Wednesday, December 16, 2015

Beach Town dates for January 2016: Seattle and Buenos Aires (and more!)

Get a dose of Seattle summer next month and see Beach Town on the big screen as it was intended (and stay tuned for more screening announcements soon to come!)

Kino Palais, Buenos Aires
This just in: Beach Town will have two screenings in the glorious Argentinian capital! 
January 3,  2016  (7 pm)
January 30,  2016 (7 pm)

Northwest Film Forum. 
The calendar is now live! Beach Town's encore screening in Seattle is:
Sunday January 10, ( 4 pm )

Beach Town at Northwest Film Forum 1/10/2016

Tuesday, November 17, 2015

Next: Kino Palais -- Buenos Aires!


They love us down south!

"Beach Town" has been invited to screen at the Kino Palais  in the Ministerio de Cultura of Buenos Aires in January.


More info as it comes!





Saturday, October 17, 2015

Beach Town back in Seattle in 2016


Mark your calendars!


Sunday, January 10, 2016   @  4 pm.
Northwest Film Forum!

Previous gigs:

* Seattle International Film Festival, 2015
 ("Best of the Fest" -- The Sunbreak)

* Alta Fidelidad Ill Muestra de Cine Documental Musical, Bogota - Colombia,  2015

The crits: 

"...retro charm... (a) briny, wistful quality." - 
(Brian Miller, Seattle Weekly)

"...nails the dynamics of a rinky-dink music scene in a small town ... great original songs."
(Tony Kay, The Sunbreak)

The scene: 

Inspired more by films like People on Sunday (1930) than Frankie and Annette, Beach Town is a rock and roll beach movie of the mind   a quiet, unabashedly atmospheric look at the lives of young people whose art is ineffably linked with their surroundings in a low-rent coastal community. Beach Town features an upbeat summertime soundtrack and was shot entirely in Seattle in glorious, Super 16 color film.

Friday, July 31, 2015

Colombian listing for Beach Town

Check out our cool Spanish-language page in Bogota, Columbia! Showing at the Kubrick Room!
Click the image to see the whole thing.




Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Friday! Beach Town in Bogota, Colombia!

Bogota, Colombia will experience a rock and roll beach movie of the mind this Friday, July 31, at the Alta Fidelidad film festival!

Greetings to Bogota from sunny Seattle! Please let us know how it goes!

Friday, June 19, 2015

Beach Town goes International!

Our next screening will be here, at the Alta Fidelidad music film festival in Bogotá, Columbia!

Monday, June 1, 2015

The SunBreak lists BEACH TOWN as one of it's picks! (Premiere Tomorrow!!)


Straight from the online journal here:

Tony’s Picks:

Beach Town  Seattle-based writer/director Erik Hammen mines young romance and humor from DIY indie-band dynamics in an unnamed beach town (played with credibility by Ballard and Georgetown).
  • June 2, 2015 SIFF Cinema Uptown  6:30 PM
  • June 4, 2015 SIFF Cinema Uptown 4:00 PM

See all the picks here:


Wednesday, May 27, 2015

City Arts write-up for Beach Town!





City Arts online just put up a very nice interview/review about Beach Town! Check it out here, complete transcript below!

A Rock n Roll Beach Movie of the Mind

Nothing much happens in Beach Town—the movie or the place. And that’s a considerable part of its charm.


