Sundance & Steve Harvey

Our September programming arrives with a dash of the indie mainstay, as well as a local short about everyone's favorite Family Feud host

September 09, 2025

Heeeeeeeey Everybody!

Hard to believe it’s already September isn’t it? Leaves are changing, flannels are coming out, and football season is kicking off. We’ve had a great year so far here at SFS, full of film and friendship- we’re not done yet!

This month brings a mix of shorts silly and serious for Locals Only, Film Discussions covering Sundance classics, and a hot doc about a ‘00’s reality show that’s fresh off the festival circuit. It also brings about the Northwest Film Forum’s annual LOCAL SIGHTINGS Film Festival, of which we are an Official Sponsor for this year’s Closing Night Shorts. Our readers can get discounted tickets for the Closing Night Shorts screening by using code SeattleFilmSociety and selecting the Friends of the Forum ticket option. We’re thrilled to be able to partner the NWFF for this event, and to support one of Seattle’s enduring cinematic institutions.

Now that we’ve dotted our i’s and crossed our t’s, lets get into the good stuff, shall we?

Marcus Baker

SFS Creative Director

SCREENINGS

Thursday, September 25th @ NW Film Forum | Doors at 6:30pm

What do a James Bond riff, a coming of age film, an existential art piece, and a dramatic retelling of the 2017 Steve Harvey memo incident have in common? If you guessed it’s that they’re all apart of our September 2025 Locals Only, you would be correct:

  • The Memo by Lamar + Nik

  • Joy by Arthur Asriyants

  • Inspire by Sandra Garcia

  • Double Blind by Galen Andrus

We’ll have each of the filmmakers with us for the screening + Q&A so grab a friend, see some films, and come hang out with us!

Doors at 6:30PM, screening from 7:00PM to 8:30PM. Afters to follow!

Thursday, October 2nd @ NW Film Forum | Doors at 6:30pm

Our monthly doc screening with SeaDoc and the Northwest Film Forum continues with one of the hottest documentary titles of 2025, Predators. A chilling, edge of your seat film, Predators uses the early 2000’s series To Catch A Predator as a prism through which to examine our nature to observe hunter, predator, subject, and spectator alike- as well as America’s obsession with watching people at their lowest.

SFS Newsletter subscribers can get discounted tickets for this screening by using the code SFSPred at check out.

Doors at 6:30PM, screening starts at 7:00PM.

EDUCATION

Wednesdays | SFS Discord @ 7pm

Our September Film Discussion series will turn our focus toward the giant that is the Sundance Film Festival with a series centered on four prize winning films, as well how the films that win the awards have changed over the years:

  • Wed. September 3rd | Blood Simple (1985) - Dir. The Coen Brothers

  • Wed. September 10th | Poison (1991) - Dir. Todd Haynes

  • Wed. September 17th | Girl Fight (2000) - Dir. Karyn Kusama

  • Wed. September 24th | Twinless (1985) - Dir. James Sweeny - Field Trip!

Wednesday nights, 7pm-8:30p. All meetings (with the exception of the last one) will take place on the Seattle Film Society Discord server.

1st + 3rd Tuesdays | SFS Discord @ 7:30pm

Our Screenwriting Group continues! Meetings are bi-weekly on our Discord channel and we are always looking for new submissions! Scripts can be submitted through our website.

SELECTED EVENTS

ALUMNI NEWS

Ed Castañeda | April ‘24 + October ‘24 Locals Only (LO #5, #11)

Ed recent completed production on two short films: The Horror-Fantasy 48 Hour Film Pop and the family drama My Fat Feet. He’s also begun festival submission for his short film Fire and Oak, and recently released the microshort Bones (a previous LO selection) on his YouTube channel.

Thomas Scott Adams | June ‘24 Locals Only (LO #7)

Thomas’s new short film Beneath the Same Sky, a 4Culture grant-funded film, will have a private screening at the Northwest Film Forum on Wednesday, September 17. The event is free to everyone, and no reservation or sign-up is required.

Ashley George | June ‘25 Locals Only (LO #17)

Ashley’s short film Slush continues to make the festival rounds. The film will be playing the Gig Harbor Film Festival September 25-28th in the OMG! Short Film Block. Her June ‘25 Locals Only selection Volition was also recently released online and has racked up over 140k views on Film Shortage.

