— पांच हजार छह सौ सत्तानवे —
Last night was the opening night film and event for the film festival portion of the Tasveer South Asian Film Festival and Market (the "Market" portion occurred over the past three days, and is over now). Shobhit, who as the SAG-AFTRA sponsor representative has an all-festival access pass, managed to get me in as a plus-one to last night's event.
When he forwarded me the email, it said they were showing: "Wakhri & Loop Line (short film)." That's how it was written. So, I assumed it was just one short film, called
Wakhri & Loop Line. Given that this was a film festival and the Opening Night Event, it should have occurred to me that they'd be playing a feature film: that's what Film Festival opening events do. But, because I don't speak Hindi (or in this case, Urdu—which is largely the same as Hindi but written in Arabic instead of Devanagari) and had no idea what
Wakhri meant, I assumed it was linked somehow in a single title of
Wakhri & Loop Line. Had I bothered to look more closely at the festival schedule—to be honest, I find the festival website schedule to have a kind of overwhelmingly busy visual presentation—I would have figured this out. Instead, I was kind of just this (literally) ignorant White guy along for the ride.
It turns out,
Wakhri is the title of the feature film they showed, and
Loop Line the title of an animated short they played alongside it. The email schedule had a "Red Carpet Walk" at 6:30 and the screening starting at 7:00, with a dinner reception at Seattle Opera's Tagney Jones Hall (the same location as the Launch Party we attended last month) at 9:30.
At the risk of being ethnically insensitive, I will say this: there's a great many beautiful things about South Asian culture, but, punctuality is not one of them. There were extensive introductions that occurred at maybe 7:30, and the screening did not actually begin until 8:00. The feature film ended around 10:00. We rushed over to Tagney Jones Hall and got a plate of catered food, and we did not even catch our first of two buses back until shortly after 11:00. I'll come back to that.
I have to return briefly to the theater where the screening took place. It was at the PACCAR IMAX Theater, which I kept assuming was the same IMAX theater I have seen many films at, at the Pacific Science Center. It turns out, this is a
second IMAX theater, on the opposite end of the Pacific Science center to the west, and up one level. How did I not even know this existed? How the fuck long has that even been there?
It turns out, the one I was familiar with, which you go down a ramp underground to get to, is the Boeing IMAX Theater. And how long has the PACCAR IMAX Theater been there?
Since 1979. Have I mentioned I am renowned for my attention to detail?
And that's the
older one! The Boeing IMAX theater opened
in 1999, at the time becoming only the second place in the U.S. with two IMAX theaters on the same site. Sheesh! Shows what I know.
I mean. My memory is so fucked, for all I know I
have been in the PACCAR IMAX theater before and I just don't remember it. Certainly nothing in there rang a bell, though. I can find no record of it in my blogs or calendars, for the record—although my September 2022 Google Calendar event for the David Bowie documentary
Moonage Daydream did note it was playing at "PACCAR and Boeing IMAX Theaters." But, I saw that at the Boeing one.
— पांच हजार छह सौ सत्तानवे —
— पांच हजार छह सौ सत्तानवे —
Anyway! Knowing Shobhit wanted to get down to Seattle Center by 6:30, I chose not to walk all the way home, and I opted for the hybrid route of walking to the Monorail, transferring to Light Rail, and then walking from Capitol Hill Station. This still involved roughly one mile of cumulative walking, but was more reliable than attempting the #8 bus, which theoretically is more of a straight shot and does not necessitate transfers, but goes up Denny Way and is notoriously unreliable in terms of making good time in traffic on that street. The trains have no traffic holdups (although I did finally get an explanation on the trains going
so bizarrely slow through the U District).
This got me home shortly after 5:00. Shobhit was dressing formally, so I went ahead and changed as well. I even changed into a pair of black slacks, something I almost never do. Shobhit had black slacks, a white shirt, a black bowtie and a black dinner jacket. I went ahead and changed into a black button-up shirt, so I was in all-black. I can't say there was much to the effect on either of our parts: it was chilly enough that we both wore jackets, and Shobhit put on a tan rain jacket over his dinner jacket, which he only took off when we sat down. I wore my black pea coat, so I was still in all black, but no one would have ever noticed the nicer outfit I was wearing underneath. I didn't even take it off during the movie.
We tried to get an early bus, but I got delayed because Shobhit suggested I finally start wearing the pair of Sketchers I had yet to break in. They were so tight, I had to take my right shoe off every once in a while through the evening because my big toe literally felt like it might wind up bruised (it didn't). He wanted me to change my white socks into black ones, and then get the new shoes, all while he was ostensibly ready to go out the door. We then made it onto the #8 headed back west toward Seattle Center, and by the time we actually reached the entrance to the Pacific Science Center, a good crowd had already gathered as it was right at 6:30.
Both on the bus and at the "red carpet" pre-event—where they sold movie concessions the whole time; lots of people walking around with small bags of popcorn in their hands—Shobhit was
wired. He was talking constantly, zipping from one person to the next, and insisting on introducing "My husband, Matthew" to each new person he came across. I'm not complaining, really. It was just . . . a lot. And Shobhit himself was
a lot. It was truly like he was having a manic episode, and it didn't really diminish in any way until the feature film was ending.
His manic disposition spiked a bit again at the post-movie dinner reception. At one point, I was still working on my one plate of food, but Shobhit had gone back in line to get another. I observed him from across the room, schmoozing with the people he was in line with, and I did think to myself: I do enjoy seeing him happy. He was having a very good time. He was also pretty careful, I noticed, not to mention his day job any time anyone asked him what he does. He would focus on his current work on local boards, both TPS (Theater Puget Sound) and SAG-AFTRA (that being one of the sponsors of this festival). Apparently he spoke to many aspiring film makers at the Film Market about making their productions union productions, which would mean SAG-AFTRA. I suppose the degree to which the union will want to sponsor again next year—and particularly if they will contribute more, as Shobhit is tirelessly advocating—will depend on how successful they see their sponsorship this year to be.
I didn't even realize until it finally occurred to me that we would be seeing a feature film that it would mean writing a review. I have not done that yet, as there hasn't been time. It was nearly midnight before we were home and I was in bed last night, although I must note that we really lucked out on the buses. We were trying to figure out the best route and which busses to take, between what the Trip Planner suggested and what real-time arrival information One Bus Away had, which they had for maybe half the buses going by over at Queen Anne Ave N.
Once we walked over there, by the time the #13 came by and how many minutes until another bus was coming, we decided to hop on that to get to the heart of downtown. The question then was whether to get off on Pine and transfer to the #10 or #12, which would take us right to our block, or get off on 3rd & Union and transfer to the new RapidRide G line up Madison to 17th, which is two blocks from home. With no 10 or 12 coming soon enough, we opted to go for the G line, even though One Bus Away was not showing real-time arrival information.
We were going to get off on 3rd and Union, but then the driver took us to 3rd and Spring, even though that stop is not officially one for the #13. This gesture totally saved us, though, because we were one block from Marion where the G goes northeastbound through several blocks of dowtown, and the G was right there when we got to Marion. Had we gotten off on Union, we would have missed it. So, we zipped up Madison and got home before it was even 11:30, faster than any other option we might have chosen. Yay!
— पांच हजार छह सौ सत्तानवे —
[posted 12:31 pm]
