Recent Stories with tag ben kasulke

$5 Cover: Seattle Trailer from MTV New Media on Vimeo.

On Monday, the Seattle version of $5 Cover premiered all twelve episodes to a SIFF Cinema packed with cast, crew, volunteers, MTV producers, and Seattle music fans. The installments, along with short documentaries about each of the bands and B-side films about Seattle, won't start appearing online until June. Since everyone else will have to wait, I won't say too much beyond reporting that the finished product is so much better than the long-circulating trailer (above) suggests. 

When Audrey and I last discussed this matter, a map of band relationships had sparked delight and the preview footage had raised modest skepticism. Seeing the preview, I worried about how uncomfortable it might be to see musicians reading scripted lines to portray slightly more dramatic versions of themselves in service of thinly contrived plot devices. Happily, most of the moments of forced narrative are shown in the trailer itself, and the rest of the project quickly begins to feel more like a gently observed documentary than forced reality programming. ...

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The cast of The French Project at Gainsbourg, Sept. 14-16.

Tonight through Wednesday, a collective of Seattle performers, writers, and musicians are launching an ambitious performance series called The French Project at Gainsbourg , the Francophile lounge Seattle Weekly music writer Hannah Levin opened up in Greenwood with her husband last year. The show starts at 8 p.m., but doors open at 7 p.m. and seating is limited ($10 at the door, 8550 Greenwood Ave. N.).

The core cast of the show features Erin Jorgensen, Sara Edwards, Basil Harris, and Charles Smith performing a repertoire of Parisian tunes from everyone from Edith Piaf to Jacques Brel to the bar's namesake, Serge Gainsbourg (plus, hopefully, Boris Vian, whose omission from the set-list would be tout à fait impensable! ).

Edwards and Jorgensen were half of a four piece performance group who wowed audiences at On the Boards ' Northwest New Works Festival this last spring with a deeply moving piece called Sunday Service , that explored the loss and persistence of religious faith through music and text. It was by far the deepest, most serious piece at the festival, and also suggests the musical talents of the group involved. The show also features two members of Seattle's Awesome! : Basil Harris, one of the core performers of The French Project , and Rob Witmer will be rocking the accordion.

Poet, solo performance artist, and plumber Allen Johnson also joins the crew to channel the Parisian  poètemaudit par excellence Charles Baudelaire. And finally, Tania Kupczak will be screening a film shot by Seattle's busiest cinematographer, Ben Kasulke.

About five minutes into her dance film Holding This For You, Marissa Rae Niederhauser throws herself against the wall, slides to the floor, and begins trying to untie a key knotted to the front of her dress. But Ben Kasulke's camera stays trained to her face; she squints a little as she works, purses her lips before biting the lower one, and only when she's mostly worked her way through the knot and closed her eyes does the camera trail down to her breast as she pulls the key off the ribbon. She holds it tightly in her hand for a long moment, her face, turned from the camera, slightly out of focus, and then drops it.

"Different stories work better onstage, and different stories work better on film," explained Niederhauser last week at Smith, near her home on Capitol Hill. "And I'm particularly drawn to small facial gestures and physical details. Onstage, dance is great to have these big, sweeping spacial patterns and geometric forms, kind of like a kaleidoscope. But this was kind of more a psychological drama,...

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