April Showers Bring Art from Seattle Moviemakers, Poets and Musicians

Filmmaker Zach Weintraub, alt-country band The Head and the Heart and a poetry party at Richard Hugo

By Seattle Mag March 16, 2011

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This article originally appeared in the April 2011 issue of Seattle magazine.

Meet Your Maker
ARTIST: Zach Weintraub, 23, filmmaker FILM: Bummer Summer, an inventive take on a road trip/love triangle that won last year’s Local Sightings Film Festival at Northwest Film Forum SCREENING: 4/22–4/28. Times and prices vary. Northwest Film Forum, 1515 12th Ave.; 206.329.2629; nwfilmforum.org.

BD: Filmmaking is really hard and expensive. Why do it?
ZW: I love movies….It’s a world that I’ve always wanted to be a part of. I didn’t feel like film school [at NYU] was helping me get there, so I finished as soon as I could and I moved home [to Olympia] to try things a different way.

BD: What makes Bummer Summer different from other road movies?
ZW:
Part of what’s important about the movie is the sense of feeling inert despite being out on the road and in motion. The logistics of the road trip are intentionally not addressed. If you’ve been around, you can tell it takes place in the Pacific Northwest, but specifically where is more of a mystery. The characters might as well be driving in circles.

BD: Where are you?
ZW:
I’m actually living in Buenos Aires, rehearsing for and eventually shooting a new movie that I’ve been writing for about a year, called The International Sign for Choking [see blog.lotlmovie.com]. It’s an adventure, definitely. I’m not sure where I’ll wind up next, but a voice in my head is telling me to go home to the Northwest.

Poetry
Re: Verse
The Hugo House is piling up a month of poetry

As all good word nerds know, April is National Poetry Month, and Seattle’s Richard Hugo House writing center is celebrating with a veritable Lollapoetlooza. Filling the shoes once worn by the Seattle Poetry Festival (which recited its last rhyme in 2007), the National Poetry Month at hugo house festivities invite the poem-loving public to partake both as audience members and do-it-yourselfers. At press time the lineup was still in progress, but plans include:
* A monthlong poem-a-day challenge undertaken by three local writers (TBA), who will in turn ask the public to commit to writing one poem every day in April (they’ll help by hosting writing happy hours at which they’ll offer poem prompts)
* Seattle musicians Sean Nelson, Sara Edwards, Jason Dodson (of the Maldives) and Jose Bold performing newly composed songs whose lyrics are taken from favorite poems
* A “loading dock explosion,” wherein local installation artist Ben Beres (of SuttonBeresCuller) will take over the outdoor building space with an epic poem writ large
* Also: readings galore, a gallery of new poem-inspired paintings by local artists, and, of course, another installment of the raucously popular Cheap Wine and Poetry series. Richard Hugo House 1634 11th Ave.; 206.322.7030; hugohouse.org


The HEad and the HeartGreat Anatomy //The Head and The Heart

Since hitting the indie rock scene in 2009, Seattle sextet The Head and the Heart has been rocketing skyward, thanks to its beguiling and genre-bending sound (we named it Seattle’s Best New Alt-Country Band last year, but alt-folk and indie-pop descriptors also apply). The execs at Sub Pop Records were so impressed by the self-titled album The Head and The Heart self-released in 2010 that in January they added the band to the label’s roster, and this month (April 16) will re-release the original album—remastered and augmented with the crowd-pleaser song “Rivers and Roads.” The band celebrates its new Sub Pop–ularity with several shows this month. On April 16, Record Store Day (when everyone should buy something at an indie record store), the band will play intimate shows at both Easy Street in West Seattle and Sonic Boom on Capitol Hill. On April 29, the band will take over Showbox at the Market with its infectious sound. For show details, visit theheadandtheheart.com.

 

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