Events

The Sprocket Society periodically hosts movie screening and film events in the Seattle area. To receive announcements of these, subscribe to our email list, join our Facebook group, or visit our blog.

Coming Soon

Sixties Synaesthesia
April 14, 2010 at the Northwest Film Forum
Co-presented as part of Visual Music: Sensory Cinema, 1920s–1970s
Visit the companion web site at SensoryCinema.org

The 1960s brought an explosion in experimental cinema, at once influenced by its forebears and liberated from them by the revolutionary lysergic ethos of the time. Its influence continues to reverberate today. In this final program of the Visual Music series, we present a selection of highly original works by artists who shattered the boundaries between visual and sonic through the creative use of optical printing, animation, electronics, and editing.

Films include a newly-restored print of Jud Yalkut’s Turn, Turn, Turn (1966), Scott Bartlett and Tom DeWitt’s landmark OffOn (1968), Robert Breer’s Blazes (1961), Storm DeHirsch’s Peyote Queen (1965), and Barry Spinello’s Six Loop-Paintings (1970). We culminate with the purest and most intense of ’60s visual music experiments: The Flicker (1965) by avant garde composer Tony Conrad, who conceived the film in explicitly musical terms and used alternating pure black and white light to create hypnotic impressions of paradoxically vivid colors.

Past Events

Public Screenings

  • Halloween Spook-Show Spectacular
    (October 30, 2009) Grand Illusion Cinema
    Mind-Rending Movies and a Terrifying Display of Un-Dead Magic! A Shocking, Thrilling, and Amazing Event! Can you Survive?!? Will you soil your pants!?! The Swami is your host for an old fashioned Halloween spook show in the grand tradition, with an extra-special program of haunted film delights featuring: Carnivorous Cartoons! Shocking Shorts! Putrescent Previews! Alliterative Asphyxiation! And Unexpurgated Unexpectednesses! Your eye-sacks will explode!
  • Focal Points: Documentary Shorts of 1969
    (October 14, 2009) Northwest Film Forum
    A program of traditional, vertité, radical newsreel, and avant-garde short docs that provide diverse portals into a fractured time. Subjects include a Black Panthers rally in San Francisco, Pentecostal Christians in rural Ohio, a severely handicapped man in Lawrence, Kansas, the 1968 Democratic Convention, and legendary underground filmmaking team the Kuchar brothers. Co-presented as part of the year-long 69 Series.
  • Heavy Visuals ‘69: Electronic Cinema and Experimental Films
    (September 23, 2009) Northwest Film Forum
    A selection of landmarks in avant film from 1969, featuring short works by many of the year’s greatest pioneering artists. Surveying a pivotal year, both aesthetically and technologically, the program presented “analog” films side-by-side with examples from the birth of digital cinema, with early video art and even some of the first digital computer animation ever made. Co-presented as part of the year-long 69 Series.
  • The Secret Sunday Matinee II: Adventure! And Stuff!
    (March 1 – May 24, 2009) Northwest Film Forum
    Our second three-month series of old-fashioned weekend matinees, with a 12 chapter cliffhanger movie serial (Zorro’s Fighting Legion, 1939), plus rare cartoons and shorts, and a classic Secret Feature Film. This series emphasized adventure, film noir, and westerns along with the occasional comedy, horror, or sci-fi treasure.
  • The Secret Sunday Matinee series
    (August 31 – November 23, 2008) Northwest Film Forum
    A three-month series of good old-fashioned weekend matinees. Every show featured weekly episodes of the classic 1941 sci-fi movie serial Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe, plus cartoons and shorts, and a Secret Feature — science fiction, adventure, and horror films from the 1930s – 1960s. Web page includes a series guide and downloadable posters.
  • Georges Méliès: Impossible Voyager
    (May 15, 2008) Northwest Film Forum
    Special effects epics from the early 1900s, with unusual musical accompaniment. Plus special guests Climax Golden Twins on dueling Victrolas, and a rare live performance of Méliès’ original narration for The Impossible Voyage (1904). Illustrated program booklet available as PDF.
  • Keep Warm, Burn Britain!
    (April 13, 2008) The Jewel Box Theater
    Slide show performance and experimental films by Ross Lipman, plus live music by Ruby Thicket and The Philistine Liberation Orchestra. Web page includes film stills, full bio and press release PDFs, MP3s and other related links.
  • Search and Rescue: Sound Found
    (March 4, 2008) Northwest Film Forum
    A program of rare early sound films, with The Mysterious Island (1929) starring Lionel Barrymore, and the Fleischer brothers’ cartoon, Noah’s Lark (1929).

Backyard Movie Parties

The Sprocket Society had its genesis in a (so far) ongoing series of private backyard movie parties held in Ballard, beginning in 2005. Below is a list of our backyard movie parties to date, including links to available program notes.

  • Backyard Movie Party X – Space Brains: Fiend Without a Face (1958), plus Koko’s Cartoon Factory (1924, Max & Dave Fleischer), St. Louis Blues (1929) with Bessie Smith, Hoppity Pop (1946, Norman McLaren) and the remarkable Délicieuse Catastrophe (1970) by Polish animator Piotr Kamler with electronic score by Robert Cohen-Solal. (July 18, 2009)
  • Backyard Movie Party IX – Flash vs. the Psychic Silverfish: Mars Attacks the World (1938) – a feature version of the serial Flash Gordon’s Trip to Mars released at the same time. Plus shorts: The Silverfish King, Bobby Bump’s Hypnotic Eye, PSI, et al. (August 15, 2008)
  • Backyard Movie Party VIII – Duck, Duck, Marx: Duck Soup (1932) plus shorts (June 27, 2008)
  • Backyard Movie Party VII – Trippin’ With Groucho: Skidoo (1968, Scope) plus shorts (September 15, 2007)
  • Backyard Movie Party VI – Attend or Die! (Atomic B-Day Edition): Monster Zero (1970) plus shorts (August 4, 2007)
  • Backyard Movie Party V – Soundies and Stuff: numerous shorts (July 6, 2007)
  • Backyard Movie Party IV – Voyages: The Fabulous World of Jules Verne (1958/1961) plus shorts (May 25, 2007)
  • Backyard Movie Party III – BYMP 2006 Part 2, The Sequel: Nosferatu (1922) plus shorts (Sept. 29, 2006)
  • Backyard Movie Party II – BYMP 2006: Godzilla vs. the Cosmic Monster (1974) + shorts and 3D (Sept. 3, 2006)
  • Backyard Movie Party I – Basement Edition: Frankenstein (1931) + shorts and 3D (Sept. 4, 2005)