NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2015
THE 42ND NORTHWEST FILMMAKERS’ FESTIVAL JAPANESE CURRENTS ORSON WELLES AT 100
PLUS
WINTER BREAK CAMP CERTIFIABLY YOURS: NEW FILMS FROM THE SCHOOL OF FILM
School of Film
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NORTHWEST FILM CENTER DIRECTOR: BILL FOSTER EDUCATION DIRECTOR: ELLEN THOMAS FILMMAKER SERVICES MANAGER: THOMAS PHILLIPSON HARRY & ROSE MOYER ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICES & NORTHWEST FILM CENTER SCHOOL OF FILM 934 SW SALMON STREET
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SPECIAL SCREENINGS PAGE 3–4
SCHOOL OF FILM PAGES 5, 6 & 15
THE 42ND NORTHWEST FILMMAKERS’ FESTIVAL PAGES 7–14
JAPANESE CURRENTS PAGES 16–17
ORSON WELLES AT 100 PAGES 18–19
G ENERA L ADM I S S I ON $9 GENERAL $8 PAM MEMBERS, STUDENTS, SENIORS $6 SILVER SCREEN CLUB FRIENDS SPECIAL ADMISSION PRICES AS NOTED. ALL PROGRAMS ARE SINGLE ADMISSION, UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED. SILVER SCREEN CLUB DIRECTORS, PRODUCERS, BENEFACTORS & SUSTAINERS RECEIVE FREE ADMISSION TO ALL REGULAR ADMISSION PROGRAMS, INCLUDING FESTIVALS. SEATS FOR ADVANCE TICKET HOLDERS AND SILVER SCREEN CLUB MEMBERS ARE HELD UNTIL 10 MINUTES BEFORE SHOWTIME, AT WHICH POINT ANY UNFILLED SEATS ARE RELEASED TO THE PUBLIC. BOX OFFICE OPENS 30 MINUTES BEFORE SHOWTIME.
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If you are not already a member, we’d love you to consider joining. Whether you consider it a strictly economic proposition, or part of your contribution to the cultural life of the community, Silver Screen membership pays dividends year-round. As it is for all arts organizations, ticket sales support some programs and grants and sponsorships others, but it is member support that provides the foundation that allows programming that you can’t find elsewhere. For only $75 a year you can be a FRIEND, which gives you a $3 discount on tickets (Northwest Filmmakers’, Portland International and Portland Jewish Film Festivals included), the Film Schedule by mail, guest tickets and even a tax-deduction. Or, for $200 a year, a SUPPORTER membership offers free admission to the regular, year-round program with the exception of PIFF. A $400 DIRECTOR level membership gives you free admission to the regular programs and PIFF—more than 400 programs annually—invitations to preview screenings of new commercial releases, invitations to member parties and events, an even larger tax-deduction, and more. Obviously, a great value if film is your passion, but moreover a vote of support for all the Film Center does to animate community. With a PRODUCER ($600), BENEFACTOR ($1,500) or SUSTAINER ($2,500) membership comes reserved seating, enhanced guest privileges. Invitations to exclusive events, receptions and tours, and other benefits both personal and philanthropic. In addition to your own, a Silver Screen membership makes a great holiday gift for your favorite film lover, especially with January’s Reel Music and Bollywood series, and February’s 39th Portland International Film Festival on the horizon. Look for the Silver Screen brochure at the theater or read more about the benefits on our web site—www.nwfilm.org—and thanks for your part in making the Center’s 43rd year of exhibition, education and artist service programs possible. This month is our 42nd Northwest Filmmaker’s Festival and 39th Fresh Film Northwest, events which more than any others define what the Film Center is about. The 66 works presented—by established artists and emerging makers—give testimony to the flourishing media arts community in the Northwest and point the Center, with your help, to remain at the Center. Bill Foster DIRECTOR NORTHWEST FILM CENTER
MISSION
The Northwest Film Center is a regional media arts resource and service organization founded to encourage the study, appreciation, and utilization of the moving image arts; to foster their artistic and professional excellence; and to help create a climate in which they may flourish.
PRESENTING
The Film Center’s year-round exhibition program surveys the full range of cinema past and present. From classic silent film to the avant-garde, thematic series, director retrospectives, national cinema surveys, visiting artists, and the latest in regional, independent, and foreign film, the Film Center’s programs open the world of diverse moving image expression.
TEACHING
The Film Center’s School of Film is one of the oldest and largest community-based media arts education programs in the country. The School of Film offers intensive hands-on classes and workshops in film production for adults and youth, taught by faculty members who are accomplished working media artists. Students may earn the Film Center’s non-degree Certificate in Film as well as obtain optional college credit through partnering higher education institutions.
PORTLAND ART MUSEUM MARILYN H. & DR. ROBERT B. PAMPLIN JR. DIRECTOR: BRIAN FERRISO
In K-12 classrooms, after-school, and community settings, in partnership with many other organizations, the School of Film advances media literacy and expression as core skills for the next generation through screenings, production camps, and other innovative programs and collaborations.
NW FILM CENTER CORRESPONDENCE TO:
SUPPORTING FILMMAKERS AND COMMUNITY
NORTHWEST FILM CENTER 1219 SW PARK AVENUE PORTLAND, OR 97205
NORTHWE ST FI LM CENTER ISSUE DATE: OCTOBER
The Northwest Filmmakers’ Festival, archival screenings, Japanese Currents, Orson Welles, the British Arrow Awards—all in two months. If you regularly attend the Film Center’s exhibition programs you know that one of the hallmarks of the programming is diversity. From experimental film to documentaries, regional work to cinema classics, thematic series and retrospectives to the latest in foreign film, the Center serves the community with an unmatched range of programming. The richness, of course, is made possible by audience support—in particular the investment of our Silver Screen Club members, the base of Film Center season subscribers.
EMAIL: INFO@NWFILM.ORG PHONE: 503-221-1156 FAX: 503-294-0874
NWFILM.ORG
In addition to exhibition and teaching opportunities, the Film Center circulates traveling exhibition programs featuring work by regional artists, administers the Oregon Media Arts Fellowship, offers fiscal agent services for independent producers in need of non-profit sponsorship, provides low-cost equipment access, and engages in consulting services to community producers and organizations. THE NORTHWEST FILM CENTER IS FUNDED IN PART BY THE REGIONAL ARTS & CULTURE COUNCIL, PORTLAND ARTS EDUCATION & ACCESS FUND, THE JAMES F. AND MARION L. MILLER FOUNDATION, OREGON CULTURAL TRUST, THE OREGON ARTS COMMISSION, THE TED R. GAMBLE FILM ENDOWMENT, AND THE SUPPORT OF NUMEROUS CORPORATE AND EDUCATION PROGRAM SPONSORS, MEMBERS & FRIENDS.
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NORTHWEST FILM CENTER
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2015 503-221-1156 NWFILM.ORG
SPECIAL SCREENINGS THE WHITE SHEIK
ALWAYS FOR PLEASURE
NOV 4 WED 7 PM
NOV 7 SAT 7:30 PM—VISITING AUTHOR
DOWNTOWN 81
ALWAYS FOR PLEASURE
on art and artists US 1981
DIRECTOR: EDO BERTOGLIO
This fanciful urban fairytale is an essential time capsule of the postpunk club scene on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the early 1980s. The not-yet-famous artist Jean-Michel Basquiat stars along with such artistic revolutionaries as John Lurie, Lydia Lunch, Vincent Gallo, Deborah Harry, and rap legend Melle Mel. Basquiat makes his way through a vibrant scene exploding with new wave music, experimental painting, hip-hop, and graffiti art in an elliptical journey that is half-documentary, half fantasy. Among the leading bands of the era captured onscreen are Kid Creole and the Coconuts, James White and the Blacks, DNA, Tuxedo Moon, The Plastics, Walter Steding and the Dragon People, Suicide, and Basquiat’s own band, Gray. (73 min.) On view at the Portland Art Museum, Nov 4–Feb 21, is “Paige Powell: The Ride,” a three-channel digital projection and installation featuring Powell’s personal archive of never-seen recordings and images of Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and the New York art world of the 1980s.
