Jon Behrens Films

Jon Behrens is one of those industrious local filmmakers who keeps cranking out quality shorts that receive little attention in Seattle because, well, they lack character and plot. And I mean that as a compliment. He’s a proud, unreconstructed avant gardist. He’s got no use for car chases, wacky couples, mismatched cops, or whatever formula sells in Hollywood. Tonight, however, you can buy his new DVD, Jon Behrens: Selected Experimental Short Films, 1987-2007, for $10. Which I strongly recommend you do. It’s an excellent investment for those who—maybe because they were busy watching the latest Adam Sandler vehicle—missed one of those infrequent, small, one-night-only local exhibitions by Behrens and his cohorts. Most short films we see, especially at Bumbershoot and SIFF, are narrative. In the selections screening tonight from his 16-title DVD compendium, Behrens frees the cinematic image from the burden of telling a story. (Sometimes he also forgoes a camera, inscribing imagery directly on the filmstrip, then projecting it.) In his 1994 Undercurrents, for instance, the local skyline is sampled and rearranged, reframed and laid horizontal among slow-boiling clouds. A shuddering underscore by Rubato makes the time-lapse montage—often with two or even three exposures in a shot—seem transformative. It’s as if Seattle’s secret doppelgänger is finally revealed, and we realize we’d never been looking at the city close enough to see. Behrens will provide introductory remarks. (The DVD can also be found at Scarecrow Video.) Northwest Film Forum, 1515 12th Ave., 267-5380, www.jonbehrensfilmis.com. Free. 9 p.m. BRIAN MILLER
Fri., Dec. 19, 9 p.m., 2008