The third feature from Seattle director Erik Hammen—and his first to play the Seattle International Film Festival—follows Noelle (Sarah Winsor), a recent transplant to an unnamed backwater coastal town, as she ambles through the summer. Along the way she meets cute with Arthur (Ahren Buhmann), a local who sings lead in punk band,the Clanking Chains, but Noelle’s recent breakup with another musician renders her gun-shy at the prospect of a new romance.
Describing that thread of a storyline makes Beach Town sound a lot more literal—and a lot less special—than it is. It’s not so much about young romance as it is about capturing a corner of the world that’s not beholden to the tumult and grind of city life. It’s also about that strange confluence of memories alternately being made and remembered: Despite being set in modern times, Beach Town is shot in the soft, charmingly-faded tones of an old photograph nestled in your parents’ scrapbook.  Hammen—a musician himself—even nails the dynamics (and humor) inherent among a bunch of kids creating their own music scene in a sleepy small town. The end result is a guilelessly sweet, sometimes wryly funny and unexpectedly resonant snapshot that gently surprises you like saltwater circling your bare feet on a sandy beach.
Hammen—who also wrote, produced, edited, and composed songs for Beach Town—chatted about his movie and the inspirations behind its evolution.
Why this particular setting?The beach is great because it has an inherent tension in it, but it’s not overt. You’ve got this beautiful landscape but there’s something unreconstructed about those towns that has a sense of promise to them. I‘ve always felt this tension of promise at the beach. It’s exciting to me. That was the impetus of the movie. At certain points during a summer, you think, “This is great. This is perfect.” Usually, it’s just one moment. This movie’s kind of a compressed summer day, stretched over about a month or so. But it’s got the feelings that I wanted to evoke.
You’ve constructed a little composite beach town from Ballard and Georgetown for the movie, thanks to camera angles and editing. Was there ever a point where you’d thought about shooting in an actual beach town?I definitely thought that Ballard was it. Initially, I’d also thought of Alki: That has a big strip, just like an LA beach. But I didn’t want this place to look like LA. I wanted it to look like its own thing. The beaches in the Northwest don’t look like those beaches. I think that’s part of the beauty out here. Also, Georgetown worked because it’s got the buildings, and also if you get down low enough and shoot, you see sky instead of trees. You need a certain amount of sky to at least imply that you’re near a beach. It was mechanical but it was also aesthetic. A couple of scenes were also shot in the U District. We just kind of cut-and-pasted to make it work.
I shot a lot at Golden Gardens. That beach was so great. I love the publicness of that beach. Here’s a beach that’s not private and the people that show up are from all walks of life, all economic levels, all ethnic backgrounds. 
Your actors add a level of believability. The leads are both charming but they look like normal, functioning human beings.Great! That was crucial. With Sarah Winsor, I thought, “This kid is way too cool. She’s gonna get a better offer and she’s gonna leave.” This isn’t a horror movie or something that’s fashionable like that. And she is cool, but not too cool. She’s also bookish: She’s a reader and a little quiet. I didn’t know that until I got to know her. And Ahren, the boy who plays Arthur, was a happy accident: He was the boyfriend of the girl who plays the character of Farrah in the movie. He was also the technical director at Balagan Theater. That was his full-time day job, which is very involved. And he did the color correction on our movie, too.
The business with the bands and the DJ character who’s sort of a Greek chorus in the movie are funny without going over the top. Was it ever an issue keeping things outside of the realm of cartoonishness?
Not really. I basically told the actors, “This is what you’re doing,” and they did it. It was as simple as that. With your average indie movie set at a beach, it’d be made as a parody or extreme sports or it’d be some sort of edgy reinvention of a beach movie. This movie is none of those things. But the actors were really able to get into the spirit of what I was looking for.
The DJ character was fun. Steven [Sterne, the actor playing the DJ] got a huge kick out of playing it. That character’s funny, but we made a concerted effort to not make him too cartoonish, mostly out of respect for the film’s sense of place. Eccentrics like this guy can live in this [fictional] place, and they’re not getting priced out by condos. No one there is worried about rents. That’s beautiful—and that’s why it’s fiction!

Beach Town plays June 2 and June 4 at SIFF Uptown as part of Seattle International Film Festival. 

Friday, May 22, 2015

Beach Town Posters


Just got back from the printers with THREE elements!

This is the 11x17 poster that'll be pasted up all over town starting Monday.

There's also postcards, and a gigantic, movie theater-sized poster!


Wednesday, May 20, 2015

Press from Three Imaginary Girls for Beach Town at SIFF!

A couple more nice mentions for BEACH TOWN from the mighty savvy Three Imaginary Girls, the My Ballard Blog and Jack FM Radio! !

Three Imaginary Girls
"Did you know Seattle could pass for a Beach Town? Honestly, my first thought while watching the trailer was, “How cold were those ladies in bikinis when they were filming this?” – but I like the Instagram-y look and feel of it, and it’s really fucking awesome that it was shot both a) within the Seattle city limits and b) on 16mm film. I’m diggin’ the soundtrack too.{Screens 6/2, 6:30pm and again 6/4, 4pm at SIFF Cinema Uptown; Director Erik Hammen scheduled to attend both screenings}"
    (Editor's Note: Sarah and Maya were actually quite comfortable that day)

My Ballard
"One of the featured films at this year’s Seattle International Film Festival has captured the essence and beauty of Ballard summer...."

JACK FM Radio
Beach Town is one of their official picks of the fest!


Wednesday, May 13, 2015

Seattle Weekly Beach Town write-up!

Brian Miller from the Weekly gave us this fabulous write-up! Complete text is below,  the Weekly's site features photos!

SIFF 2015: Hot Summer Lovin’, Ballard-Style!

This gossamer indie Seattle romance is meant to evoke a state of mind, says its local director, not the city’s specifics. 

If the images in his shoestring romance Beach Town seem a little grainy and washed-out, if the sun flares in the lens, if the plot and dialogue lack much heft, that’s just fine with Ballard filmmaker Erik Hammen. His third feature—and first in SIFF, where it will premiere—is more about a summertime state of mind than any kind of weighty tale. Sitting over beers at the Lock & Keel on an appropriately mild May evening, he explains how “there is a delicacy to it. It’s a beach movie of the mind. Wistfulness . . . I’m trying for that sense.”
Yet the idyllic and idealized Beach Town—the name Seattle is never uttered or invoked—is more backward-looking, innocent, and vaguely nostalgic. Raised in a coastal Connecticut town, Hammen tells me how he sought to evoke the sensual pleasures of sand between your toes, the smell of suntan oil, the sensation of ice cream (or cold beer) on a hot summer day. “It’s an atmospheric piece,” he says of Beach Town. “It’s not literally Seattle, but the essence of it. I’m really interested in a sense of place . . . that kind of salt-burned world” of creosote-smelling boardwalks and unpolluted surf.