NOV 5 THUR 7 PM
voices in action
NO LAND’S SONG
FRAN CE/G ER MANY/I RAN 20 14
DIRECTOR: AYAT NAJAFI
The Islamic revolution of 1979 banned female singers from appearing in public in Iran. Women are no longer allowed to perform solo unless to an exclusively female audience and recordings of former female icons can only be bought on the black market. But composer and activist Sara Najafi is determined to refresh her country’s cultural memory and revive the great female voices of Iran’s past. Roaming Tehran in the footsteps of these singers and with the hope of rebuilding shattered cultural bridges, Najafi courageously plans an evening spotlighting Iranian and French female soloists—a concert that is, by Iranian law, not allowed to take place. Director Ayat Najafi follows the preparations for this forbidden concert as Najafi travels between Tehran and Paris, one step ahead of imprisonment. Can intercultural solidarity and the revolutionary power of music triumph? Both a political thriller and a musical journey, NO LAND’S SONG never loses sight of its real center—the powerful female voice. (93 min.)
NOV 6 FRI 7:30 PM—VISITING AUTHOR
wordstock and nwfc present
THE WHITE SHEIK ITALY 1 9 52
DIRECTOR: FEDERICO FELLINI
Fellini’s first feature, an uproarious comedy skewering the popular notion of marital “bliss,” stars Brunella Bovo and Leopoldo Trieste as newlyweds in Rome with vastly differing agendas. While Ivan (Trieste) has a rigid schedule set (including a rendezvous with the Pope, of all people) Wanda (Bovo) is single-minded in her mission to meet the “White Sheik” (Alberto Sordi), the hero of a popular cartoon. While it’s clear that the couple couldn’t be more different, just how (and if) they will manage to hold their marriage together is the real question—played out here with a style and a smirk that’s all Fellini. (86 mins.) Sandra Cisneros, author of several novels including THE HOUSE ON MANGO STREET, CARAMELO, LOOSE WOMAN, HAVE YOU SEEN MARIE?, and most recently, A HOUSE OF MY OWN, will introduce the film and participate in a post-film discussion with Olga Sanchez, former artistic director of Milagro Theatre. Screens as part of Wordstock 2015, produced by Literary Arts and presented at the Portland Art Museum November 7.
wordstock and nwfc present
U S 1 978 DIRECTOR: LES BLANK The vibrancy of New Orleans’ cultural life in the late 1970s shines through in Blank’s characteristically freewheeling, fun, yet incisive documentary portrait of the city. Featuring interviews and performance footage with prominent New Orleanian musicians including Professor Longhair, Irma Thomas, the Neville Brothers, Kid Thomas Valentine, and Allen Toussaint among others, Blank weaves a tapestry up-anddown the boulevards and docks of a pre-Katrina New Orleans through a focus on Mardi Gras and St. Patricks’ Day celebrations, underscoring the profound joy at the heart of this most American of cities. (58 mins.) Wendell Pierce (THE WIRE, TREME), author of the new memoir THE WIND IN THE REEDS, will introduce the film and participate in a post-film discussion with Portland film critic and programmer David Walker. Screens as part of Wordstock 2015, produced by Literary Arts, which takes place at the Portland Art Museum today.
NOV 8 SUN 7:30 PM
CERTIFIABLY YOURS: NEW FILMS FROM THE SCHOOL OF FILM
Join us as we screen and celebrate the work of year’s School of Film Certificate Program graduates and acknowledge the faculty, visiting artists, staff, family and friends who have supported them. The program includes Brian Jepperson’s I DREAM THEREFORE I AM, Devin Weller-White’s THE STORIES THEY LEAVE, Zsuzsanna Mangu’s AROUND THE POLE, Dave Hagerty’s DELIKUN PEEP, Conrad Caczor’s WE’RE FROM HERE and Raj Patel’s SLICE OF LIFE. These final projects showcase the skill and voice that each has developed over the years through class assignments, visiting artist sessions, faculty mentorships and extracurricular pursuits. Join us at 6:30 for reception honoring the filmmakers in the Andrée Stevens Room. Admission is free.
NOV 10 TUE 7 PM
SCHOOL OF BABEL FRAN CE 20 13
DIRECTOR: JULIE BERTUCCELLI
Bertuccelli’s observational documentary follows a group of newly arrived immigrant teens as they begin their studies at La Grange-aux-Belles secondary school in Paris and prepare for entry into the French educational system. At the center of this dramatic transition is teacher Brigitte Cervoni, a wise and patient woman charged with guiding a diverse class of 11- to 15-year-olds hailing from countries including Tunisia, Ireland, Senegal, China, Serbia and Brazil. Part psychologist and part surrogate mother, Cervoni helps her students cope with problems ranging from homesickness to emotional trauma while instilling in her students a sense of self-worth and mutual respect. As the teens adjust—and some begin to blossom—the results are illuminating, moving and exhilarating. (93 mins.) The film is also screening as part of the
Film Center’s Global Classroom program, which presents new international cinema for high-school students throughout the metro area. For schedule information and to arrange to bring a class to one of these school day screenings, please contact mia@ nwfilm.org.
FRIDAY FILM CLUB Our inaugural Friday Film Club discussion series—presented monthly when the Portland Art Museum’s galleries are open late on Friday evenings—features works with implicit or explicit focus on landscape: rural and urban, physical and emotional. Presented in conjunction with the Museum’s “Seeing Nature” exhibition, on view October 10-January 8, we hope these films will spark dialogue, both between audience members and between artistic mediums. The screenings are accompanied by post-film discussions led by a Museum docent, sometimes with a short exhibition tour component. Special Admission: $5.
NOV 20 FRI 5:30 PM
THE GREAT NORTHWEST PO RTLAN d 20 1 2
DIRECTOR: MATT MCCORMICK
Portland filmmaker Matt McCormick’s film is inspired by—and recreates—a 3,200-mile road trip made in 1958 by four Seattle women who recorded their journey in an elaborate scrapbook of photos, postcards, brochures, and receipts. Fifty years after their trip, McCormick found the scrapbook in a thrift store and, charmed, set out to re-trace their route, searching out every stop that the ladies had so lovingly documented five decades earlier. The resulting film juxtaposes the land and landmarks then and now, a double portrait capturing the eternal and the new. “Like McCormick’s other quasi-documentary film projects, THE GREAT NORTHWEST is notable for the sheer visual pleasure that it offers viewers. McCormick is very patient with his camera and he draws on a talented photographic eye to deliver prolonged shots that can’t be described as anything other than lovely.”—Megan Driscoll, Portlandart.net (70 mins.)
DEC 11 FRI 5:30 PM
TASTE OF CHERRY I RAN 1 997
DIRECTOR: ABBAS KIAROSTAMI
Winner of the Palme d’Or at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival and celebrated as the critical rival of his own 1994 film THROUGH THE OLIVE TREES, Abbas Kiarostami’s TASTE OF CHERRY follows a middle-aged, middle class man—possibly cut from the same cloth as Kiarostami himself—quietly resolved to some desperate purpose. As he criss-crosses the rural outskirts of Tehran in his expensive SUV, the man gives lifts to a series of strangers—a Kurdish soldier, an Afghani seminarian, a Turkish taxidermist—and then offers each a considerable sum of money if they will assist him in his terrible task. Each person he picks up has moral or ethical objections to his plight, and each symbolizes a discrete, key section of Iranian society. Kiarostami’s celebrated poetic humanism is evidenced throughout the film; his noted formalism—unique blurring of fact and fiction, documentary and drama—for which he is so well known, is here held in check until the film’s last, enigmatic finale. “TASTE OF CHERRY actually says a great deal about what it was like to be alive in the 1990s, and despite its somber theme, this masterpiece has a startling epilogue that radiates with wonder and euphoria.”—Jonathan Rosenbaum. (98 mins.)
NWFILM.ORG 503-221-1156 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2015
NORTHWEST FILM CENTER
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SPECIAL SCREENINGS PARIS IS BURNING
THIS IS CINERAMA
ASSOCIATION OF MOVING IMAGE ARCHIVISTS SCREENINGS
We are pleased to welcome the Association of Moving Image Archivists, whose 2015 National Conference is being held in Portland from November 18-21. Join AMIA’s Conference members for these special screenings highlighting recent film preservation work. Free admission. Seating very limited.
NOV 19 THUR 7PM
NOV 21 SAT 1PM
DIRECTOR: VARIOUS
U S 1 9 52
ARCHIVAL SCREENING NIGHT The Association of Moving Image Archivists, an international association dedicated to the preservation and use of moving image media, is meeting in Portland this year! Archival Screening Night, the first of the AMIA public programs, is a showcase for AMIA members’ recent acquisitions, discoveries, and preservation efforts. The program represents the magnificent spectrum of media formats, works, and collections protected and preserved by the AMIA community. Featuring unearthed treasures and films you’ve likely never seen before, Archival Screening Night is pure cinematic pleasure from start-to-finish. The full lineup will be introduced closer to the conference on our website and in the AMIA conference program. (120 mins.)
