Olympia is known for its alternative, indie, do-it-yourself arts scene.

"To me, that's one of the beautiful things about Olympia," says Devon Damonte, an experimental filmmaker and artist. "It's a very welcoming arts community, and that fosters people pursuing their dreams, regardless of how well their dreams might not pay."

Damonte teaches workshops and hosts a weekly group he calls Crackpot Crafters at his downtown studio. "Somebody once described it as ‘a quilting bee for film freaks,'" he says. "That's pretty accurate, but some people don't like film at all, and they come and they knit. It's halfway in between a social event and a crafty thing."

Since October, he's been curating a monthly film series at Northern. He says the ease with which he launched that project shows him how great the city's arts community is.

"Organizing this film series has been wonderful," he says. "I didn't have any kind of organization backing me. It was just asking a couple of people, and everybody said yes."

Wednesday's screenings: From the animation faculty at Dartmouth, Jodie Mack visits Oly with her "Sing It Out Loud" tour featuring bushels of magnificent motion graphics, plus original songs performed live, in harmony, with cello. Plus the Crackpot Crafters debut the group film The Artifacts Of Life with a multitudinous menagerie of once-living stuff, stuck onto 16mm film, and reanimated, cast aloft on wings of light.

Northern Flickers Film screenings

Organized by panelist Devon Damonte
Wednesday, July 27, at 7-9:30 p.m., free
Northern, 321 Fourth Ave. E., Olympia
northernolympia.org