After five years running free monthly documentary film screenings on the hill, the Queen Anne Movie Guild has announced that the organization has come to an end. In a note addressed to members of the community last week, Guild members explained some of the difficulties that led up to this decision. Congruently the group posted the following note on the QAMG website:
After five years, the Queen Anne Movie Guild has come to a close. Over these years, documentaries have grown in number and visibility, which is great news. The bad news is that their cost has risen to the point where we are no longer able to afford to show the quality films we would like to bring you.
Fortunately, the sources available through the internet have increased — NetFlix, Brave New Theatre, FreeSpeech TV online documentaries, YouTube free feature length films, and FaceBook – and we hope you will take advantage of these.
We will be donating our remaining funds to the Center for Wooden Boats and Wallingford Meaningful Movies. They each have supported us with loaned projectors. Our DVDs will be going either to the Seattle Public Library or to the DVD loan library of Wallingford Meaningful Movies. Our DVD player will be going to Wallingford Meaningful Movies to support their ongoing project, which aids others in showing social justice documentaries in area neighborhoods.
Thank you for your participation in and generous support of the Queen Anne Movie Guild screenings over the past five years. Collectively, we built a successful and thoroughly enjoyable venture in education, entertainment, and community building. We hope our paths will cross again.
All the Best,
Guild Members:
David Griffith, Pat Griffith, Carol Isaac, Gordon Jackins, Rich Littleton, Margaret Okamoto, Erin Schiedler, Richard Sewell, and Keith Yoshida
While the all-volunteer QAMG and its Second Saturdays Film Series has now come to a close, you can still look back over the last five years at the films the Guild has shown and catch up on those you missed. Check out all of the films the QAMG has shown over the years here. Want to say goodbye to the Guild? Send the QAMG a farewell message on its Facebook page.
The Queen Anne Movie Guild will be hosting a free screening of documentary film “The People Speak” on Saturday, June 11 as part of its Second Saturdays film series. From the QAMG website:
The People Speak is a beautiful and moving film inspired by Howard Zinn’s books A People’s History of the United States–first published in 1980 and one of the bestselling history books in the United States–and Voices of a People’s History of the United States, the primary-source companion to A People’s History of the United States, edited with Anthony Arnove.
Using dramatic and musical performances of the letters, diaries and speeches of everyday Americans, the documentary feature film The People Speak gives voice to those who spoke up for social change throughout U.S. history, forging a nation from the bottom up with their insistence on equality and justice.
Narrated by acclaimed historian Howard Zinn, The People Speak illustrates the relevance of these passionate historical moments to our society today and reminds us never to take liberty for granted.
The screening will be held at 7 p.m. at the Queen Anne United Methodist Church, located at 1606 5th Ave W next to the Queen Anne library. Movie-goers should use the Fellowship Hall entrance on W Garfield Street. Refreshments will be provided by Peet’s Coffee & Tea and Top Pot Doughnuts. The screening is, as always, free and open to the public, though donations will be accepted.
The Queen Anne Movie Guild is hosting a screening of Split Estate, a documentary film about the struggle homeowners in Rocky Mountain West faced when they discovered that energy companies owned the rights to the minerals under their land, this Saturday, May 14, as part of its Second Saturdays documentary film series.
From the Queen Anne Movies Guild:
Imagine discovering that you don’t own the mineral rights under your land, and that an energy company plans to drill for natural gas two hundred feet from your front door. Imagine having little recourse, other than accepting an unregulated industry in your backyard. Split Estate maps a tragedy in the making, as citizens in the path of a new drilling boom in the Rocky Mountain West struggle against the erosion of their civil liberties, their communities and their health.
Zeroing in on Garfield County, Colorado, and the San Juan Basin, this clarion call for accountability examines the growing environmental and social costs to an area now referred to as a “National Sacrifice Zone.”
This is no Love Canal or Three Mile Island. With its breathtaking panoramas, aspen-dotted meadows, and clear mountain streams, this is the Colorado of John Denver anthems — the wide-open spaces that have long stirred our national imagination.
Exempt from federal protections like the Clean Water Act, the oil and gas industry has left this idyllic landscape and its rural communities pockmarked with abandoned homes and polluted waters. One Garfield County resident demonstrates the degree of benzene contamination in a mountain stream by setting it alight with a match. Many others, gravely ill, fight for their health and for the health of their children. All the while, the industry assures us it is a “good neighbor.”