NOV 20 FRI 7:45 PM
PARIS IS BURNING U S 1 99 0
DIRECTOR: JENNIE LIVINGSTON
“Having a ball... Wish you were here...” is the catchphrase of Livingston’s iconic film, a lively exploration of the “golden age” of voguing and drag ball culture in New York City in the 1980s and the African-American and Latino gay and transgender communities that fueled its creative explosion. First operating below the radar of popular culture, these raucous celebrations became the opportunity for powerful expressions of fierce personal pride and social commentary, revealing the ambitions, desires, and yearnings of a uniquely American community in search of affirmation, acceptance, joy, and love. Winner of the Grand Prize at the 1991 Sundance Film Festival. (75 mins.) With the help of technological advances and a
THIS IS CINERAMA DIRECTOR: MERIAN C. COOPER
Cinerama, introduced to the film-going public in 1952, was a key technology in the mid-50’s rush to innovate on the big screen as television threatened the movie theater’s very existence. Consisting of three 35mm images laid next to each other and projected onto a curved, extremely wide screen, Cinerama images were, at the time, the foremost in cinematic experience. This fascinating documentary, directed by KING KONG’s Merian C. Cooper and made as a kind of introductory moment for the fledgling technology, features test footage shot to show off Cinerama’s capabilities. Through this footage, the film becomes a detailed window into 1950’s detritus and an elegy to the other, lesser film technologies that have perished along the march of progress. Elected to the Library of Congress’s National Film Registry in 2002. (115 mins.) Prior to the screening, the film’s digital restoration team of David Strohmaier and Randy Gitsch will present a before-andafter demonstration and discuss their work.
NOV 21 SAT 7 PM
UKSUUM CAUYAI: THE DRUMS OF WINTER US 1988
DIRECTORS: LEONARD KAMERLING, SARAH ELDER
Shot in 1977, this award-winning ethnographic documentary explores the traditional dance, music, and spiritual world of the Yup’ik Eskimo people of Emmonak, a remote village at the mouth of the Yukon River on the Bering Sea coast. Dance dedicated team, Paris is Burning is being presented like never before, was once at the heart of Yup’ik spiritual and social life; the remastered from the original 16mm elements and, for the first time in bridge between the ancient and the new, the living and the Portland, being screened in its original aspect ratio so you can see the dead, a person’s own power and the greater powers of the film as it was intended through the eyes of director. unseen world. In THE DRUMS OF WINTER, the people of Emmonak express through performances and interviews how NOV 21 SAT 11AM their history, social values and spiritual beliefs are woven THE THANHOUSER around the songs and dances that have been handed down to them through the generations. Throughout the film, archiSTUDIO AND THE BIRTH val photographs and film footage accompany the words of OF AMERICAN CINEMA early missionaries who brought with them both Christianity U S 20 14 and cultural repression. Added to the National Film Registry in DIRECTOR: NED THANHOUSER 2006, the film has been recently restored to its original cineThe Thanhouser Company was a trailblazing studio based in New matic quality with support from the National Film Preservation Rochelle, New York, where from 1910 to 1917 it released over 1,000 Foundation and the Rasmuson Foundation. (90 mins.) films seen by audiences around the world. This documentary from Portlander Ned Thanhouser, grandson of studio founders Edwin and Gertrude, reconstructs the little-known story of the studio and its founders, technicians, and stars as they entered the nascent motion picture industry to compete with Thomas Edison and the companies aligned with his Motion Pictures Patents Corporation (MPPC). Recounting a saga of entrepreneurship, success and reversal, cinematic innovation, the launching of careers, and the transition of the movie industry from the East Coast to the West, Thanhouser’s film provides an intriguing perspective on both the studio and the pioneering days of independent movie-making in America. (50 mins.) PAGE 04
NORTHWEST FILM CENTER
THE THANHOUSER STUDIO AND THE BIRTH OF THE AMERICAN CINEMA
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2015 503-221-1156 NWFILM.ORG
2015 BRITISH ARROW AWARDS
NOV 27 28 29 FRI 7 PM, SAT 7 PM, SUN 4:30 & 7 PM
2015 BRITISH ARROWS AWARDS DIRECTORS: VARIOUS
This annual juried survey (38th edition), formerly called the British Television Advertising Awards, never fails to deliver an entertaining mix of commercial creativity of the highest order. Drawn from submissions across the UK’s multimedia advertising platforms—from traditional broadcast and cinema to new online mediums—trademark British wit and gleeful innovation are apparent at every turn. Whether touching drama or high-tech dazzle, low-budget invention or mind-boggling production, this eclectic collection of prizewinners do have something in common: they are all remarkably short and delightfully inspired. Thanks to the British Arrows, London, for this creative crash course on the marriage of advertising and film, art and commerce. (80 mins.)
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2015 We are a place where individuals find and cultivate their personal voices as storytellers and image-makers. Our classrooms and facilities bring a diverse crosssection of community members together for skill-building, friend-making, and technical support. We’re a center where access, aesthetics, and action combine to help people realize their aspirations and where new films and filmmakers are launched into the world onto screens both large and small. PHOTO BY ROBERT LAYGO
COMMUNITY
Our learning community consists of artists, creatives, educators, and business professionals who want to connect to the film scene and explore filmmaking with others, whether professionally, avocationally, or somewhere in between. Enrollment is open to all—simply sign up for what interests you. Explore career options and gain new skills, whether you are degree-bound or post-degree.
PHOTO BY JOEL CONRAD BECHTOLT
FACILITY
Our 10,000-square-foot building in downtown Portland contains classrooms, editing labs, a well-stocked equipment cage, and the Film Center’s administrative offices. Equipment is provided with class registration. Our friendly equipment room staff will answer your technical questions and will make equipment check-out as easy as possible. We also rent a variety of equipment to the general public.
FACULTY
Our faculty are working filmmakers who humanize and enrich the learning process by teaching and guiding from real life experience, encouraging class dialogue and supportive critique. Hailing from among our region’s finest documentary, narrative, and experimental filmmakers, our faculty’s award-winning work appears in film festivals, art houses, microcinemas, and exhibition programs worldwide.
PHOTO BY ROBERT LAYGO
CURRICULUM
Take a class or two at your leisure or challenge yourself further by enrolling in our optional Certificate Program in Film. We offer classes and workshops on many aspects of film production, including cinematography, editing, and screenwriting. Most of our classes are no larger than 15 students. Classes generally meet once a week, most often on evenings and weekends. Equipment is provided with registration.
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VISITING ARTIST WORKSHOP HAND MAKE 16MM FILM STOCK SATURDAY, NOV 20, 10AM-2 PM & SUNDAY, NOV 21, 10AM-5 PM (with lunch break) 2 sessions Tuition: $115 HOSTED BY MEMBERS OF PROCESS REVERSAL Hand make your own 16mm film stock using silver-gelatin and acetate, then shoot on and handprocess it to explore the possibilities of what this remarkable medium has to offer! Digital may be the industry norm today, but there’s renewed curiosity in the filmmaking community about the 16mm film format, especially when used in creative, alternative ways. In this two-day workshop with Colorado-based collective Process Reversal, participants will learn various DIY strategies to formulate, mix and coat silver-gelatin onto cellulose acetate and other materials, generating homemade emulsion (the photosensitive side of photographic film) that is the basis for achieving dynamic variations in grain, texture, and streaking effects. Participants will be guided through the basic procedures for loading and shooting with a 16mm Bolex camera, strategies for composing shots and shooting on 16mm film, hand-processing negatives, and contact printing directly onto film stock. Throughout the workshop, there will be an emphasis on working together as a team to experiment with different filmmaking techniques. Theories concerning emulsion chemistry and photography production will be discussed so that participants develop a base of knowledge upon which they can experiment in their own work. Though not a replacement for commercially produced film stocks, hand-making your own silver gelatin emulsions can lead to new and exciting ways of forming cinematic images. No prerequisites are required, though a basic understanding of photography is helpful. Tuition includes film stock and supplies. A compilation of final footage experiments will be shared with the class via an online link. PROCESS REVERSAL is a Colorado-based collective that seeks to preserve film through research, resource development, and film productions focused on advancing the aesthetics and technology of the medium itself. Self-described as “an artist-run, photochemical initiative,” their mission and purpose is to advocate and ensure the viability of 16mm film for all. The collective, whose members include Kevin Rice, Taylor Dunne and Andrew Busti, hosts a variety of workshops, lectures, and screenings around the world.
