The Grand Illusion

Adapting David Benioff’s novel (with Benioff himself writing the screenplay), Spike Lee directed the first major motion picture to acknowledge the September 11th attacks. The filmmaker captures the somber atmosphere of life near ground zero while telling a gripping story set over the course of a tense day in which a convicted drug dealer (Edward Norton) tries to make peace with himself, his friends, and loved ones before going behind bars.

Featuring outstanding cinematography by Rodrigo Prieto, a riveting lead performance by Norton, and brilliant supporting performances by Philip Seymour Hoffman, Barry Pepper, Rosario Dawson, Anna Paquin, and Brian Cox, 25TH HOUR is a thrillingly made psychological diagnosis of both a man and a city.

Named the 3rd best movie of the 21st century by The Big Picture podcast.

“A superb film.” Michael Wilmington, Chicago Reader

“A melancholy tone poem, deeply affecting in its mute apprehension of loss.” David Edelstein, Slate

Strange/Found VHS presents: The First Annual 1-Year Anniversary Show!

Chicago VHS all-stars Joe Pickett (Found Footage Fest) and Scott Miller (Strange Tapes Zine) have a combined VHS collection of 16,000 tapes and will be celebrating their first year of touring their collection by showing their favorite finds from 2025 (all hand-picked VHS, nothing from the internet!). Expect workplace safety videos, poorly produced instructional tapes and some wonderfully homemade movies. Join us as we reap the finest bounty VHS has to offer!

Content note: This show will likely contain some language and nudity.

A documentary feature about the legendary psychedelic punk band, Butthole Surfers. Through archival footage, surreal animation, puppetry reenactments, and interviews with people like Richard Linklater, Dean Ween, Henry Rollins, Flea, Dave Grohl, Eric André, Ian MacKaye, and Steve Albini, BUTTHOLE SURFERS: THE HOLE TRUTH AND NOTHING BUTT unfolds in the anarchic spirit of the legendary band.

The film traces how two accounting students from Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, found solidarity in their shared strangeness, gathered a tribe of like-minded outsiders — queers, weirdos, and nonconformists, including the unforgettable naked performance artist/dancer Kathleen Lynch — and launched one of the most radical and unpredictable paths in rock history. Against all odds, and with a proudly unmarketable name, they became unlikely icons, inspiring acts like Nirvana and even landing a number one hit. Their live shows were one-of-a-kind events; communal rites of passage for band and audience; the perfect antithesis of the digital isolation of our modern age.

The movie also goes deep on the personal lives behind the chaos; an intimate portrait of lead singer Gibby Haynes, guitar wizard Paul Leary, drummers Teresa Nervosa and King Coffey, and bassist Jeff Pinkus: five uncompromising originals whose lives took extraordinary turns.

Former Butthole Surfers roadie Greg Butler scheduled to join for a live Q&A!

“One of the best music docs ever.” Rob Reiner

“…the film creates a vibrant collage that gives audiences a sense of the creative genius that the group exhibited with each show and album… Butthole Surfers: The Hole Truth and Nothing Butt is a reminder that the most punk thing an artist can do is reject conformity and simply be themselves.” Courtney Small, POV magazine

Chow Yun-Fat (CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON) steps into the most gleefully tasteless shoot-em-up of his storied career. Queer arms dealers, fields of exploding automobiles, harsh neon greens and blues, madness with butterfly knives, biker punk chic, ripping donuts on motorbikes and heaping helpings of horniess. The ultimate ‘90s Hong Kong action sleazefest by bullet balletmaster Ringo Lam (CITY ON FIRE, PRISON ON FIRE).

In Cantonese with English subtitles.

Special live intro from local Hong Kong genre film connoisseur and one of the programmers of the Seattle Film Society, Patrick McFarland.

“With Full Contact, Lam takes the action genre and proceeds to not merely transcend it but explode it.” Beth Accomando, KPBS.org

“Fast, fierce and gleefully tasteless…” Dennis Harvey, Variety

With their sophomore feature, Shatara Michelle Ford (TEST PATTERN) puts their singular stamp on the American road movie. After an unceremonious layoff, Z (Denée Benton, “The Gilded Age”) embarks on a trip across the Midwestern United States in search of a friend that has seemingly disappeared off the grid. Travelling with her two closest friends, these three queer black femmes find their priorities tested as shapeshifting threats in each city expose (inter)personal and ideological fractures.

Tender and expansive, DREAMS IN NIGHTMARES is an ode to chosen family and the radical act of claiming space to dream – and exist – beyond the systems of an increasingly fraught country.

Critic’s Pick! “A nifty new spin on the American road trip movie, one that functions both as an intimate exploration of identity and a rallying cry for a new kind of world.” Kate Erbland, IndieWire

“A special type of indie film teaches you how to see it as you watch it — not as an instructor might a student, but as an ally would a new acquaintance. Shatara Michelle Ford’s sophomore feature, Dreams in Nightmares, about a road trip, a friendship and a Black queer landscape anchored by care, has that quietly confident appeal, like being invited into something intimate, then let free when your curiosity is at its zenith.” Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times

New 35mm print of one of the most disarmingly funny and cathartic entries in Tsai Ming-Liang’s filmography, co-presented with SIFF.

