The most prominent is the long-running and crowd-pleasing Seattle International Film Festival, which took place entirely online in 2021. For its projected return in spring of 2022, Barrett estimates SIFF will likely include about 90 films — less than half the usual 200-plus.
“We’re not 100 percent sure what this next festival will look like,” she says. “We had a terrific experience with the virtual festival. Our [live] attendance tends to be about 100,000, and we guess we had 66,000 views online, though often there’s more than just one person watching. But we also believe deeply in the in-person experience.”
The Central District arts center LANGSTON is also looking ahead to conducting its annual Seattle Black Film Festival in spring 2022, “virtually and minimally in person, if possible,” according to program manager Jazmyn Scott.
Spring plans are also in the making for another popular movie marathon: the Seattle Jewish Film Festival, which annually presents international releases with Jewish themes at the Stroum Jewish Community Center on Mercer Island and other sites. The center also offers additional film programs in its Arts + Ideas cultural series — both virtually and live in a well-equipped auditorium.
The in-person programming restarted “with a few [live] screenings this past spring and summer, as a way to welcome people back into the SJCC and to build community,” reports Pamela Lavitt, director of the festival and Arts + Ideas.
“We’ve learned the majority of patrons actually prefer a hybrid format, so we plan to stick with that,” she says. “We’re currently tracking to a three-week festival, March 24 to April 10, with a blend of in-person weekend screenings and events that really come to life when we are all together.”
More in-person festivals are returning this fall. In October, SIFF will co-host the Tasveer South Asian Film Festival throughout the month (with live events at Broadway Performance Hall and the Egyptian). The Northwest Film Forum will project jazz films as part of the Earshot Jazz Festival (Oct. 13-Nov. 7). And both organizations will hold in-theater screenings for Three Dollar Bill Cinema’s Seattle Queer Film Festival (Oct. 14-24) and the Romanian Film Festival (Nov. 12-21).
And while it’s more a series than a festival, Silent Movie Mondays, the paramount Theatre’s regular run of choice pretalkies (complete with live mighty Wurlitzer organ accompaniment), is coming back to the storied downtown showplace this December.
Though the pandemic and accompanying economic stresses and uncertainties have clearly made this a challenging time for independent cinema outlets in Seattle, there have been bright spots in the long hiatus from public screenings.
Thanks to relief funding and other financial support, SIFF Cinema and other organizations have used the downtime to upgrade facilities. And some have banded together to share resources and foster more collaboration.
Says Dan Hudson, “We talk with Northwest Film Forum and SIFF much more now, about who is going to show what film for which audiences. That has helped clarify even further what people can find at the Grand Illusion, that they may not see elsewhere.”
Ironically, the pandemic has also given indie venues new access to the mainstream movie pipeline. “All those big Hollywood films that were supposed to come out in 2020? Most of them never did,” Beth Barrett says. She points out that the commercial cineplexes will be eager over the next year to catch up with the backlog of delayed, mega-budget action releases (e.g., The Matrix: Four, Top Gun: Maverick and the latest James Bond film, No Time to Die). That will give independent cinemas opportunities to nab the first runs of critically touted but less flashy, or more offbeat, studio fare.
As for competing with the many big new releases showing up on major streaming sites like Netflix, Disney+ and Prime Video, local venue operators aren’t too worried about competition with the in-person experiences that Seattle cinemas can provide.
“I think we’re going to get some great films this year and in 2022 at SIFF,” says Barrett. “The majority of the films we’ll show aren’t streaming currently, so there’s that great possibility of discovering something here you wouldn’t otherwise see. We’ll show movies you won’t find in a Netflix block.”
And Hudson, the Grand Illusion programmer, says he worries more about the ongoing gentrification of Seattle neighborhoods crowding out niche film houses than the Grand Illusion losing its unique appeal on the local scene.
“It’s funny because there are bigger and bigger, cheaper and cheaper TVs available all the time. And there are some hardcore cinephiles in the Seattle area who could maybe approximate the screen size we have and put in a good sound system,” he says. “But we still can show 35- and 16-millimeter films, and the warmth of that analogue film experience still finds a home at the Grand Illusion.”