THE CERTIFICATE PROGRAM IN FILM PRESENTS
CERTIFIABLY YOURS: NEW FILMS FROM THE SCHOOL OF FILM
SUNDAY, NOV 8, 7:30 PM LOCATION: WHITSELL AUDITORIUM Join us as we screen and celebrate the achievements of this year’s matriculating School of Film Certificate Program students and acknowledge the faculty, visiting artists, staff, family and friends who have supported them. Each filmmaker will present the short narrative or documentary film that is the culminating effort of their studies in the Certificate Program. The screening will include Brian Jepperson’s I DREAM THEREFORE I AM, Devin Weller-White’s THE STORIES THEY LEAVE, Zsuzsanna Mangu’s AROUND THE POLE, Dave Hagerty’s DELIKUN PEEP, Conrad Caczor’s WE’RE FROM HERE and Raj Patel’s SLICE OF LIFE. These projects showcase the skill and voice that each student has developed through multiple years of class assignments, visiting artist sessions, faculty mentorships and extracurricular pursuits. A reception honoring the filmmakers begins at 6:30 PM in the Andrée Stevens Room. FREE ADMISSION.
I DREAM THEREFORE I AM
THE STORIES THEY LEAVE
AROUND THE POLE
DELIKUN PEEP
WE’RE FROM HERE
A SLICE OF LIFE
6 NOV/DEC 2015
nwfilm.org/school
November 12–18, 2015
The 42nd Northwest Filmmakers’ Festival
NORTHWEST FILM CENTER / NWFILM.ORG
WELCOME
JUDGE’S STATEMENT
Harnessing and celebrating the best of Northwest film is both the Film Center’s responsibility and joy. As we continue to grow as a fresh and vital institution for the study and celebration of regional film, we’re compelled to keep up a constant search for new filmmakers, new work, and new ways the Film Center can bring artists and audiences together.
Before traveling to Portland to watch the entries is this year’s 42nd Northwest Filmmakers’ Festival, I knew little about contemporary work being made in the Northwest. I was stunned to find that this wide geographical area—so sparsely populated with media makers compared to larger metropolitan centers—is nonetheless filled with so many exceptionally committed and developed independent filmmakers. The 31 moving image works that comprise this year’s three Festival shorts programs encompass a diverse range of genres and subjects: documentary essays, self-portraits, portraits of others, social critiques, richly detailed fantasies, intricate animations, poignant narratives, and experimental cinematic experiences.
As we’ve discovered over the past 42 years, Northwest filmmakers continue to create engaging and new work that provides ongoing discovery year after year. Our task is to create a showcase that captures the vibrancy and variety of the cinematic art being created across the Northwest. This year we invited Steve Anker to help us shape this year’s selection and we hope his discriminating vision, heart, and mind add to your enjoyment of the program. In addition to the films, this year’s Festival features the annual “part game show, part filmmaking master class” What’s Wrong with this Picture? with Seattle film guru Warren Etheredge. Our invaluable Filmmakers’ Un-conference, created so that filmmakers have a place and time to share ideas and inspiration, allows makers to become the teachers. And, as we are never ones to rest on our plush conifer laurels, we’re proud to announce that this year will feature the first Northwest Filmmakers’ Expo. Top motion picture equipment manufacturers and vendors will be showing off their latest cinematic toys along with demonstrations, presentations, and the opportunity to see and handle the latest cutting-edge motion picture gadgets. Many thanks go to friends who have helped plan and execute this event, including Tim Williams at the Oregon Film Office, Nathaniel Applefield at the Oregon Media Production Association, and the team at Professional Video and Tape. We also offer big thanks for some heavy lifting from Matt Schulte and Lower Boom who, in addition to helping envision and organize the first Northwest Filmmakers’ Expo, produced all the gorgeous design work and trailers for this year’s Festival. The Festival appreciates the longtime support of LAIKA, the ongoing institutional support of the Regional Arts and Culture Council and Oregon Arts Commission, and the sponsorship of Sierra Nevada Brewing and Koerner Cameras. This year, the Festival is especially honored and thankful to receive support from the Oregon Cultural Trust (and the citizens who fund it) who, like us, are committed to helping artists thrive. The Trust’s investment will help this year’s Best of the Festival Touring Program reach audiences throughout the region. All these friends have helped the Film Center put together a Northwest Filmmakers’ Festival that will knock your socks off. We hope you’ll come meet and support this year’s filmmakers. Thomas Phillipson, Festival Manager Bill Foster, Director, Northwest Film Center
The work of these filmmakers represent as wide a range in age, cultural background, lifestyle, and aesthetic style as can be found in any large or national film festival. Most impressive to me is the level of care and assured craft evident in each one of these pieces. I didn’t expect to find so many individuals with such a clear passion for cinematic self-expression, who have undertaken projects demanding enormous amounts of time, energy, money, and stamina to produce. This year’s Festival selection is a strong indication that in the Pacific Northwest free expression and independent spirit are not merely ideals, but ways of life. For the media makers represented in this year’s Northwest Filmmakers’ Festival, cinema remains an immediate—and very personal—art form.
Steve Anker JUDGE’S BIOGRAPHY Steve Anker is the Dean of the California Institute of the Arts School of Film/Video and formerly served as director of the San Francisco Cinematheque as well as artistic director of the Foundation for Art in Cinema. He holds an MFA in Filmmaking and Film History from Columbia University and taught for many years as professor of film at the San Francisco Art Institute. In his capacity as director of the San Francisco Cinematheque Anker oversaw one of the most respected showcases of experimental film and video in the world, presenting more than 75 programs per year. His publications include catalog essays for “Big As Life, Unknown Territories” and “American Experimental Film,” as well as articles and reviews for Film Quarterly, Cinematograph, Idiolects, the New York Times, the Nation, the Christian Science Monitor and the San Francisco Chronicle.
JUDGE’S AWARDS Best Sleight of Hand in Making the Invisible Visible
IMPRESSIONS OF PORTLAND
This dense film operates on many levels. It is at once an essay about forgetting the past, a conceptual tour-de-force, a performance, a survey of Portland streets, and a vivid use of celluloid and digital imagery. But most of all it is an anguished critique of social amnesia and how blinkered perspectives can cover up an ongoing injustice.
Best Update on Creatures of the Night
TWO WAYS DOWN
Little pencil sketches spring to life through an almost offhanded use of animation. These simple drawings of body parts, grotesque faces, and weird conglomerations all floating in space are more menacing (and funny) than they may initially seem.
Best In-Your-Face Diatribe About Bad Parenting
SON IN THE BARBERSHOP
How does one deal with a failing parental relationship? With guts and deep self-awareness, a son puts his own father on trial through the happenstance of an overheard conversation. A richly woven interplay that is both indictment and exorcism, SON IN THE BARBERSHOP creates a tension that reaches beyond mere dramatic enactment.
Best Gothic Bedtime Story Filled With Love, Loss, Taxidermy, Kung Fu, and Biker Werewolves
DEAD HEARTS
Spooky things are going on at night in a mortician’s home. Even if the film wasn’t so enjoyably over-thetop, it would still be impressive in creating its small-budget, Wes Anderson-esque universe of richly detailed, expressive compositions.
Best Antidote To Teenage Angst
TRAPPED
Here is a portrait whose irreverent, spiky subject is alive with youthful energy and who delights in choosing the terms of her own life.
Best Proof That The Will To Survive Can Outlast Human Predators
TWO ROADS
In TWO ROADS, expressions of a living cultural heritage are imaginatively filmed and shared in the span of only three minutes. This experientially large film is a defiant celebration of a native culture that remains vital despite being besieged and forcefully undermined for hundreds of years.
Best Transformation of Ordinary Objects Into Fields of Movement and Mystery
PISTACHIO
At first glance they are mere pistachio nuts...but where they come from and where they go is a bit more unpredictable. Complex free-form lines and textures become a means of joyful self-expression in this imaginative animation.
Best Artistic Use of Silly and Long-Forgotten Material
ROBOT PAVLOV SPUTNIK
The world of Grade Z low-budget sci-fi movies is happily subverted into a quasi-mystical, bizarre choreography of dancing forms with strangely familiar actors and impossibly primitive robots. ROBOT PAVLOV SPUTNIK lovingly spoofs the sci-fi genre, but is serious in its intention of finding new cinematic meaning in discarded material.
Best Portrayal of Family Anguish And Renewal
EVERY BEAUTIFUL THING
This lovingly told ensemble piece needs relatively little screen time to develop complex characters and their inter-relationships. Three sisters come to terms with each other while caring for their aging, seriously ill mother, who has just enough bile left in her to demonstrate exactly why family ties can be so painful to sustain.
