Most film festivals would be over by now, but SIFF is just halfway through its 25-day schedule. The Alternate Cinema program of experimental films has wrapped up, and I didn't see as many of these films as I had expected to. I'm not sure why. I like the genre quite a bit, but maybe when given the choice between independent films or documentaries and really independent examples of the same in a festival setting, I didn't really make a distinction between the two.

I did, however, make it to the party for the Alternate Cinema program, which was generously hosted by the Northwest Film Forum, the venue where most of the screenings took place. The party had a nice, late start at 11 p.m., and one of the first things to be seen while entering were the go-go dancers. Near the bar in one of the cinemas I ran across Jeffrey Blitz, the director of Spellbound and his current festival film Rocket Science, and we talked about his transition from documentary to narrative features, and he gave me some war stories from the Baltimore shoot. Out in the lobby I ended up on the dance floor with, among others, Taika Waititi, the director of Eagle vs. Shark, New Zealand's answer to Napoleon Dynamite. Meanwhile, Portland director Cullen Hoback (Monster Camp) was still in town, and we talked a little more about his upcoming documentary about real life vampires (or rather, people who think they are).

On Saturday I went to see the one screening of Kurt Cobain About a Son at the Neptune, which I really liked. The movie actually reminded me of the Seattle-based documentary Zoo, and NOT because Kurt Cobain's suicide reminded me of Kenneth Pinion's death by stallion (follow the link if you need more information). No, the two movies are similar because they both laid down a narration track first, based on first-person interviews, and then layered imagery on top of that. Both films are beautiful and capture the Pacific Northwest and the Seattle area in all the ways that are slowly solidifying into being iconic: lush, moody, and a little bit distant. What also works in the movie's favor is the fact that, instead of having experts talk about who they think Kurt Cobain was, the audio track is pulled from actual audio tapes of actual interviews with the man himself.

After the screening I followed an elite crowd into an office space above the Neptune Theater where there was a private after-screening party for the film. The man who made the tapes with Cobain, Rolling Stone reporter, Kurt Cobain biographer, and all-around good guy Michael Azerrad was at the after-party, and he is so down to earth that you understand why Cobain opened up to him in the first place for the interviews. Director AJ Schnack was also there, and I was able to compliment him not only on a great film but also on a great blog that he's been running. I was also able to hobnob a bit with Death Cab for Cutie frontman Benjamin Gibbard and legendary Seattle music producer Steve Fisk. Of course, more people showed up, like Oscar-nominated documentary director James Longley (Iraq in Fragments), who got into a conversation with local documentary producer Shannon Gee about the best new documentary gear. Also in attendance were the creators of the World Premiere movie Cthulhu, director Daniel Gildark and screenwriter Grant Cogswell, which will play closing weekend.

The next night I introduced the delightful Josh Hamilton comedy Outsourced, in which a Seattle customer service manager's job is outsourced to India and he is forced to train his replacement. During the Q&A afterward we found out that they decided to pass on a cable TV premiere with a possible theatrical release in order to self-distribute. As far as I'm concerned, I'm surprised that the regular distribution companies passed on this timely and crowd-pleasing comedy. After the screening, I went out for drinks with director John Jeffcoat and screenwriter George Wing and a few others, and they talked about pitching TV shows that could be set and shot in Seattle in order to help sustain the talented crew members who are the backbone of the local film industry.

MORE MOVIES OF NOTE

For 2 Days in Paris, the absolutely charming writer-director-composer-editor Julie Delpy has created a film that has the structure and flow of a blog, dropping in photos and adding personal commentary at will. Unfortunately, she wrote in a "comedic" ugly American boyfriend (Adam Goldberg in the Ethan Hawke role), and he is so abrasive that I moved from doubting her taste in men to doubting her script.

Big Rig is Hype! director Doug Pray's ode to the trucking industry which is full of lovely shots of America, but at times it feels like the movie was just the excuse he gave himself to hitchhike all across the country in the titular trucks.

The Champagne Spy is a documentary about a German-born man who would take time away from his family in Paris to be an Israeli spy in Egypt, and he got so lost in his double life that he started a double family of sorts. It's an amazing story, often from his son's point of view, and a good documentary.

Crazy Love is an amazing story about an obsessive lust that became love, and how the abuse in an abusive relationship can switch directions over time. The doc doesn't always give you the context that you need, but the present-day characters are often hilarious.

The Devil Came on Horseback is another story of a white man who goes to Africa and wants to save it from itself. This time it's Major Brian Steidle, who brought the atrocities of Darfur to light and has been doing what he can to have the international community step in and stop the genocide. It's a worthy cause in a worthy film.

The Fever of '57 focuses on the space race after the Russians launched Sputnik in 1957, and the movie benefits by focusing on that specific time and how that Russian victory of sorts changed American culture, technology, politics, and self-image.

In Grimm Love, Keri Russell stars as an American grad student in Germany researching a famous case of a practicing cannibal and his willing victim, only she's just a narrative device in a movie that completely loses its focus.

I Don't Want to Sleep Alone is Tsai Ming-liang's first film in his native Malaysia, and so many people have told me it's his most gentle and caring film that I know I misread it back in Rotterdam where I saw it and was left cold.

A recording of his autobiographical stage show, The Life of Reilly glosses over Charles Nelson Reilly's TV work (he never talks about his stint on Match Game), which is okay because he is a magnetic and hilarious performer who has had an amazing life.

I enjoyed the time-shifting structure of La Vie en Rose (it reminded me of an Olivier Assayas film), and I didn't know much about the life of Edith Piaf before this, and I thought Marion Cotillard's hunched and brassy central performance was fun, so I quite liked this movie.

In Protagonist, Jessica Yu captures four disparate stories of four men with troubled childhoods who found something to believe in, became obsessed with that, and then eventually had to break away from their cult-like devotion, with inter-chapters that feature really cool wooden-rod puppets.

Running on Empty is not the story of Jackson Browne, but rather the story of an insurance salesman who drives the Autobahn and falls for the roadside innkeeper - who may very well be the memory of his wife, in this poetic and extremely well-directed feature.

Sanctuary: Lisa Gerard is for fans of the Dead Can Dance lead singer only. The rest of us are given an interesting 20 minutes late in the film where Michael Mann and some Hollywood composers talk about her soundtrack work.

Still Alive. A Film About Kieslowski looks at the famous director Krzysztof Kieslowski from the days when he was an impulsive ladies man and documentary filmmaker through his transition to narrative filmmaker as his communist Poland changed around him.

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Andy Spletzer has only seen about 45 films so far at this year's festival.