Indie Film News – KCTS Introduces Reel NW with “Wheedle’s Groove”

November 22nd, 2010 | POSTED BY Brandi Sperry

This past Thursday, I attended quite a rollicking party at KCTS studios to kick off their new series, Reel NW. The series provides a showcase for Northwest independent film, allowing the selected documentaries, narrative features, and shorts to be made available to anyone who can access KCTS, both over the airwaves and online.

I spoke with Randy Brinson, the executive producer of the series, about the kind of exposure KCTS can provide these films. The KCTS signal reaches 1.6 million people in Washington, along with close to a million more in Canada. He pointed out that even if KCTS was only to show a film once, the potential audience could be quite extraordinary for films that might only have small festivals as their main method of distribution. But featured films will be aired multiple times, and also made available for streaming at the KCTS website for two weeks after their initial air date. KCTS hopes to be able to extend this online availability in the future, perhaps even for a period of time before a film’s over-the-air premiere. This first series of ten films is already receiving such a positive reaction that another series is a near certainty.

The first film to get the Reel NW treatment is the 2009 documentary Wheedle’s Groove, which also played at the Seattle International Film Festival last May. An introduction to the not-well-enough-remembered Seattle soul and funk scene of the 1960s and 1970s, the film features interviews with a number of musicians of the era, and many were on hand at the premiere party to treat the crowd to some of those legendary songs.

Wheedle’s Groove is exactly the sort of documentary I like best, one that knows it can’t tell you everything there is to know about a subject and doesn’t even pretend to try. Director Jennifer Maas lets a selection of the musicians and producers who contributed to the thriving music scene of Seattle during that time simply tell their stories.  At least one of these musicians is a familiar name (that’d be Kenny G, of the band Cold, Bold & Together), but the majority—while for the most part still making music, as born musicians do—are not even close to household names. The narrative thread comes from local DJ Mr. Supreme, whose collection of 45s from the era becomes a sort of accidental anthology, as one obscure Goodwill find leads to another. Eventually, some of his findings become part of a release on local label Light in the Attic Records that aims to bring some of these now-obscure bands back into discussion.

The film’s subjects comment on a couple of arching themes: the difficulty of making art away from the accepted nucleus for that art (in this case, trying to make a living making music while not living in Los Angeles), and the racial segregation of the time. Both of these themes are so interesting, I wish they’d been delved into further. Additionally, a few more contemporary musicians discuss their impressions of the era (Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie and Ben Shepherd of Soundgarden among them). I came away from the film impressed at how much I don’t know about a fascinating, relevant, and fun subject, and that is exactly how I want to feel after this sort of film.

Wheedle’s Groove can be seen online at KCTS until December 2nd. Subsequent films in the Reel NW series will air on Thursdays at 10 PM, with the next being the documentary Paddle to Seattle, about two friends trying to kayak from Alaska to Seattle, on November 25th.

You can follow Reel NW to learn more about their upcoming films on Twitter or on Facebook.

Wheedle’s Groove Final Grade: B+

Jennifer Maas, KCTS, Paddle to Seattle, Reel NW, Wheedle's Groove