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The 42nd Northwest Filmmakers’ Festival
EVENTS THURS, NOV 12, 9 PM
November 12, 2015
The 42nd Northwest Filmmakers’ Festival Opening Night Party FIELDS BALLROOM, PORTLAND ART MUSEUM 1119 SW PARK AVENUE Join us after the Opening Night program for our festive celebration of Northwest filmmakers and their work. We’ll have a brief awards ceremony for the Judge’s Award winners and then dance the night away. Grab a drink at the cash bar and dig into conversation with the many filmmakers and film enthusiasts around you.
$10 ADMISSION. AGES 21+ ONLY.
Sponsored by Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. & Sokol Blosser Winery
The 42nd
SAT, NOV 14, 4 PM
WHAT’S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?
Northwest Filmmakers’ Festival Expo
WHITSELL AUDITORIUM, PORTLAND ART MUSEUM 1219 SW PARK AVENUE HOSTED BY WARREN ETHEREDGE
Each year the Festival selects roughly ten percent of the films submitted for public screening—but what about the other 90%? We value all those who enter their films, so we offer each filmmaker two tickets to the Festival, an invitation to participate in the Filmmakers’ Un-conference, and an opportunity to have Seattle film guru Warren Etheredge watch a few minutes of their work and offer his experienced and brutally honest take on what is and what isn’t working—all with the participation of a live audience. Part game show, part master class, What’s Wrong with this Picture? has included short films from beginners and pros (plus at least one Oscar winner), and has become an audience favorite for Etheredge’s often hilarious commentary and his spot-on insight. Come join the fun. Free Admission.
NORTHWEST FILM CENTER / NWFILM.ORG
SAT, NOV 14 10-11 AM—WHITSELL AUDITORIUM 11-4 PM—SCHOOL OF FILM
THU, NOV 12, 10 AM-5 PM
WHITSELL AUDITORIUM, PORTLAND ART MUSEUM 1219 SW PARK AVENUE SCHOOL OF FILM, NORTHWEST FILM CENTER 934 SW SALMON STREET
Get your hands on the latest gear and filmmaking resources at the first annual Northwest Filmmakers’ Expo. More than just a techie trade show, this event will illuminate a broad range of resources available to anyone interested in telling stories through film and digital media. In addition to state of the art equipment from top manufacturers like Canon, Sony, and Panasonic, there will be demonstrations and presentations by working professionals throughout the day. Admission $10, register online or at the door.
NORTHWEST FILMMAKERS’ EXPO PORTLAND ART MUSEUM MARK BUILDING 1119 SW PARK AVENUE
NORTHWEST FILMMAKERS’ UN-CONFERENCE
The Northwest region is brimming with filmmaking talent and expertise—and the Filmmakers’ Un-conference provides an opportunity for these makers to come together and share their own ideas and inspiration. The Un-conference is unique in that it is largely user-organized: participants suggest the topics, make the schedule and lead the discussions. It’s a dizzying carnival of practical breakout sessions where novice filmmakers might meet their next collaborators and accomplished filmmakers might meet their inspiration. Thanks to KIND Healthy Snacks for providing breakfast snacks and to Chipotle for providing lunch vouchers. Contact Festival Manager Thomas Phillipson at thomas@nwfilm.org to sign up. Admission $10.
PAST FESTIVAL JUDGES Michael Almereyda Freude Bartlett Ellen Bartow James Benning Phil Borsos
Ernest Callenbach John Cooper Karen Cooper Jo Ann Danzker Steve Dejarnett
Gill Dennis Sam Green Matt Groening Andrea Grover Todd Haynes Jim Hoberman Dan Ireland
Heike Kuehn Edith Kramer Stan Lawder Ted Mahar Leonard Maltin David Milholland Marv Newland
Pat O’Neill Mike Plante Bill Plympton Christopher Rauschenberg Kelly Reichardt B. Ruby Rich Rachael Rosen
Norie Sato Steve Seid Maureen Selwood Jill Sprecher Amy Taubin Kenneth Turan Christine Vachon
Gus Van Sant Jane Veeder Carmen Vigil Melinda Ward Gene Youngblood
The 42nd Northwest Filmmakers’ Festival
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SHORTS I: Fantasies and Diversions THURS, NOV 12, 7 PM
PISTACHIOS
BOTTLE NECK
(ANI) Pistachio nuts are brought to handmanipulated, illusor y life through play ful filmmaking techniques. (4 mins.)
(ANI) A veteran animator gives us a jazzy vision of figures hovering between abstraction and definition amidst luminous imaginary landscapes. Score by Seth Norman. (3 mins.)
DIRECTOR: TERESE CUFF 2015 / TACOMA, WA
DIRECTOR: JOANNA PRIESTLEY 2015 / PORTLAND, OR
ROBOT PAVLOV SPUTNK LULLABY OF BIRDLAND DIRECTOR: OLIVER HOCKENHULL 2015 / VANCOUVER, BC
( E XP) Remnants of a chintz y sci-fi movie transform into a hypnotic, hallucinogenic, and hilarious distortion of cinematic reality. (7 mins.)
TWO WAYS DOWN DIRECTOR: LAURA HEIT 2015 / PORTLAND, OR
(ANI) Fantastical creatures float in and out of space, destined for a hellish final destination. (3 mins.)
NIGHT WEAVER DIRECTOR: JOAN GRATZ 2015 / PORTLAND, OR
(ANI) A tapestry of computer mandalas and intricate animated weavings. (6 mins.)
FOR JEAN-PIERRE MELVILLE DIRECTOR: IRA FLOWERS 2014 / PORTLAND, OR
(NAR) A witty homage to the great French director of gangster noir that cleverly parodies many of the genre’s most enduring clichés. (6 mins.)
DIRECTOR: EDGAR BRIDWELL 2014 / VANCOUVER, BC
(ANI) In a near-abstract landscape, we follow two birds and a hippo as they make their way around a strange and pulsating land of whimsy, nightlife and shady entrances. (5 mins.)
THAT BITCH BECKY DIRECTOR: REBECCA ROCHON 2015 / VANCOUVER, BC
(ANI) Seeking to impress her insect friends, socially ambitious wasp Becky gives a party in order to show off, but things backfire in wild and unexpected ways. (7 mins.)
DEAD HEARTS
DIRECTOR: STEPHEN W. MARTIN 2015 / VANCOUVER, BC (NAR) A gothic romance, replete with throbbing hearts, startling locales, and a mortician’s undying love. (16 mins.) TOTAL RUNNING TIME 81 MINUTES
DAISYHEROIN “ART SHOW” DIRECTOR: COLIN DAWSON 2015 / SEATTLE, WA
(EXP) Explore the strange and compelling world of a subterranean art show in which a swirl of moveable figures materialize in and out of tangible shape. (12 mins.)
TO SEE MORE LIGHT
SHORTS II: Tracing Space FRI, NOV 13, 7 PM
SPATIAL
MEMORY
(EXP) The streets of Portland become a physical adventure through the collapse of cinematic time and space. (4 mins.)
(EXP) A little city symphony in 16mm black and white that portrays people, buildings, parks and streets with photographic sensitivity and acuity. (10 mins.)
DIRECTOR: MILES SPRIETSMA 2015 / PORTLAND, OR
TO SEE MORE LIGHT DIRECTOR: KURTIS HOUGH 2015 / PORTLAND, OR
( E X P) Geological formations of land and sea become a study in light, dark, and the enchantments of photographic sight. (15 mins.)
ROVER’S EYE
DIRECTOR: LAURA HEIT 2015 / PORTLAND, OR (EXP) Images recorded by NASA on the surface of Mars gain a mysterious presence through the interventions of the human hand. (3 mins.)
ABANDONED GENERATIONS DIRECTOR: LINDA FENSTERMAKER 2015 / SEATTLE, WA
(DOC) Generations of a family’s commitment to its Pacific Northwest farmland are portrayed through a 1945 diary and the haunting reminiscences of its current inhabitant. (10 mins.)
IMPRESSIONS OF PORTLAND DIRECTOR: JULIE PERINI 2015 / PORTLAND, OR
(EXP) An understated and powerful evocation of the history of violent racial incidents that lies hidden behind the placid street life of contemporary Portland. (3 mins.)
CRACK HOUSE
DIRECTOR: VANESSA RENWICK 2015 / PORTLAND, OR DEAD HEARTS
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The 42nd Northwest Filmmakers’ Festival
(EXP) Fragmentary glimpses suggest a peaceful Buddhist garden surprisingly embedded within Jeffrey Bale’s Crack House paradise. (2 mins.)
