On January 5th the Seattle Arts and Lecture Series will inspire Northwest audiences with the presence of world famous documentary filmmaker Barbara Koppel. On the evening preceding her appearance, 911 presents a video warm up so we can refresh our knowledge or familiarize ourselves with her work. Thanks to the Seattle Arts and Lecture Series, The Seattle Public Library and Barbara Koppel, 911 will show two award winning documentaries.

Harlan County USA
An Academy Award Winner and one of the greatest films of all time, Harlan County USA, chronicles the heroic fight of 180 coal mining families for dignity and fariness in Harlan County, Kentucky. "The movie is a great American document, but it's also entertaining; Kopple structures her material to provide tension, brief but vivid characterizations and dramatic confrontations. There are gunshots , and a death, and many moments of simple warmth and laughter. The many union songs provide a historical context, and also help Kopple achieve a fluid editing rhythm. And most of all there are the people in the film, those amazing people, ao pround and self reliant and brave." - Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

American Dream
Koppel's second Academy Award winning movie American Dream follows the true life story of workers on strike in Austin, Minnesota. In 1984, the Hormel company saw a profit of $29 million. That same year they offered it's Austin meatpackers a salary cut from $10.69 to $8.25 an hour and a 30% cut in basic benefits. The strike which followed pitted worker against management, worker against worker and even brother against brother. Now, enter the community as it is brought together and torn apart by outrage and discontent. This powerful film takes you to the heart of America - a heart that beats with anger, and a heart that beats with pride.

This touring program includes award-winning works from the highly acclaimed 10th Annual US Super 8 Film/Video Festival the longest running juried 8mm festival in North America. Tonights show is curated by Albert Gabriel Nigrin, presented by 911 Media Arts Center, The Rutgers Film Co-op and the New Jersey Media Art Center.

Bathtub Bully
J.D. Barfield, Los Angeles, CA 6 min. A clay animated film about four small short tempered creatures in your bathroom.

Tundra Victory Furniture
Staten Island, NY 3 min. A hypnotic film haiku focusing observes billowing snow on the Trans-Siberian Railway.

The Safeway
Daniel Martinico, Brooklyn, NY 3 min. You would never believe hose useful a plastic Safeway bag can be.

Puss In Books
Gary Roma, Waltham, MA 29 min. This film takes a humorous look at cats who call a library their home. Most of these cats and the librarians who care for them belong to the Library Cat Society, an organization whose mission is "to promote the establishment of a cat or cats in a library setting." Puss In Books goes behind the scenes, and between the stacks, to tell the story of this burgeoning movement.

The Tourist
Maria Venuto, Flushing, NY 28 min. This film examines issues of emotional isolation and cultural displacement as experienced by a German woman who arrives at Kennedy International Airport. The narrative is based on the true story of a young German traveler whose body was found under a footbridge at the airport. The project was inspired by a few brief newspaper reports, and combines fragments of factual information with imagined scenarios.

Art of the Vampire
Walter Von Egidy, New Milford, CT 50 min. Artists are vital. They keep in operation the precious playground of all humanity. Within them is what Anton Vardakuhla seeks. He is a different breed of vampire who's out for more than just blood. Traveling through time, Anton finds the perfect hunting ground in a band of freaky artists who specialize in quirky psychedelia. Here he meets Tinka, the embodiment of expressionistic color, and together they proceed to drain the group of its vital essence.

Love it or hate it, deadheads, dreadlocks and dope are here to stay. Youth culture may be a fickle but feeling good is constant. A loving look at these subcultures of pleasure may give us insight on what it is hedonists are truly seeking. Format VHS video.

Cannabis Rising
Green Mountain Films. Ahhh Amsterdam where you can relax in a coffee shop with a double tall latte and a double stuffed bowl of hash. Join Ed Rosenthal, the prophet of pot, the messiah of kaia, the Johnny Appleseed of the magic weed, as he takes us to the high road of Holland. We'll visit the hydroponic greenhouses of Sensi Seed's Cannabis Castle, industrial hemp fields, Positronics (the Molbaks of Marijuana) and many many coffeeshops and bud boutiques! Have the Dutch found a peaceful, practical alternative to the war on drugs? Cannabis Rising poses this question to police, sociologists, marijuana tycoons and drug refugees. Watching this video is almost as good as being there.

