Lovers of weird, eclectic, and thoughtfully-programmed cinema rejoice! The Northwest Film Forum (NWFF), Seattle’s nonprofit independent art house cinema, is making a big expansion: starting Monday, they’ll be open for all seven days of the week.  This is the first time NWFF will be showing movies every day with a full staff. More than a decade ago, the organization had daily screenings, but that relied on volunteer labor. For the expansion, while they’ll still have volunteers, staff is running things and NWFF is bringing on additional projectionists to expand their team to cover evening screenings. It’s a far cry from 2024 when NWFF laid off nearly half its staff. Now, there will be no more “dark days” (when the theater was typically closed on both Monday and Tuesday) since  the lights will be on all week long.  One reason for the operational expansion is because NWFF is thriving. The organization’s unique programming—a real fuck you to AI slop and the glut of algorithmically-driven streaming trash—is bringing in audiences. According to NWFF, attendance increased 62 percent between 2024 and 2025. And even though the fall movie season is just getting started, attendance this year is already up 27 percent from last year. With doors open every day, NWFF hopes those numbers will keep climbing.  Jill Busby, who took over as the full-time executive director at NWFF back in January, said NWFF had been considering expanding for a while. “Once we were seeing higher attendance, it felt really justified,” Busby says. They could pull this off. A lot of this recent success is due to NWFF’s programming. NWFF has never lacked for weird shit and a diversity of films. Just recently, they closed out the Local Sightings Film Festival with the North American premiere of the fascinating experimental documentary The Joyless Economy and are now opening the one-of-a-kind pseudo sci-fi horror film Chronovisor this weekend. While there is a team working on programming festivals and community groups that bring in their own films, Busby specifically credited NWFF director of exhibition Cole Wilder as being central to their growth, calling him a “programming wizard.” In addition to more programming that will make the most active Letterboxd users rock hard, Busby says the expansion will open up the theater to the community.  “We also want to have the opportunity to do a diversity of events,” Busby says. “So more rentals, more partnerships, more weird shit. Whatever we can fit in there to be a more active space seven days a week.” Building off those partnerships could mean more interesting local festivals like what NWFF is already hosting. Next month from Oct. 15-18, this will include the return of the Seattle Trans Underground Film Festival (STUFF), which has proven to be one of the more exciting new festivals to burst onto the scene. Now that they’re open seven days, not only will NWFF have more flexibility to hold screenings and events like these, they’ll also be able to potentially bring in films that require longer runs on what are known as “clean screens.” TLDR: A distributor can say “if you want this film, you need to play it for this amount of time on its own dedicated screen.” Now, if NWFF wants one of those films in the future, their increased capacity means they can meet that requirement. The expansion is a testcase. A knock on wood. NWFF has seen audiences dry up (see: that pesky pandemic) and has been through the ringer before (see: those 2024 layoffs), but Busby is optimistic.  “We’re seeing this year how it goes and if it feels like it’s not working, we’ll be responsive to that,” Busby says. “But it probably will.”  It’s more good news for independent Seattle movie theaters. Earlier this month, the Grand Illusion Cinema announced it’s moving into the University District’s Varsity Theatre later this fall. And local organization WFLM has a deal in the works to take over the Egyptian Theatre which SIFF abandoned after declining to renew their lease around this time last year. Adding the NWFF’s expansion to the mix could foretell the start of a real turnaround for local movie theaters. Whether this will usher in a new golden age for film heads remains to be seen. There are big challenges to running a theater. But after the last few years of empty seats and theater closures, there’s hope in the local scene. “I do think we’re in a very good moment for moviegoing. Specifically in Seattle, I think we do have just a very big variety of stuff happening,” Wilder says. “I’m excited to see where things go.” The post The Northwest Film Forum Will Be Open Seven Days a Week appeared first on The Stranger. ...read more read less