DIRECTOR: STUART EAGON 2015 / PORTLAND, OR
OCEAN FALLS
DIRECTORS: RYAN ERMACORA, JESSICA JOHNSON 2015 / VANCOUVER, BC (EXP) A reflective portrait of an idealistic wooded community that seems suspended in time and exists within an unspoiled landscape. (13 mins.)
PASSAGE |||||0 DIRECTOR: NICO TOLL 2015 / PORTLAND, OR
(EXP) An isolated leaf moves subtly down a stream and through different forest vistas. (5 mins.)
TALL TREES
DIRECTOR: SALISE HUGHES 2015 / SEATTLE, WA (DOC) Harsh and unglamorous life in the Old West is chillingly evoked through the firsthand photographic account of a violent bank robbery in rural Washington. (6 mins.)
TWO ROADS
DIRECTORS: TROY MOTH, JOSH LAMBERT 2015 / SOOKE, BC (DOC) The rich culture of the Anishinaabe, still vital despite a history of genocide and marginalization, comes alive through the fluid enactment of native poetry, singing and dancing as performed by Cloud Moves Away, elder of the Anishinaabe people. (3 mins.) TOTAL RUN TIME: 78 MINS.
EXP= experimental ANI= animation
NAR= narrative DOC= documentary
SHORTS III: Intimate Portraits
FEATURES
EXP= experimental ANI= animation
NAR= narrative DOC= documentary
SAT, NOV 14, 6:30 PM
[WHO]
MOTH
(ANI) Faces and objects come into view and suddenly vanish in this texturally dense, surprising animation. (1 min.)
(NAR) Resisting the taunts of her domineering father, a teenage girl faces mor talit y by confronting the helplessness of a small dying bird. (6 mins.)
DIRECTOR: ABBEY SACKS 2015 / KIRKLAND, WA
ARCA ARCHA
DIRECTOR: SARAH EL BAKKOURI 2015 / RICHMOND, BC (NAR) A man alone in an apartment experiences a series of visible internal changes and alternate realities. (6 mins.)
BEAUTY & THE SEA DIRECTOR: IVY LIN 2015 / PORTLAND, OR
( DOC) Sensitively filmed and edited, this portrayal follows an elderly woman and her daily wanderings, from getting a haircut to buying and cooking fish. (10 mins.)
TRAPPED
DIRECTOR: LONG TRAN 2015 / RENTON, WA
DIRECTOR: EVAN BRITZ 2015 / DELTA, BC
SOURDOUGH
DIRECTOR: KIRK RASMUSSEN 2015 / BOZEMAN, MT (DOC) A son’s home movies and reminiscences, recorded in the early ‘90s, are reshaped into a deeply personal portrait of his father, a tough longtime inhabitant of a remote landscape. (10 mins.)
(NAR) A poignant tale of two sisters and their aging, ill mother, in which different generations reach out to each other despite years of mistrust and painful disconnects. (11 mins.)
DIRECTOR: MICHAEL T WORKMAN 2015 / MISSOULA, MT
(DOC) An imaginatively crafted portrait of a locally active performance artist’s singular creative life. (8 mins.)
THE SANDWICH NAZI 2015 VANCOUVER, BC DIRECTOR: LEWIS BENNETT
(NAR) A wrenching double character study of a teenager and his businessman father, each out of touch and view of the other but who reveal a lifetime of pain and misunderstanding. (7 mins.)
SEVEN WAYS FROM SUNDAY
CONSTRUCTED SITUATIONS
FRI, NOV 13, 9 PM
DIRECTOR: NATHAN DOUGLAS 2015 / BURNABY, BC
EVERY BEAUTIFUL THING
( E XP) Seven power ful anecdotes of racial injustice, each told against a backdrop of industrial locales that are populated by unlikely stand-ins for the narrators. (7 mins.)
WELCOME TO THE CIRCUS
SON IN THE BARBERSHOP
(DOC) A perky and witty portrait of an early teen who grew up in Hong Kong and has embarked upon an affirming journey of self-discovery. (5 mins.)
DIRECTOR: ROBERT SICKELS 2014 / WALLA WALLA, WA
THE SANDWICH NAZI
DIRECTOR: SONYA LEA 2014 / SEATTLE, WA
TOTAL RUNNING TIME: 75 MINS.
THE CURIO
FRI, NOV 13, 3 PM
ARRESTING POWER: RESISTING POLICE VIOLENCE IN PORTLAND, OREGON
2015 PORTLAND DIRECTORS: JODI DARBY, JULIE PERINI, ERIN YANKE (DOC) ARRESTING POWER speaks to the history of police violence in our society, providing a framework for understanding the systems of social control in Portland and its history of exclusion laws, racial profiling, redlining, and gentrification practices. Through conversations with community leaders including Walidah Imarisha, author of the “Oregon Black History Timeline,” JoAnn Hardesty, and Rev. LeRoy Haynes of the Albina Ministerial Alliance Coalition for Justice & Police Reform, Dan Handelman of Portland Copwatch, and Kent Ford, founder of the Portland Chapter of the Black Panther Party, the filmmakers explore strategies for community safety that do not employ constant surveillance and unneeded violence. “Delivers a vital message with an artful clarity.”—The Oregonian. (90 mins.)
FRI, NOV 13, 5 PM
WELCOME TO THE CIRCUS
2015 PORTLAND DIRECTOR: COURTNEY COULSON (DOC) Set in the West Bank city of Ramallah, The Palestinian Circus School welcomes The Lido, a visiting circus school from France. In a month, the two schools must come together to create a mobile circus for children. Living in the West Bank means that mastering acrobatics isn’t the only challenge for a traveling Palestinian circus—hitting the road means an obstacle course of permits and checkpoints along the way. But for these students, the circus is a form of peaceful resistance; instead of surrendering to despair, they overcome their difficult circumstances through the power of art and unity. (80 mins.)
SAT, NOV 14, 8:30 PM 2014 PORTLAND DIRECTOR: DICKY DAHL
2015 PORTLAND DIRECTOR: PAM MINTY
(EXP) A blind woman (Minty’s mother) navigates her domestic surroundings and landscapes while recollecting these places prior to losing her vision. Through conversations and word puzzles, a story emerges about the relationship between memory, sense of direction, and the texture of experience. (45 mins.)
PRECEDED BY
HERS IS WHERE YOURS BEGINS 2015 PORTLAND DIRECTOR: JANET MCINTYRE
SOURDOUGH
SAT, NOV 14, 1:30 PM
THE CURIO
DIRECT ROUTE
BEAUTY & THE SEA
(DOC) We meet 50-something Salam Kahil in full (off)-color in his Vancouver delicatessen, where one sign says “Best Sandwiches in North America!!” while another warns “This deli contains coarse language and nudity.” “I’ve been treating my customers the same way for 26 years,” he shrugs, and it’s clear that his customers are used to it, enduring the constant onslaught of wincing vulgarity with varied hilarity, bewildered smiles and sometimes flat-out discomfort. But most of them know that beneath the bluster is a mile-wide generous side, an colorful personal history...and some of the best sandwiches they’ll ever eat. (72 mins.)
(EXP) McIntyre mingles a sense of drowning with a sense of dreaming, and explores the overriding impulse to submerge our sorrows with anger. “My mother died of cancer at age 45, leaving behind an angry teenager who would forever grapple with feelings of loss, grief and longing. She has and will continue to inform all my work. Behind all your stories is always your mother’s story, because hers is where yours begin.”—Janet McIntyre (5 mins.)
(NAR) Based on his short film of the same name, Dahl’s first feature weaves documentary and narrative elements into a poignant and funny memoir about the collapse of his marriage and subsequent struggles to find his footing in the bohemian paradise that is Portland, Oregon. His ex-wife, parents, and brothers appear as themselves in the film and scripted material, footage from the director’s married life, and interviews with family and friends paint the picture of a somewhat misguided late-bloomer experiencing all the freedom, loneliness and humiliation that come with having to start over when the bloom is off the rose. (87 mins.)
PRECEDED BY
198
2015 PORTLAND DIRECTOR: JOSH LUNDEN (NAR) Under the pressure of a hanging marriage proposal, a young woman attempts to avoid reality during an ill-conceived night of drinking, smoking...and bowling. (20 mins.)