Ordinary homeowners and ranchers absorb the cost. Actually, we all pay the price in this devastating clash of interests that extends well beyond the Rockies. Aggressively seeking new leases in as many as 32 states, the industry is even making a bid to drill in the New York City watershed, which provides drinking water to millions.
As public health concerns mount, Split Estate cracks the sugarcoating on an industry touted as a clean alternative to fossil fuels, and poignantly drives home the need for real alternatives.
The screening will be held 7 p.m. this Saturday at the Queen Anne United Methodist Church, located next to the QA Library at 1606 5th Ave W. Moviegoers should enter via the Fellowship Hall entrance located on W Garfield St. As always the event is free, and coffee and doughnuts will be provided by Peet’s Coffee and Tea and Top Pot Doughnuts.
The Queen Anne Movie Guild will be screening Brother Towns, a documentary about two towns in different countries linked by immigration, family, and work–the highland Maya town of Jacaltenango, in Guatemala, and the coastal resort town of Jupiter, Florida, where many Jacaltecos have settled, this weekend as part of its monthly Second Saturday film series.
From QAMG:
Brother Towns chronicles a story of how and why people migrate across borders, how people make and remake their communities when they travel thousands of miles from home, and how people maintain families despite their travel. Because we are all immigrants, this is a universal human story, and a quintessential American one. All of us understand family.
Brother Towns is also a story of local and international controversy. News of undocumented immigrants is familiar in nearly every community across the U.S., and citizens must choose how they respond to this issue.
Welcome to Brother Towns, a place where there are no easy answers, but where emotions of every sort abound. Families are like that.
The screening will begin at 7 p.m. on Saturday, April 9 at the Queen Anne United Methodist Church, located at 1606 5th Ave W. Moviegoers should use the Fellowship Hall entrance on W Garfield Street.
As always, admission is free, though donations to keep the Second Saturdays film series alive are welcomed.
Refreshments will be provided by the Interbay Peet’s Coffee & Tea and the Queen Anne Top Pot Doughnuts.
The Queen Anne Movie Guild is screening Call+Response, a documentary film on human trafficking, this weekend, as part of its second Saturday film series.
From QAMG:
CALL+RESPONSE is a first of its kind feature documentary film that reveals the world’s 27 million dirtiest secrets: there are more slaves today than ever before in human history. CALL+RESPONSE goes deep undercover where slavery is thriving from the child brothels of Cambodia to the slave brick kilns of rural India to reveal that in 2009, Slave Traders made more money than Google, Nike and Starbucks combined.
Luminaries on the issue such as Cornel West, Madeleine Albright, Daryl Hannah, Julia Ormond, Ashley Judd, Nicholas Kristof, and many other prominent political and cultural figures offer first hand account of this 21st century trade. Performances from Grammy-winning and critically acclaimed artists including Moby, Natasha Bedingfield, Cold War Kids, Matisyahu, Imogen Heap, Talib Kweli, Five For Fighting, Switchfoot, members of Nickel Creek and Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers, Rocco Deluca move this chilling information into inspiration for stopping it.
Music is part of the movement against human slavery. Dr. Cornel West connects the music of the American slave fields to the popular music we listen to today, and offers this connection as a rallying cry for the modern abolitionist movement currently brewing.
There is a sea of change happening in human rights activism. The world’s issues cannot be solved alone by governments and non-profits, but require community-based participation. As a feature film, CALL+RESPONSE has the unique position of being not only a ground-breaking genre-bending film, but also serves as a deft tool in the hands of 21st Century Abolitionists. We provide activists with tactile strategic online and mobile tools to fight slavery everyday. We believe this is a fight that must that is won with passion, innovation, and commitment.
As always the screening will begin at 7 p.m. on Saturday, March 12 at the Queen Anne United Methodist Church, located at 1606 5th Ave W (right next to the Queen Anne library). Moviegoers should use the Fellowship Hall entrance on W Garfield St. Coffee will be provided by Peet’s Coffee & Tea and doughnuts provided by Top Pot Doughnuts. Admission is free.
