The Rose Theatre, thus far the oldest theater in the Sound Cinema catalog, opened back in 1907 in Port Townsend, a city on the eastern tip of the Olympic Peninsula. The theater started as a vaudeville performance space—like most in that era—before converting to movies. The space went through a couple of transitions after its initial run as a movie house, and by 1992 it was a junk shop in the heart of the lower portion of the city. At that time, a group of community volunteers, donors, and investors brought the theater back to life, and for the over thirty years since, the Rose Theatre has become a community staple. 

Seeing a movie outside is like a campfire story. You and your friends and family gather around a glowing screen on blankets or short chairs to sit back and relax. In August, a partnership of the Maple Leaf Community Council and Scarecrow Video, sponsored by Áegis Living, are running the fourth edition of Movies by the Tower. For three Saturdays there will be free movies in Maple Leaf Reservoir Park.

The Evergreen Echo, a burgeoning PNW arts and culture publication, has secured fiscal sponsorship through Shunpike, a Washington-based arts organization that provides artists with equitable access to vital expertise, opportunities, and business services via their programs, such as Fiscal Sponsorship, ACES: Artists of Color Expo and Symposium, Shunpike Artist in Residence & Storefronts, and The Studio @ 2+U.

The true value in community media is in the way it forges local connection and identity, providing spaces for diverse voices—something that is often lost in conglomerate media, who tend to cite the same sources (often one another), parrot the same talking points, and create an overwhelming agenda on behalf of their owners or investors.

For their 30th Queer and Trans Film Festival, Three Dollar Bill Cinema is taking us back to 1996 when it all began. This event will be a mix of throwback favorites and some new shorts in the TRANSlations Shorts program. The festival will open with Beautiful Thing, which was the film that kicked it all off 30 years ago.

A few things greet you when you take in a show at the Blue Mouse. There are clocks on each end of the building's marquee, and scampering across the edges are neon, blue mice created by Tacoma-born glass artist Dale Chihuly. The lobby has the old-school movie house charm with a concession stand right inside the doors. When you go through the curtains to the theater proper, you see the old influences on the space—the large stage for performance or presentation mixed with the modern features.

Aaron Johnson (he/him) is on a mission, the type of undertaking that comes to you through lived experiences. Ben Wilson (he/him), the producer of and participant in the short film Dark and Tender, invited me to attend the film’s screening at the Seattle Black Film Festival. The film, which aims to be a larger documentary, tells the story of the CUT Project.

The Seattle Asian American Film Festival returned for its 13th year this month. The festival was composed of several programs, including an opening night centered on the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, a Native Hawaiian Showcase, and a Queer AF Shorts collection. Another highlight of the festival was the Bring it Home: Pacific Northwest Shorts program, held on June 21 at the Broadway Performance Hall. Featuring 11 films, the program was a celebration of the diversity of AAPI experiences in the Pacific Northwest.

The 2025 Seattle Asian American Film Festival (SAAFF) kicked off its two days of in-person screenings on June 20 and continues virtually through June 29. The opening night screened Reflections & Legacies, a feature-length compilation of films focused on stories of refugees and immigrants of Southeast Asian communities into the United States. While only a few hours of programming in a shorter-than-usual SAAFF, the evening captured a deeper sense of meaning and community than its schedule would suggest.

It’s opening night! Today marks the start of the Seattle Asian American Film Festival—a two-day affair held in Seattle at the Wing Luke Museum (International District) and Broadway Performance Hall (Capitol Hill), and followed by a week of virtual screenings for those who can’t attend in person. This year commemorates 50 years since the end of the Vietnam War (or “The American War” as it is known in Vietnam).

Sometimes, to see yourself reflected back at you can be a radical experience. 
This was how it felt at Moving History – The Queercrow Archive, Volume 3 on June 8 at Northwest Film Forum. The event was the third annual installment of a collaborative project between two Seattle nonprofits devoted to preserving history through video: Scarecrow Video and MIPoPS (Moving Image Preservation of Puget Sound). 

Back in March, I had the pleasure of interviewing Emergence Films’ cofounder Rachel Noll James and discussed the forthcoming Emerging Filmmakers Program. Open to anyone who identifies as a woman, this program’s mission is to elevate marginalized voices in the filmmaking world while giving filmmakers of all experience levels the opportunity to create a feature length movie. A few months later, this year’s cohort of emerging filmmakers has been selected! There are three groups: Team Pocket Topic (Melissa Tumas and Sonia M. Kandathil), Team Mother Tongue (Jo Woods and Sarah Mona), and Team Cosmic Coyote (Mia McGlinn, Ila Dreesen, and Sydney Renee).

Though you may appreciate the updated and modern conveniences built into the space by the Olympia Film Society, the bones and the spirit of the structure make the Capitol Theater a way to go back in time and see a film like those who experienced the new medium for the first time. It is a bit of magic in the heart of Olympia.

This year’s SIFF has served us a remarkable collection of films. Three of my favorite films from this year all have friendship as a core theme: Ka Whawhai Tonu, The Balconettes, and She’s the He. 

The saddest part about attending the Seattle International Film Festival is the moment you realize it’s almost over. I have gotten to see some unforgettable films this season, thanks to the diverse and unique sensibilities of the 26 SIFF Programmers, who began their research and selection process last August for this year's festival. SIFF 2025’s final weekend is now upon us, and there’s still time to take advantage of some of the must-see films, now showing at the five SIFF and SIFF-partner venues around the city.

Documentaries like Between Goodbyes, Viktor, and Seeds are an invigorating style of non-fiction storytelling. These films evolve the genre beyond what we perceive as documentaries. Documentary filmmaking, like narrative filmmaking, sets out to tell a story and so it makes sense to tell the story in a way that makes sense for the subject and material. These three forge their own path and are all the better for it.

The theme of this year’s SIFF is “Escape to the Reel World,” and with passport in hand, attendees get to travel the globe seeing stories from all over the world—opening your eyes, your ears, and your soul.

Here are just a few of some of the many movies worth a look:

It has been an amazing week of films, both international and domestic, at the Seattle International Film Festival. While I have been enjoying many films from around the world, I must give an enthusiastic shout-out to three films that hail from the northern climes of Scandinavia—specifically, Denmark and Norway.

There's nothing quite like opening night. There's an electricity in the air as tents go up, marquees are set, and the staff makes final checks in their walkie talkies. Of course, it wouldn't be opening night of the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF) without at least a drizzle of rain, which began coming down in earnest around the time the red carpet arrivals kicked off.

The 51st annual Seattle International Film Festival kicked off last night at the Paramount Theatre with a screening of Darren Thornton’s Four Mothers. The festival has grown immensely since its debut in 1976, where it showed 18 films. Now, over the next ten days through May 25, you can expect screenings of 245 films that span continents, criss-cross genres, and highlight brand new and longtime filmmakers alike.