The 42nd Northwest Filmmakers’ Festival
11
FEATURES
EXP= experimental ANI= animation
NAR= narrative DOC= documentary
SLACKJAW
SUN, NOV 15, 11:30 AM
AND WE WERE YOUNG 2014 MISSOULA, MT DIRECTOR: ANDY SMETANKA
(ANI) Andy Smetanka’s work has ranged from creating a short segment for Guy Maddin’s MY WINNEPEG to ‘The Bachelor and the Bride,’ a music video for the Decemberists. For his first feature-length film, Smetanka turned to his fascination with World War I. Three years and over 250,000 individual frames in the making, AND WE WERE YOUNG is a stop-motion animated oral history of American soldiers in France in the last days of the Great War, performed entirely by blackpaper puppets and filmed on Super 8 against translucent paper backgrounds. Brooding, brutal and hauntingly beautiful, this epic is a vision of war beyond your wildest dreams and nightmares. (115 mins.)
SUN, NOV 15, 2 PM
DRAWING THE TIGER
2015 SEATTLE DIRECTORS: AMY BENSON, SCOTT SQUIRE (DOC) Filmed over the course of seven years, DRAWING THE TIGER focuses on the lives of a family of Nepalese subsistence farmers and their daily struggles. The parents have watched their children go off in different directions. Their hopes for a brighter future are pinned almost solely on their eldest daughter, Shanta, who has been studying voraciously to become a doctor in an underfunded, poorly run school. When Shanta is awarded a scholarship for a city education in Kathmandu the fulfillment of her dreams feels imminent, but opportunity is coupled with the kind of sacrifice that comes with the responsibility of singlehandedly pulling her family out of poverty. “A quietly powerful film that will stick with viewers long after it ends. It’s a major work by people who clearly put everything they had and more into making it.”—Toronto Film Scene. (96 mins.)
SUN, NOV 15, 4 PM
THE WAY WE TALK 2015 SCOTTS MILL, OR DIRECTOR: MICHAEL TURNER
(DOC) Michael Turner (THE LIFE OF VESPER GEER), winner of the 2015 Oregon Media Arts Fellowship, struggles with one of medical s ci e n c e’s m o s t b a f f ling an d e n du r ing disabilities—stut tering. On the sur face, stuttering is syllable repetitions, prolongations, blocks, and various physical tics. But as he illustrates in the film, stuttering is like an iceberg, with most of the major symptoms below the surface. Emotions caused by the disorder— anxiety, depression, denial, and negative selfimage—are rarely confronted in speech therapy or even by people who stutter. Turner explores his own experiences with stuttering and presents the stories of others who are part of the selfhelp movement within the stuttering community; stories that are relatable to anyone who has experienced feelings of separateness, isolation, or inadequacy in any area of their lives. (80 mins.)
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DEATH ON A ROCK
SUN, NOV 15, 6 PM
MON, NOV 16, 8:30 PM
2015 VANCOUVER, B.C. DIRECTOR: SASHA SNOW
2015 PORTLAND DIRECTOR: STEVEN RICHTER
HADWIN’S JUDGEMENT
BIRDS OF NEPTUNE
(DOC) Grant Hadwin was a logging engineer and expert woodsman whose job was finding and removing the largest, oldest and most valuable trees from British Columbia’s remote and ancient forests. Unable to reconcile his love for the forest with the highly skilled part that he was playing in destroying it, Hadwin was driven to commit a strange and unprecedented crime. Interweaving speculation, myth and reality HADWIN’S JUDGEMENT charts his descent into torment and self-destruction, a journey that ended with a mysterious discovery that made him not just a madman, but also a visionary. “Offers a timely warning that is engaging, cinematic and yet refreshingly unpolemical. The film manages to situate the viewer both within the environment that moved Hadwin so profoundly and in his very troubled mental space.”—POV Magazine. (87 mins.)
(NAR) Young sisters Mona and Rachel are left to their own devices after the loss of their cultmember parents. Confined to their childhood home and constantly surrounded by reminders of the past, the girls create their own pseudo-realities. Rachel finds solace in her music and spiritual practices, while her older sister Mona, a burlesque dancer, gravitates toward an unconventional and taboo form of self-expression. When Mona brings a strange new lover into their world who starts to pull away at the fragile threads holding everything in place, the sisters find themselves facing harsh truths about their past. With a dark and dreamlike filmmaking style, brooding tension, and songs from bands such as Blouse, Chastity Belt and Warpaint, BIRDS OF NEPTUNE is infused with the mystery of the Pacific Northwest. (97 mins.)
SUN, NOV 15, 8 PM
THE SKYPE LIVE STUDIO 1210 SW 6TH AVE
VOYAGERS WITHOUT TRACE 2015 PORTLAND DIRECTOR: IAN MCCLUSKEY
(DOC) In the summer of 1938, filmmaker Bernard de Colmont, his new wife Genevieve and their friend, Antoine de Seynes, set off from France on the biggest adventure of their lives. They had a bold, perhaps even foolhardy plan: be the first to take kayaks down the mighty Green and Colorado rivers. 75 years later, Portland filmmaker Ian McCluskey (ELOQUENT NUDE, SUMMER SNAPSHOT) discovered their story and after finding their journals, photographs and 16mm film documenting their journey, (some of the firstever color film) he decided to retrace their route. Between 1938 and 2012 much changed on the river. And much remains the same, including wild unknowns, overwhelming beauty and explorers documenting their journey. (80 mins.)
MON, NOV 16, 7 PM
SLACKJAW
2015 OLYMPIA DIRECTOR: ZACH WEINTRAUB (NAR) "Rob and his friend Austyn apply to become human guinea pigs at the local medical testing facility of a vaguely intentioned multinational company called EvCorp. The facility’s mere presence has bitterly polarized their town, so the two apply in stealth. Austyn is accepted— ushered away and out of contact into EvCorp’s shadowy interior—leaving Rob to bear the burden of secrecy and the private concern that all may not be well with his friend. As he navigates both sides of the town’s deepening rift, guilt and denial do battle in his mind, eerie visions, paranoia and a strange physical malady begin to emerge."— Locarno Film Festival. (71 mins.)
The 42nd Northwest Filmmakers’ Festival
TUES, NOV 17 6 PM RECEPTION | 7 PM FILM
MAKE MINE COUNTRY 2015 PORTLAND DIRECTOR: IAN BERRY
(DOC) In the 1940s, the US military built an airbase on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia and brought with them their love of country music. The airbase is long gone, but the country music has never left. Part cinéma vérité documentary, part dreamscape, Berry’s film is contemplation on the common humanity of people from vastly different cultures, played against a background of extreme poverty and disenfranchisement—which even the bluest of country-western balladeers would be hard-pressed to convey. (70 mins.)
TUES, NOV 17, 7 PM
THE TREE INSIDE
2015 VANCOUVER, BC DIRECTORS: MICHELLE KIM, ROB LEICKNER (NAR) Myra is a woman who can’t maintain a relationship with anyone longer than a couple of months—aside from a past fling with a famous author (played by famed Canadian author Michael Turner). When Myra meets the charming David, potentially the man of her dreams, she still must fight the impulse to keep looking. Shot over the course of a year, Vancouver’s exquisite seasonal landscape subtly mirrors Myra’s turbulent emotional life. With a soundtrack highlighting music from Canada, the US, Iceland and Belgium, the film also includes a wondrous dance performance by Barbara Bourget of Kokoro Dance. (90 mins.)
BIRDS OF NEPTUNE
THE TREE INSIDE
TUES, NOV 17, 8:45 PM
DEATH ON A ROCK 2015 PORTLAND DIRECTOR: SCOTT BALLARD
(NAR) Ballard’s (A STANDING STILL, WELCOMING DEPARTURE) latest feature follows a young woman coming to terms with a trying event in her life. Lillian’s (Rachael Perrell Fosket) outlook is bright—she loves her job in a flower shop and has a sweet budding relationship with her boyfriend (Joe Von Appen)—when her existence is unexpectedly rocked by illness. Days spent in long-term care at the hospital bring reflection, desperation, and some family tension...even as the pain also brings happiness and growth. Told through flashbacks and drifting between memories and shifting consciousness, DEATH ON A ROCK is a bittersweet tale balanced between tragedy and levity. (82 mins.)
WED, NOV 18, 7 PM
CHRISTIANIA—40 YEARS OF OCCUPATION 2014 SEATTLE DIRECTORS: ROBERT LAWSON, RICHARD JACKMAN
(DOC) For over 40 years a squatter community has occupied an abandoned military base in the center of Copenhagen, Denmark. The community was born when youthful idealism and a severe housing shortage incited hundreds of young people to turn 85 acres of deserted brick buildings, woods, ramparts and canals into their home. Finding the idea of eviction to be politically unpopular, the government declared Christiania a short-term social experiment. WELCOME TO THEDecades CIRCUS later, Christiania is still standing. Through interviews with longtime residents, police officers and government officials, Lawson and Jackman’s film explores consensus democracy, alternative building methods, drug policy, and Scandinavian culture in a provocative and often humorous fashion. (77 mins.)