After a little holiday hiatus last month, the Queen Anne Movie Guild is back in action, hosting a screening of the documentary film “At the River I Stand” as part of its Second Saturdays Series this Saturday, February 12. From the QAMG:
At the River I Stand chronicles the tumultuous events that unfolded over two fateful months in 1968. It began as a local strike by African American sanitation workers for human dignity and a living wage. The story eventually captured national attention and drew Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to Memphis, along with the assassin who would kill him. The results marked a turning point in the Civil Rights Movement and the national struggle for racial and economic justice.
This film recounts the two months leading to Martin Luther King Jr.’s death, coinciding with the 65-day strike of 1300 Memphis sanitation workers. In 1994 it won the Organization of American Historians Erik Barnouw Award, and has been widely heralded as one of the most poignant documentaries about the civil rights movement.
As always, the screening will be held at 7 p.m. on Saturday, February 12 at the Queen Anne United Methodist Church, located at 1606 5th Ave W (the pink building next to the Queen Anne library branch). Moviegoers should use the Fellowship Hall entrance on W Garfield Street. Admission is free (though donations are welcome), and there will be coffee and doughnuts provided by the Queen Anne Top Pot Doughnuts.
If you were planning to head up the hill this weekend to see what documentary the Queen Anne Movie Guild is screening this month, you’re out of luck. The QAMG is taking a mid-winter hiatus from its Second Saturdays series this month. Usually the organization hosts a free screening of a different documentary monthly at the Queen Anne United Methodist Church, inviting the neighborhood to enjoy good films, snacks and community. The Second Saturdays series will resume next month (February 12).
Marilyn Waring is the foremost spokesperson for global feminist economics, and her ideas offer new avenues of approach for political action. With persistence and wit she has succeeded in drawing attention to the fact that GDP has no negative side to its accounts–such as damage to the environment–and completely ignores the unpaid work of women.”Why is the market economy all that counts?” Ms. Waring asks.
In 1975, when she was just 22 years old, she was elected to the New Zealand parliament. She was re-elected three times and eventually brought down the government on the issue of making New Zealand a nuclear free zone.
When she was chairperson of the Public Expenditures Committee, she perfected what she calls the “art of the dumb question.” Ever since she has challenged the myths of economics, its elitist stance, and our tacit compliance with political agendas that masquerade as objective economic policy.
This film has inspired many people, notably the Who’s Counting Project, to work on human-scale economic alternatives, local currency exchanges, and more humane ways of measuring the quality of life.
As always, the event will be held at the Queen Anne United Methodist Church, located at 1606 5th Ave W, next to the Queen Anne library. Movie-goers should use the Fellowship Hall entrance located on W. Garfield Street. As always, admission is free, and coffee and doughnuts will be provided by Top Pot Doughnuts‘ Queen Anne location.
It’s been a crazy week and I haven’t had time to publish our usual weekend calendar yet. But considering how great the weather is, I want to make sure no one misses out on a fun community event over this sunny Saturday and Sunday. So, without further ado, check out what’s going on in Queen Anne this weekend:
Saturday, July 10
Join 500 others at the Crown of Queen Anne Fun Run and Walk, 8 a.m. Saturday. The run will begin at 5th Ave W and W Halladay St., and follow a 3.3-mile course along Queen Anne Boulevard, ending at Coe Elementary School at 7th Ave W and W McGraw Street.
Takes your kiddies to the Queen Anne Children’s Parade at 11 a.m. Saturday. The parade starts at Queen Anne Community Center at 1st Ave W and W Crockett Street, then goes south on 1st to W Blaine St; west on Blaine to 3rd Ave W; north on Third Avenue to W Howe Street; and east on Howe into the Community Center playfield; Seattle Police will escort.
Celebrate the best of Seattle’s “curbside cuisine” at the fourth installment of Mobile Chowdown, at Seattle Center’s former Fun Forest from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday.
Head down to Pier 57 for Seattle’s Free Outdoor Summer Concert Series every Saturday through August 28 from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. They’ll be food, entertainment, and the Miner’s Landing arcade!
Trek up and down Queen Anne Ave for the summer sidewalk sale all day, Saturday and Sunday!
Sunday, July 11
The Seattle Department of Neighborhoods has awarded a Small and Simple Grant for the repair of the Dexter Way North Mural (under the Aurora Bridge). Community members will be prepping the surface from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Sunday, and volunteers are welcome! Wear something you don’t mind getting dirty, and don’t forget to bring a water bottle!
