Celebrating Sarah Jacobson.

When I first met Sarah at the Olympia Film Festival a decade ago, I admittedly did not know what to make of her. She had seemingly taken a garage band "do-it-yourself" aesthetic and applied it to the film business. She was also a tireless self-promoter, attending the event with her "featurette" I Was a Teenage Serial Killer. I have no idea how we ended up sitting together in the front row of the Capitol Theater that cold evening (for an OFF annual favorite, All Freakin' Night - a marathon screening from midnight to sunrise of some of the best of the worst films ever made). Still, we shared a blanket and endless tales of our predestined future success during the lengthy breaks between films. She has a listing on IMDb, an achievement that continues to escape me (twenty shorts and one feature later). She did pretty well for herself, all in all.

Although we kept in contact, it was a few years later before we met again. I was the curator of a film series at the Grand Illusion and she had just finished her full-length film Mary Jane's Not a Virgin Anymore. She came to Seattle with her wonderful mother Ruth (who served as something of a best friend/agent during the Mary Jane roadshow) to introduce a few screenings. It was here, once again, that Sarah's exceptional personality revealed itself. A mutual friend (nameless for his sake) made an appearance at one of the screenings to see some work he had done on the title sequence. Sarah and I remained in the lobby of the theater, talking (again) of our great lives ahead, when this gentleman tried to sneak out of the screening about thirty minutes into the film. Caught, he made the usual polite excuses that a person in such situations are wont to do. Sarah wouldn't stand for it and proceeded to yell at him for several minutes until he bashfully left the theater.

If anything, it is that lack of an appearance by Ms. Jacobson that will make tonight's screenings less-than-perfect. Her frank admissions of why her films work and, just as important, why they don't will be sorely missed at the ATA's Celebrating Sarah Jacobson. The show, in two parts (starting at 7:00pm), is essentially a recreation of an event that Sarah assembled in New York (where she relocated a few years ago) which presents a fine overview of her varied (if unfortunately brief) career, including the feature and featurette above along with her documentary, co-directed with Sam Green (Weather Underground), on the legendary Ladies and Gentleman, the Fabulous Stains. Other pieces and fragments will also be screened, along with remembrances "between sets" from those that knew her. Which, as I figure it, will include nearly everyone in attendance.

-- Jonathan Marlow

Posted by dwhudson at March 30, 2004 1:32 PM