Love on $14
Steve Martini Sadly, the phenomenal Grateful Dead experience is no longer. Enough time has passed since Jerry left us that we can now look back, scratch our heads and say "what happened?" Steve Martini documented a classic three day stand at Alpine Meadows during the peak of the band's "Touch of Gray" resurgence in popularity. Trolling through the tent city we talk to trippers and challenge them with the question "why?" Very often, the answer is a bit more insightful than "why not." We learn why they pursue this existence, how they survive and what they would do if the band should ever cease to exist.

Join us for the return of two fascinating documentaries profiling individuals obsessed with making or appearing in media. The subjects of both works started tiny underground contingencies which quickly exploded into national phenomenons through the subversive use of media. This evenings video selections have appeared in festivals and at art house screenings across the country. Format VHS video.

The Rainbow Man / John 3:16
by Sam Green - Almost everyone who has watched sports in the last 20 years has seen the crude signs that read "John 3:16" or remembers that kooky guy in the rainbow colored Afro-wig. That guy is Washington native Rollen Stewart, a media hound obsessed with getting free airtime for himself and his religious message. Here's the clincher, "Rock-N-Rollen" is serving three life sentences for holding a maid at gunpoint and demanding a three hour press conference. Part King of Comedy, part Taxi Driver, Rollen's sordid tale is compelling to those of us raised with a TV as a baby sitter. The rise and fall of this one man media virus is attributed to a steady diet of alienation and meaningless that is television.

Andre The Giant's Got a Posse
Director Helen Stickler
The 7' 4" 520lb professional wrestler Andre the Giant passed away in 1992. Andre's career as a film and television personality would have quickly faded out of our cultural memory if it were not for the efforts of one man. Skateboarder and graffiti artist Shepard Fairey, is on a cruisade to reappropriate Andre's image as both a celebration of the gentle giant's life and an attack against the visual clutter and overindulgent images of contemporary culture. What started out as a local one man sticker operation became a nationwide poster campaign. Even in Seattle, "Power to the Posse", "Obey" and "Giant" posters are plastered on the graffiti wall across from the KFC on Capitol Hill. You've seen the stickers, now see the movie!

America, home of new indigenous culture springing up between the cracks on the wrong side of town. Would our nation's forefathers ever have imagined that new frontiers of art and community would come from those removed (forcibly or by choice) from society? Would they condemn them or would they celebrate their actions for epitomizing the true spirit on which this nation was founded. Join us as we hear from America's newest artistic pioneers, hip hop rhymers, graffiti artists, homeless kids and other voices of street culture. Format VHS video.

Bomb
Justin Graeme McMahan Take a ride through the graffiti subculture of Southern California's vibrant hip hop community. Bomb explores the political stances and artistic obsessions which consume eleven aerosol artists. They comment on the stylistic idiosyncrasies that delineate spray can art from mere vandalism and the socio-political ramifications of practicing America's only prima facie illegal art form. Intercut with the interviews are prime examples culled from a two year stockpile of footage from LA's streets and galleries to San Diego's river beds and walls. Bomb also spotlights hip hop's ancillary art forms, b-boying, with the seminal Rock Steady Crew, rhyming, with Conception Records' Kutfather and turntablism by Zodak One.

Crash Where You Land
Joseph Dax Phelan/Chris Mano - Enter the strange reality of New Orleans' infamous French Quarter and hear, firsthand, the stories of those who choose to live in the cracks of society amidst the scarred and ragged shells of America's wayward youth. Take a glimpse into the world of seven homeless teenagers, who strive to live life on their own terms on the mean streets. Scraping by in a world of violence, lice, hunger and drugs, these gutterpunks and hippies accept all conditions of their conscious choice in lifestyle while maintaining their focus on experiencing for the sake of experiencing itself.