Trek up and down Queen Anne Ave for the summer sidewalk sale all day, Saturday and Sunday!
Have more events to add to the calendar? Email us at tips@queenanneview.com and we’ll put ‘em up quick! Happy sunshine Queen Anne!
The film follows a Canadian town that was able to successfully ban the use of pesticides, inciting a province-wide movement:
Dr. Irwin’s persuasive arguments and data to back her findings eventually led the town of Hudson to enact a by-law that banned the use of all chemical pesticides and herbicides. The most mighty chemical companies in North America put their full legal weight on the tiny town and eventually the case made it to the Supreme Court.
The town’s right to protect its citizens was upheld, and — like a row of dominos — other municipalities followed suit. The movement spread so far and wide that the entire province of Quebec enacted a ban and Home Depot stopped putting the dangerous pesticide products on their shelves.
Paul Tukey, one of the nation’s leading experts on organic lawn care has been following this story for years. After becoming seriously ill with acute pesticide sensitivity from applying chemical lawn products in his own lawn care business, he became an outspoken advocate for alternatives to chemical lawn care. He travels across the country lecturing on the subject and has written the nation’s leading book on organic lawn care titled, The Organic Lawn Care Manual.
This documentary follows his journey that leads to the doorstep of Hudson, Quebec. It’s an inspiring story of overcoming great odds and demonstrates the power of people coming together to effect great change in our society.
The Queen Anne Movie Guild‘s monthly Second Saturday screening series is coming up this Saturday, May 8. This week they’ll be showing “Burning the Future: Coal in America,” a documentary about the “the explosive conflict”that has sprung up between the coal industry and the residents of West Virginia.
Confronted by emerging “clean coal” energy policies, local activists watch a world blind to the devastation caused by coal’s extraction. Faced with toxic ground water, the obliteration of 1.4 million acres of mountains, and a government that appeases industry, our heroes demonstrate a strength of purpose and character in their improbable fight to arouse the nation’s help in protecting their mountains, saving their families, and preserving their way of life.
As always, the event is free and open to the public. The screening will be held at 7 p.m. on Saturday and the Queen Anne United Methodist Church , located at 1606 5th Ave W right next to the Queen Anne Library. Movie-goers should use the Fellowship Hall entrance on W. Garfield St.
This week for its Second Saturday Free Movie Series, the Queen Anne Movie Guild will be screening Dirt! The Movie, which delves into the the world and wonders of–you guessed it–soil! From the Guild:
It tells the story of Earth’s most valuable and under-appreciated source of fertility–from its miraculous beginning to its crippling degradation.
The opening scenes of the film dive into the wonderment of the soil. Made from the same elements as the stars, plants and animals, and us, “dirt is very much alive.” Though, in modern industrial pursuits and clamor for both profit and natural resources, our human connection to and respect for soil has been disrupted. “Drought, climate change, even war are all directly related to the way we are treating dirt.”
Narrated by Jaime Lee Curtis, Dirt! is described as a “call to action” for the reconnection of humanity to the environment we live in. The film encapsulates the environmental, economic, social and political impact of soil by sharing stories from experts all over the world who “are able to harness the beauty and power of a respectful and mutually beneficial relationship with soil.”
The movie teaches us: “When humans arrived 2 million years ago, everything changed for dirt. And from that moment on, the fate of dirt and humans has been intimately linked…The only remedy for disconnecting people from the natural world is connecting them to it again.” What we’ve destroyed, we can heal.
As always, the QA Movie Guild’s Second Saturday Series is free and open to the public. The screening of Dirt! The Movie will be held at 7 p.m. on Saturday, April 10 at the Queen Anne United Methodist Church, located at 1606 5th Ave W (the pink building next to the Queen Anne Library). Movie goers should use the Fellowship Hall entrance located on W Garfield St.
The Queen Anne Movie Guild will be showing Sick Around the World, FRONTLINE as part of their monthly second Saturday film screening this Saturday, March 13 at 7 p.m. at the Queen Anne United Methodist Church, located at 1616 5th Ave W., across from the QA branch of the Seattle Public Library.