Set just prior to the start of the 21st century, this vaguely futuristic story follows two residents of a quickly crumbling building who refuse to leave their homes in spite of a virus that has forced the evacuation of the area.

As rain pours down relentlessly, a single man is stuck with an unfinished plumbing job and a hole in his floor. This results in a very odd relationship with the woman who lives below him. Combining deadpan humor with an austere view of loneliness and a couple of unexpected musical numbers, Tsai Ming-Liang crafted one of the most original films of the 1990s.

In Mandarin with English subtitles.

“Impressive a quarter century ago, it seems even more so today.” J. Hoberman, The New York Times

“A broodingly apocalyptic and thoroughly original view.” Marjorie Baumgarten, The Austin Chronicle

“The Hole proves to be an eerily prophetic and timely movie, perhaps better now than it ever was.” Jeffrey Anderson, San Francisco Examiner

PULP: WHAT DO YOU DO FOR AN ENCORE? captures PULP during their 2025 tour, combining footage from their ingenious live show with four decades of never-before-seen archival material. Directed by longtime collaborator Garth Jennings and narrated by frontman Jarvis Cocker, the film traces the band’s circuitous journey from Sheffield outsiders to unlikely cultural icons.

Thirtieth encore screening! Autumn leaves and beavers please!

Our friends at Central Cinema are generously helping us keep the beavers gnawing away while we search for a new home. 60% of ticket sales go to our relocation fund!

In this 19th century, supernatural winter epic, a drunken applejack salesman must go from zero to hero and become North America’s greatest fur trapper by defeating hundreds of beavers.

“Starts strange, gets stranger, and yet remains resolutely adorable… embraces the defiant glee of art cinema and distills it into something so thoroughly pure and sincere that it is surely hard not to fall in love with it.” Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, Alliance of Women Film Journalists

“It’s sure to develop a significant cult following with its unique mix of silent-era slapstick, animation elements, theme-park-style critter costumes, and general air of inspired absurdity.” Dennis Harvey, Variety

“Steroidally swollen with gags and smarts.” Guy Maddin

A rare double feature of pioneering media artist and filmmaker Shu Lea Cheang’s 90-minute director’s cut of I.K.U. and its seldom-screened 2023 follow-up UKI, co-presented by SECS Fest! Known for her groundbreaking and transgressive works including the cyberfeminist classic Fresh Kill (newly added to the Criterion Collection), Cheang has long challenged boundaries of genre, identity, and technology.

First, in I.K.U. Shu Lea Cheang probes the commodification of pleasure—and explores the seamier implications of Blade Runner—in the tale of Reiko, a robot programmed to accumulate sexual experience for a corporation in New Tokyo. Reiko morphs through seven body types to experience a variety of couplings, then returns to the company to download her accumulated “orgasm data”—and to escape from their control.

Then, Cheang merges gaming software–generated animation with live action in UKI, which finds the now-defunct replicant Reiko abandoned in E-Trashville, a giant dumping ground for technological waste. Meanwhile, a besieged diner serves as a meeting place for humans infected with red blood cells re-engineered by GENOM Corp.—and for time-traversing hackers working to uncover the company’s schemes. A parable of resilience and rebirth, UKI demonstrates the continued vitality of Cheang’s forward-thinking, boundary-pushing vision.

In English and Japanese with English subtitles.

“I.K.U. is a phenomenon…. it crosses all categories — geographic, physical, conceptual — with a demented flourish. As much trans-genre as it is trans-gender, I.K.U. also wants to merge video and film into a fresh digital universe large-scale enough to overwhelm the viewer.” B. Ruby Rich, author of New Queer Cinema: The Director’s Cut

“UKI is not just allegory or parable, but a plea for action against biowarfare and those complicit.” Katherine Franco, Screen Slate

Note: There will be a 10 minute intermission in-between features. *No one under 18 admitted*

Long difficult to find, Tsui Hark's DON'T PLAY WITH FIRE (aka DANGEROUS ENCOUNTERS OF THE FIRST KIND) is one of the most controversial and violent crime films from the Hong Kong New Wave of the 1980s. Now newly restored!

After a fatal hit-and-run, three high school friends flee the crime scene. They are witnessed by Pearl, a sadistic young girl who pursues the group and blackmails them into more crimes, with increasingly disastrous consequences.

In Cantonese with English subtitles.

Special live intro from local Hong Kong genre film connoisseur and one of the programmers of the Seattle Film Society, Patrick McFarland.

“No film captures [Tsui Hark’s] early renegade style better.” Stephanie Monohan, Screen Slate

“An unflinching, nihilistic examination of juvenile delinquency in an unstable political climate, [it] still holds up more than three decades on, both as a piece of entertainment and as a cautionary tale about the dangers of a disenfranchised young generation.” James Marsh, ScreenAnarchy