THE BUSINESS OF FILM

Killer Films have been making some of the most important films in the indie space over the past 30 years. With over 100 films and a bounty of awards under their belt, they’ve produced everything from Past Lives to Kids and worked with filmmakers like Robert Altman, Paul Schrader, Mary Harron, Todd Haynes, and many more.

At their recent 30th Anniversary Retrospective, legendary producers Christine Vachon and Pamela Koffler sat down with Nothing Bogus for a wide-ranging conversation about how they approach their projects. The full piece (which is available for free on Substack) is an illuminating look for filmmakers working at any level, but especially for those of us working at the DIY/Indie scale:

When you say "make the thing," what do you mean by that?

CV: Make the movie.

PK: I think about what a vast skillset you need to be a 360 degree director. You need to be thinking at a very high creative level about the storytelling and the craft. But then you also have to be engaged in an unbelievably detailed mechanical process, which involves location photos, scouting, scheduling, and how many shots can you do in a day? The directors we work with have to be very engaged in what almost feels like the grunt work, but also holding the flame of the very big idea and the tone and the art of it. It's a very special thing. And so the more you can help support that from the nuts and bolts to the big picture stuff, I think the better the process will be.

RESOURCES + TOOLS

Local Resource | The Northwest Film Forum

The Northwest Film Forum is a cinema and education space dedicated to inciting public dialogue and creative action through collective cinematic experiences. They host a wide variety of events, screenings, and festivals each month that benefit and empower the Seattle filmmaking community. They also offer affordable rates for room and theater rentals for screenings and workshops.  

Online Resource | Black Film Archive

The Black Film Archive (BFA) is an evolving archive dedicated to making historically and culturally significant films made from 1898 to 1999 about Black people accessible through a streaming guide with cultural context. Films are (usually) free to view and can be easily searched by decade or genre. The BFA was founded and is currently curated by Maya S. Cade, scholar-in-residence at the Library of Congress.

Free Tool | ARRAY Crew

ARRAY Crew is a personnel database designed to connect below-the-line crew to producers, department heads, and executives. The database specializes in the amplification of women, POC, and crew from diverse backgrounds. ARRAY Crew was created by filmmaker Ava DuVernay. It is supported by all major studios and streamers including Warner Bros, A24, Amazon/MGM, Apple TV+, Disney, Lionsgate, NBCUniversal, Netflix, Paramount, and Sony Pictures. Membership is free for crew across 650+ Job categories.

SFS STAFF RECS

This month, we’ve got a Staff Rec from SFS Marketing Volunteer, Brent Winthrop

As a fan of international films, I first found Takeshi Kitano in the most unorthodox way: through the short-lived U.S. comedy show Most Extreme Elimination Challenge or MXC for short. If you don’t know what that was, it was a show in the early 2000’s that took an older show, Takeshi’s Castle (1986-1989), and re-edited it into a completely new show where American comedic actors dubbed their own brand of comedy into it. Anyhow, Takeshi Kitano was a co-host of this original show, and I wanted to learn more about the original show and the characters, so I went down some rabbit holes and found one of my favorite directors of all time! 

Other than a few smaller and notable roles here in the U.S. (‘Johnny Mnemonic’, and the live action ‘Ghost in the Shell’), I feel that Takeshi’s directorial body of work should be studied by soon-to-be and current filmmakers. My favorite era of his work can be found from 1993-2003, starting with his movie ‘Sonatine’ and rounding out the decade with ‘Zatoichi’ a remake of a popular ‘60’s movie series of the same name. Most of the films he made during this time were also with one of my favorite composers, Joe Hisaishi, who composed for nearly all of the Studio Ghibli films. 

I really like how, in many of his films, he will often hold a shot on a character, seemingly frozen in time to make the scene look like a painting or art mural, then have that same person in a new scene lash out with a complete blank expression on their face while they’re mowing down Yakuza. Did I mention Takeshi stars in 95% of all his directed and written movies?

Wild stuff!

Check out his films and see for yourself if you find a new director you like!

Thanks for reading! See you next month :) 

Got questions, suggestions, or news? We’d love to hear from you! Drop us a line at [email protected]

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