In Sick Around the World, FRONTLINE, PBS and veteran Washington Post foreign correspondent T.R. Reid investigate health care in the United States by comparing how five other capitalist democracies – Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, Switzerland and Taiwan – handle health care, tackling the question of what we might learn from their successes and failures.
As always, the QA Movie Guild’s second Saturday series is free and open to the public. Each month the volunteer group brings different independent documentary films to the Queen Anne community, focusing on prevalent issues that provoke conversation.
The focus of the movies will be what makes communities work, community sustainability and environmental issues. Some of the questions we ask when previewing films are: “Does this film address solutions to the economic or environmental issues we have in Seattle? Does it give useful approaches to the economic changes we are facing? Does it realistically inform us about how to be wiser consumers? Is it interesting and does it have entertainment value?”
This month the Queen Anne Movie Guild will be screening Turning Points, which follows eight homeless and formerly homeless Real Change vendors and deals with the transitions they’ve faced in their lives, as part of their Unnatural Causes series.
Our lives are constantly shaped by transitions – some positive, others negative, some life affirming, others crushing. All of us have stories to tell. In Turning Points we hear from eight homeless and formerly homeless Real Change vendors about the transitions in their lives. Whether its the strength of a relationship, the experience of war, or the salvation in finding community, each story illuminates the intense human ability to persevere against all odds. Timothy Harris, Executive Director of Real Change, will be there in person to lead a post-film discussion.
Get details on the screening here. The QAMG is a volunteer-run organization that brings socially relevant, independent documentary films to the Queen Anne community every second Saturday of the month.
Update: QAMG will also be showing “Not Just A Paycheck: Unemployment Takes A Toll In Michigan But Not In Sweden” alongside “Turning Points.” Both documentaries are 30 minutes long. After the screening there will be a round table discussion with Real Change founder and director Tim Harris.
The Queen Anne Movie Guild presents a free showing of: “Traces of the Trade: A Story From The Deep North”on Saturday, May 9, 2009 at 7:00pm at the Queen Anne United MethodistChurch, 16065th Ave W, Seattle98119. The film is produced and directed by Katrina Browne, co-produced by Elizabeth Delude-Dix and Juanita Capri Brown.
Enjoy comments provided by guest Patricia Russell, one-time student dean and adjunct faculty at AntiochUniversity where she wrote her dissertation on the psychological effects of slavery on a contemporary African American family.
Synopsis of the movie: The DeWolfe family: scions of RhodeIsland society, proud of their deep, strong New England roots, patriotic Americans. A family tree reveals that the DeWolfe forefathers made their vast fortune from the slave trade. This documentary follows ten members of the family as they retrace the triangle trade route of their ancestors, a route that started in Bristol, Rhode Island, went to the coast of Ghana, through Cuba, continued to Charleston, South Carolina and ended back in Bristol. This is a family’s journey as they struggle to come to grips with this here-to-fore hidden part of their identity. Along the way, we will all discover the extent to which slavery and human trafficking is woven into the very fabric of our American life, South and North. The conversation about race in American has begun.
Queen Anne Movie Guild is a volunteer group of QA residents who screen independent documentary movies focused on community building, sustainability, self-sufficiency, and environmental stewardship.
See ratings and reviews of
After five years running free monthly documentary film screenings on the hill, the Queen Anne Movie Guild has announced that the organization has come to an end. In a note addressed to members of the community last week, Guild members explained some of the difficulties that led up to this decision. Congruently the group posted the following note on the QAMG website:
At the River I Stand chronicles the tumultuous events that unfolded over two fateful months in 1968. It began as a local strike by African American sanitation workers for human dignity and a living wage. The story eventually captured national attention and drew Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to Memphis, along with the assassin who would kill him. The results marked a turning point in the Civil Rights Movement and the national struggle for racial and economic justice.
If you were planning to head up the hill this weekend to see what documentary the 
Join 500 others at the Crown of Queen Anne Fun Run and Walk, 8 a.m. Saturday. The run will begin at 5th Ave W and W Halladay St., and follow a 3.3-mile course along Queen Anne Boulevard, ending at Coe Elementary School at 7th Ave W and W McGraw Street.
Celebrate the best of Seattle’s “curbside cuisine” at the 
The Seattle Department of Neighborhoods has awarded a Small and Simple Grant for the 
This week for its Second Saturday Free Movie Series, the 
