October 2006
“Ave Rats”, a short documentary about homeless youth in Seattle’s University District by BHS Video Production students Clinton Carucci, Ian McKagan & Mixtli Zavaleta, has been selected by the Northwest Film Forum for their annual showcase of outstanding films, Local Sightings. This is a northwest premiere for the documentary. It was previously screened only at Temple University’s School of Communications for the Derek Freese High School Film & Video Festival, a prestigious national festival at which it won 1st Prize.
The NWFF will screen the documentary alongside work by accomplished filmmakers from Seattle and Portland in a segment entitled “Doc’s with a View” on Tuesday, October 10 at 9:30 p.m. For tickets and full program information, visit www.nwfilmforum.org and click on the “Local Sightings” link. Below are brief descriptions of the “Doc’s with a View” films.
Air
(Patti Sakurai, Portland, 2005, DVD, 5min.)
AIR is the filmmaker’s response to the anti-Asian remarks of two New Jersey
DJs in the spring of 2005. Shot on Super 8, the film also points to the
importance of alternative media by using audio from APA Compass, an
Asian Pacific American monthly radio program on KBOO 90.7FM in
Portland.
RC Driver
(Sophia Betz, Seattle, 2005, DVD, 18min.)
Competitors vie for the title of World Champion in the World Finals of
Radio Control Monster Truck Racing.
Ave Rats
(Clinton Carucci, Ian MacKagan & Mixtli Zavaleta, Seattle, 2006, MiniDV,
6min.)
Giving voice to one of Seattle's most misunderstood and marginalized
communities, homeless youth, Ballard High School students present a
fresh, unsentimental approach to this important topic.
Aquarium Kids
(Wes Kim, Seattle, 2006, DVCam, 10min.)
Every Sunday, three high school interns, Sam, Shun and Savy, come to
the Seattle Aquarium to help clean the exhibit tanks and feed the
animals. They all come from families with roots in Asia, but their
unique personalities and life histories illustrate the diversity within
the Asian American community, a diversity that in turn enriches the
lives of the aquarium's staff and visitors.
Tientsin Diaries
(Serge Gregory, Seattle, 2006, MiniDV, 31min.)
Tientsin Diaries is a fictional documentary about the courtship of Misha
and Natasha, whose Oriental idyll begins to unravel with the outbreak
of WWII. Using actors, family photographs and newsreels, the film
recreates the lost world of Russian exiles against the backdrop of the
disintegration of pre-revolutionary China.