The plot is suitably skimpy: Sparks are struck when boy meets girl, girl has second thoughts about boy (a musician about to leave on tour), etc. The two would-be sweethearts in this chaste romance, Noelle and Arthur, are played by local stage performers Sarah Winsor and Ahren Buhmann, respectively. Not only do we see Arthur’s punk band rehearsing and performing, plus a rival synth-pop outfit, but Beach Town is scored wall-to-wall.

“About half of it I wrote,” says Hammen of the soundtrack. “I was in punk bands on the East Coast in the ’80s.” Arthur works in a record shop where a grumpy/friendly DJ (Steven Sterne) keeps tunes spinning throughout; if that makes you think of American Graffiti and Wolfman Jack, Hammen smiles at the association. He sought “a radio feeling” to the movie, the bygone sense of shared music played in the open air from boom-boxes and passing cars—not the modern private experience of earbuds and iPods.

Also lending to the vintage texture, Hammen shot entirely on 16mm film stock (later transferred to video), which is fast disappearing. (In fact, in a sad footnote, he was one of the last commercial clients for Alpha Cine Labs after completing photography on Beach Town two summers ago.) “The results you get are unbeatable,” he says of the skinny old format. “You work with the best material you can.” After being enlarged, the grainy 16mm stock yields “a tactile sense,” he notes. The medium’s limitations are integral to Beach Town’s retro charm. And like the beach towns of Hammen’s youth, 16mm may also soon be extinct—lending to that briny, wistful quality.
Even so, the friendly, bespectacled director is anything but a bitter or mournful nostalgist. “This is my third feature,” says Hammen (after 2001’s Love My Guts and Time of the Robots, a fanciful, archival sci-fi collage seen at the Grand Illusion in 2012). “This is my first one [at SIFF]; it’s very exciting.” (He and cast members will attend the festival screenings.) The former punk rocker came to Seattle 20 years ago as a Microsoft contractor. His DIY ethos drew him to indie film, using the cameras and other resources offered by Northwest Film Forum. He describes himself as “self-taught and self trained. I never went to film school.”

Why shoot primarily in Ballard? It’s what he knows. Before the first dot-com boom and bust, circa 1999, “We bought a little tiny house,” where he and his wife and two kids still live. With a day job in the tech industry, he learned his new neighborhood on foot. “This is a pedestrian film,” he jokes of Beach Town, meaning that it’s scaled and paced at a walking (and occasionally bicycling) perspective gleaned from his early shoe-leather explorations. During that time he was surprised to discover, behind the warehouses and boat sheds, that “Goddamn! Ballard has a beach!” In particular, he was drawn to the rocky-sandy Golden Gardens, appreciating the multicultural mix of barbecue parties, bird-watchers, sailboarders, and cold-weather sunbathers. “How public it is,” Hammen marvels—not exclusive Malibu, not the ritzy Hamptons, but a relaxed coastal community blending easily into industrial Ballard.

Time unfolds slowly here, as Noelle and Arthur miss connections and meet up for movie dates. Of both the plot and milieu of Beach Town, says Hammen, “There isn’t the rush” of a more conventional, more tightly plotted film. He’s seeking to recall “the experience of being kind of young and shiftless . . . but in a romantic way.” Hence there’s time to hang, time to chill, time to sing campfire songs on the beach. “I feel like the beach town is an incubator,” he says. “There’s a sense of promise. There’s still room for the eccentrics.” 
bmiller@seattleweekly.com

SIFF Cinema Uptown 511 Queen Anne Ave. N., 324-9996, siff.net. $11–$13. 6:30 p.m. Tues., June 2 & 4 p.m. Thurs., June 4. 

Thursday, April 30, 2015

WORLD PREMIERE at Seattle International Film Festival


Beach Town will have its world premiere at the mighty Seattle International Film Festival!
And, we're getting two screenings

June 2, 6:30 pm
SIFF Cinema Uptown, Queen Anne
June 4, 4:00 pm
SIFF Cinema Uptown, Queen Anne

Tickets on sale now! CLICK HERE for more information and tickets!
See the online trailer here!

"Recognized as one of the top film festivals in North America, the Seattle International Film Festival is the largest, most highly-attended film festival in the United States, with over 155,000 attendees annually and was named one of the 50 unmissable film festivals by Variety. The 25-day festival... is Seattle's most accessible and highly publicized film event, and is renowned for its eclectic programming with over 450 features, short films and documentaries from over 80 countries annually."