COMMENCEMENT BANK PRESENTS: HAL + THE VELVET UNDERGROUND PLAYED AT MY HIGH SCHOOL

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 14 – 35th Annual Olympia Film Festival
Commencement Bank presents:
HAL
3:30pm doors / 4:00pm film

Although Hal Ashby directed a remarkable string of acclaimed, widely admired classics throughout the 1970s — Harold and Maude, The Last Detail, Shampoo, Coming Home, Being There — he is often overlooked amid the crowd of luminaries from his generation. Amy Scott’s exuberant portrait explores that curious oversight, using rare archival materials, interviews, personal letters, and audio recordings to reveal a passionate, obsessive artist. Ashby was a Hollywood director who constantly clashed with Hollywood, but also a unique soul with an unprecedented insight into the human condition and an unmatched capacity for good. His films were an elusive blend of honesty, irreverence, humor, and humanity. Through the heartrending and inspiring HAL, you feel buoyed by Ashby’s love of people and of cinema, a little like walking on water.
Dir. Amy Scott / 2018 / US / 90 min

SHORT DOCUMENTARY FILM: THE VELVET UNDERGROUND PLAYED AT MY HIGH SCHOOL
This animated documentary is the story of the Velvet Underground’s disastrous first public performance. While on stage for merely 20 minutes, The Velvet Underground performed three songs: “There She Goes,” “Venus in Furs,” and “Heroin.” The Summit High School audience responded with, as a band member recalled in 1983, a “murmur of surprise that greeted the appearance.”
Dir. Robert Pietri & Tony Jannelli / 2017 / US / 8 min