NOVEMBER 4, TUESDAY AT 8PM

Don’t let your Champagne go flat this election night! Join Northwest Film Forum and Strawberry Theatre Workshop as we turn NWFF into the epicenter of election information, complete with major network broadcasts, radio coverage, a “Capitol Hill Petting Zoo” with a donkey and an elephant, and live blogging all night long! As each state gets called, watch our master of ceremonies post red and blue light bulbs on our giant map of the country, marking wins for Obama or McCain. Raise a glass in celebration or dilute your beer with your tears–either way, it beats being home and yelling at your television. The Extravaganza is a fund–raising party for Northwest Film Forum and Strawberry Theatre Workshop. Suggested donation $10.

NOVEMBER 21 – 26, FRIDAY – WEDNESDAY AT 7, 9PM

Although it is likely you’ve never heard of Barney Rosset, he is one of the most influential cultural figures of the 20th century. Through his imprint Grove Press and his magazine Evergreen Review, Rosset fought tooth and nail (often before state and federal supreme courts) for the American right to read the works of Samuel Beckett Henry Miller, Jean Genet, Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, Harold Pinter, D H Lawrence, Alain Robbe–Grillet, Amiri Baraka and many other “enemies of morality”. “Grove was a valve for pressurized cultural energies,” says the now octogenarian and still feisty Rosset, “a breach in the dam of American Puritanism.” Obscene traces the important history and impact of Groove’s free speech fights — from Ginsburg’s “Howl” to “The Autobiography of Malcolm X” to the Swedish film I Am Curious (Yellow) — while creating a fascinating portrait of the volatile, eccentric Rosset whose unyielding restless energy and questionable business sense upended both this country’s censorship law and his own life.

More info at www.nwfilmforum.org