Late last week, SIFF unveiled the complete lineup for the 2014 festival (the 40th) on their website and in stacks of glossy printed guides all over town, complete with a full festival calendar, compact film descriptions, trailers, and all sorts of other bells and whistles. Pour one out for the much-beloved iPhone app: it’s still dead (“iSIFF, never forgotten in the hearts of SunBreakers”). Instead you’ll have to make due with bookmarks to your home screen or by summoning your best origami skills and turn the 24-day, 9-theater schedule at the guide’s centerfold into something pocketable.

Setting aside our mourning for apps of SIFFs past, let’s get ready to festival! The country’s biggest festival is knocking at our doors, wired and ready to celebrate its fortieth birthday in style. If you’re not yet ready for 435 films from 83 countries (198 features, 60 documentaries, 163 short films), it’s time to set up your war rooms because starting on on Thursday May 15th, 44 world premieres, 29 North American premieres, and 13 U.S. premieres are rolling into town. Can you ever be truly prepared for this film onslaught? Of course not! Don’t be ridiculous.

That’s why in the coming weeks we’ll be hivemindmelding to help you figure out what…tenth, let’s say, of this festival is worth your precious time. And really, if you see a quarter of those, you’ll feel it your stiff legs, bleary eyes, and sun-deprived skin by the end. As this year’s ad campaign goes, so say we all: “You will be returned home safely but forever changed”.

If you can’t wait for our crystal ball readings, but know that you like your fims, for instance, to get romantic, induce nightmares, take you on a rocket ship to adventure, or cause you to feel horribly melancholic upon having the dire state of human rights/environmental collapse/economic atrocities/etc., SIFF continues to organizing the festival into user-friendly tourist destinations (“Coast of Passion”, “Bay of Merriment”, “Plans of Truth”, “Adrenaline Forest”, “Thought Trails”, “Uncharted Territory”, “Sea of Knowledge”, “Cape of Outer Limits”, “Originality Oasis”, and “the Melodic Sea”), each with their own respective  Moods (some of which overlap).

Let’s hash through the details (and DEFINITELY reacquaint yourself with last year’s tips & tricks): Early-bird prices have come and gone, but you can still sign up for an all-you-can-eat buffet by getting a series passes or set more achievable goals with a bulk order of six or twenty slightly-discounted tickets. Aside from shopping online, the festival maintains two box offices — on at SIFF Cinema in Lower Queen Anne and another at Pacific Place. In terms of in-city programming, this year’s map remains fairly compact with most regular screenings taking place downtown at Pacific Place, in Capitol Hill at the temporarily-revived Egyptian and Harvard Exit, and on SIFF’s home turf in lower Queen Anne with three screens at the Uptown and one at the Film Center. Once again, the festival will take the show on the road to Bellevue (Lincoln Square), Renton, and Kirkland, but we have enough trouble catching everything in Seattle and don’t expect to venture too far beyond city limits.

 

ALL OF THE GALAS:

The Opening Night film features Andre “3000” Benjamin as onetime local, legendary guitarist, and permanent bronze Broadway fixture, Jimi Hendrix.  Directed by John Ridley, Jimi: All Is By My Side kicks off the festival on May 15 @ McCaw Hall and is followed with all sorts of gala festivities and various price points to meet your needs for fanciness.

In addition to the opening night soiree, the festival is packed with parties. There are also a series of “Saturday Parties” to reward you for making it through the week: Saturday #1 is fashion-centered with Dior and I + Il Fornaio, #2 gets science-metaphysical with I Origins + Kaspar’s,  and #3 is the Centerpiece Gala, featuring  the film I’m probably most excited about at the whole festival: Richard Linklater’s long-film experiment, Boyhood, followed by a party at the DAR Rainier Chapter House on Capitol Hill, and #4 finds Paul Rudd and Amy Poehler (swoon) lampooning rom-coms in They Came Together and getting boozy at the W hotel. Is that enough parties? It is most certainly not. You’ll also find the festival celebrating the African Pictures Program (Friday, June 6th with Alex Gibney’s Finding Fela), “the gays” with Helicopter Mom anchoring a mid-week “Gay-La” party at Q (June 4th), as well as opening nights in Renton (Megan Griffith’s Lucky Them, May 22nd) and Kirkland (the Grand Seduction, May 29th). If you’re still standing after all of those parties, stumble over to the Cinerama to watch Elisabeth Moss and Mark Duplass surreally rekindling their marriage at a romantic retreat in The One I Love, followed by a massive #SIFForty send-off at MOHAI on Sunday June 8th.  If you plan on diving deep into the SIFF party scene, the “Gala and Party Pass” gets you into most of them along with open bar privileges for $300 ($250 for members).

And this year, SIFF also pays tribute to a several film legends, bringing them into the company of film lovers for the right price. But don’t hold your breath, as these are cancellation-prone:

• An Afternoon with Laura Dern (SIFF’s Outstanding Achievement in Acting), featuring a screening of Wild At Heart on May 17th @ Egyptian. She’ll also appear with thousands of sobbing teenagers for a presentation of The Fault in Our Stars on Friday May 16th.
•  An Evening with Chiwetel Ejiofor (also receiving SIFF’s Outstanding Achievement in Acting) accompanies his Half a Yellow Sun on May 19th @ the Egyptian. He’ll also appear with legions of brown coats for a special presentation of Serenity on May 18th.
• An Evening with Quincy Jones (receiving SIFF’s Lifetime Achievement Award), featuring a screening of his film Keep On Keepin’ On. June 4 @ SIFF Cinema Uptown.
• An Evening with the Justin Kauflin Trio features the blind jazz pianist from Keep On Keepin’ On performing in concert, with an introduction from Quincy Jones. June 5 @ Triple Door.

 

But wait, there’s more. Along with 3D Bears, animated dragons, Game of Thones stars in non-Westerosi adventures, there are also fourteen film programs (including an archival presentation of Last Year at Marienbad!), seven competitions (a set of which is decided entirely by your votes), and a Secret Festival that includes Sunday morning screenings of films so exclusive that an Oath of Silence is required for entry. 

Can’t wait? Start scouring the festival’s offerings and strategically slotting them into your social calendars, with extra credit for plotting out agendas that allow you to see multiple films at different venues while finding non-popped sustenance. To get yourself in the mood, take a few looks at this year’s trailer and try to (1) identify all of the referenced films and (2) how many viewings it will take for you to despise and/or memorize it.