from the inside out. See Web site for full schedule and details. (NR)MICHAEL ATKINSON Northwest Film Forum, 1515 12th Ave., 206-267-5380, www.nwfilmforum.org. $5-$8. Fri. Nov. 10-Sun. Nov. 19.