Seattle’s springtime celebration of comedy/varietè entertainment, the Moisture Festival, presents captivating varietè shows featuring acts of skill and daring that include aerial and acrobatic acts, clowning, rope tricks, sketch comedy, juggling, dancing, singing, magic, and much more. SIFF is pleased to join in the festivities with a film program that highlights the astonishing world of varietè, comedy, and burlesque.
There will be a live performance featuring a Moisture Festival artist each evening preceding the film.
Please visit moisturefestival.org for more information.
Series pass available! All seven films for just $30 ($25 SIFF Supporters). Click here to purchase.
Films
 | Dir. Josef von Sternberg, 1930, 106 min.
Professor Rath (Emil Jannings) is an upright, respectable instructor at a boys’ prep school. Respectable, that is, until he steps foot in the shadowy Blue Angel cabaret and falls for smoldering Lola-Lola (Marlene Dietrich) who commands the stage in top hat, stockings, and bare thighs. more |
 | Dir. Peter Chelsom, 1995, 128 min.
Tommy Fawkes (Oliver Platt) is the son of famous comedian George Fawkes (Jerry Lewis). Tommy wants to be a comedian but his Las Vegas debut is an abject failure, so Tommy returns to Blackpool, England, to seek out obscure performers who have the gift of humor he lacks, and buy their acts. more |
 | Dir. Mervyn LeRoy, 1962, 143 min.
Based on Arthur Laurents’ Broadway hit, Gypsy stars Natalie Wood as burlesque legend Gypsy Rose Lee, and Rosalind Russell as her quintessential stage mother Mama Rose. more |
 | Dir. Jacques Tati, 1967, 124 min.
The brilliant physical and conceptual comedian Jacques Tati’s alter-ego Monsieur Hulot goes to Paris on business, but gets lost in a maze of space-age architecture and mixed up with a group of American tourists. more |
 | Dir. Edmond Greville, 1935, 77 min.
Buoyed by the success of Zou Zou a year earlier, the same team created in Princess Tam Tam a Pygmalion-like comedy in which a mischievous shepherd girl (Baker) rises through society to become a pretend princess and the toast of Paris nightlife. more |
 | Dir. Wim Wenders, 1988, 127 min.
Angels move unseen among the citizens of Berlin, keeping watch, and providing solace to the worried, the sick, and the frightened. Bruno Ganz is the angel Damiel who falls in love with a trapeze artist (Solveig Donmartin) and decides to trade in his wings for mortal existence. more |
 | Dir. Marc Allegret, 1934, 92 min.
Josephine Baker is the talented understudy Zou Zou who takes the star’s place on opening night and saves the show. more |