SAT, NOV 21, 7 PM AMIA NW ARCHIVAL SCREENING
UKSUUM CAUYAI: THE DRUMS OF WINTER 1988 US DIRECTORS: LEONARD KAMERLING, SARAH ELDER See p.4 for complete description.
FRESH FILM NORTHWEST—AGES 13–19 WINNING PROGRAM
welcome FRESH FILM NORTHWEST is a juried survey of work by up-and-coming teen filmmakers living in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, and Alaska. Now in its 39th year, the Festival recognizes individual talent, showcases model examples of how film arts can be taught in schools, and engages entire communities in helping to build the Northwest region’s youth media collective of 13- to 19-year-olds. We offer our congratulations to these young filmmakers, whose work has been selected from nearly 100 entries to this year’s Festival. We would also like to recognize the high schools, community organizations and mentors who supported their efforts. We hope that this glimpse into the heart and spirit of filmmaking’s next generation will be a refreshing reminder that filmmaking is first and foremost about community— shaping our region’s burgeoning artists through engagement, leadership and encouragement. Ellen S. Thomas, Education Director Northwest Film Center
SAT, NOV 14, 12 PM WHITSELL AUDITORIUM FREE ADMISSION
SOLVED
FEMALE FASHION THROUGHOUT THE DECADES
(ANI) Coming up with a solution under pressure. (1 min)
FILMMAKER: ALYSSA DUNCAN / VANCOUVER SCHOOL OF ARTS & ACADEMICS, VANCOUVER, WA (DOC) Hair, make-up and clothing styles evolve over time, frame by frame. (4 mins)
jurors’ statement
LEO & CLARK
After spending nearly five hours viewing this year’s teen-made entries, we learned a great deal about the challenges facing today’s youth. One theme that immediately emerged was that of searching—searching for true friendship, for meaningful occupation, and for one’s unique identity in a social media-driven world. There was also the theme of technology and life with and without it. What happens if your cell phone doesn’t ring—or even worse, if the WiFi goes out? Finally, there was youthful questioning about the future and the filmmakers’ own expectations for themselves. Can an office job really be satisfying? Will love really last a lifetime?
(NAR) Young men compare notes on the pursuit of happiness. (5 mins.)
FILMMAKERS: AKIVA HENIG, AVINOAM HENIG / INDEPENDENT, PORTLAND, OR
Getting an image to look good on screen can be pretty easy with today’s cameras, but creating a story that knows what it wants to say and why it wants to say it is a higher achievement. So many of the entries in this year’s Festival were worthy efforts, and we applaud the up-and-coming talent of our Northwest regional youth filmmakers. In the end, what separated the most compelling films from the rest of the pack was intention. We think our selections speak with confidence and spirit, whether they fall under the category of live action, animated, experimental or documentary film. For us, “Fresh” came down to honesty, empathy, and, of course, a little bit of fun. Mariana Urban Sue Arbuthnot THE JURORS Sue Arbuthnot is an independent filmmaker and educator with an MFA in Film Production from Columbia University. Her company, Hare In the Gate Productions LLC, produces independent and commissioned documentaries, including DRYLAND, which screened at the Northwest Filmmaker’s Festival in 2014, and IMAGINING HOME (NWFF Audience Award, Best Feature Documentary) in 2009. Mariana Urban is an independent filmmaker and producer for Evergreen State College Electronic Media. Her background is in teaching production and media literacy to young people. Special thanks to Hannah Eigeman for coordinating this year’s jurying, and to Keelan Booth and Dezjiana Wright for their behind-the-scenes help.
TIME CATCHES UP
FILMMAKER: MAX BEAULIEU / WHITMAN MIDDLE SCHOOL, SEATTLE, WA (NAR) She’s young, but not as young as she used to be. (3 mins)
HOME FREE
FILMMAKER: AISLINN DAY / INDEPENDENT, VANCOUVER, WA (NAR) In an empty house, the phone doesn’t ring and a daughter is left to wonder. (5 mins)
WORDS OF WISDOM
FILMMAKERS: SARAH BONILLA, VIOLET CULVER, ZANNA KORTENHOF, ELLIE MCLEAN, CHARLOTTE NEWSOM, IZI POTTER, LUZY SAGOO, LEAH STEINDORF / POWGIRLS, PORTLAND, OR (NAR) A grandmother’s advice spurs a granddaughter into action. (4 mins)
THE LAST MAN ON EARTH
FILMMAKER: ANNA KRIESKE / NORTHWEST FILM CENTER SUMMER CAMP, PORTLAND, OR (ANI) Is he—or isn’t he—the one and only survivor? (1 min)
FILMMAKER: SILVAN YOUNG / NORTHWEST FILM CENTER SUMMER CAMP, PORTLAND, OR
AT THE PARK
FILMMAKER: ZULEMA YOUNG-TOLEDO / NORTHWEST FILM CENTER SUMMER CAMP, PORTLAND, OR (EXP) Frolicking children, fountains, and skyscrapers playfully interpreted. (1 min)
TODAY
FILMMAKERS: COLEMAN ANDERSON, PJ HASE, BERGEN JOHNSON / BALLARD HIGH SCHOOL, SEATTLE, WA (MUSIC VID) The world is a magical place if you look beyond the mundane. (3 mins)
LEAVE
FILMMAKER: MIGUEL JEFFERIES / INDEPENDENT, VANCOUVER, WA (NAR) Something is out there, and you don’t want to get near it. (6 mins)
HIPPY’S VEHICLE GETTING REPOSSESSED FILMMAKER: CASEY MCDOUGALL / INDEPENDENT, WOODLAND, WA
(NAR) What happens when you don’t cooperate with the Home Owner’s Authority? (6 mins)
PENDAMONIUM
FILMMAKERS: AMELIA COMER, FRANCISCO COVARRUBIAS, KARSTEN COWLES, ELIOT CZECK, LILY ELSBROCK, LAUREL FRODSHAM, OWEN HOKE, JACKSON KOPPENHOFER, HOSHAIAH LONG, AUSTIN RODGERS, OLIVIA ROWE, COBI RUSCH, NATALIE SHERSHOW, KEEGAN VAN HOOK / NORTHWEST FILM CENTER SUMMER CAMP, PORTLAND, OR (NAR) Drama erupts over a much-needed pen. (8 mins) TOTAL RUN TIME: 70 MINS.
honorable mention TO VIEW, PLEASE VISIT VIMEO.COM/SCHOOLOFFILM STARTING NOV 16
THE STROLL
FILMMAKER: JILLYAN BINGHAM / NORTHWEST FILM CENTER SUMMER CAMP, PORTLAND, OR (ANI) Girl meets tiger on a leisurely walk. (1 min)
ANNE
FILMMAKERS: JAYA FLANARY, MAEGEN TAJALLE, RACHEL COLE / BALLARD HIGH SCHOOL, SEATTLE, WA (NAR) Loved ones may leave our lives, but they never leave our hearts. (8 mins)
GREAT EXPECTATIONS
FILMMAKERS: ANN HANLIN, KAITLYNN BRADY, JESSICA LUNDQUIST, PHILICIA ROBINSON, HANNAH ROSE, SERENA ZAFIRIS / POWGIRLS, PORTLAND, OR (NAR) Good things happen when the WiFi shuts down. (4 mins)
SEARCHING FOR THE REAL ME
FILMMAKERS: ZOE BEYLER, IVY CLARK, AMELIA ERNST / GIRL SCOUT TROOP 40032, PORTLAND, OR
FEMALE FASHION THROUGHOUT THE DECADES
LEO & CLARK
WORDS OF WISDOM
TIME CATCHES UP
(DOC) The girls in those advertisements are not the girl in me. (7 mins)
IS THIS NORMAL?
FILMMAKERS: ‘SPEAK UP AND EMPOWER’ STUDENTS / LATINO NETWORK, PORTLAND, OR (PSA) When troubles get you down, you’re not alone. (3 mins)
FRESH FILM NORTHWEST is sponsored by RACC & The Citizens of Portland through the Arts & Education Access Fund
The 42nd Northwest Filmmakers’ Festival
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EVENTS SCHEDULE
INFO
THURS, NOV 12
SUN, NOV 15
FESTIVAL PASSES
fields ballroom
whitsell auditorium
10 AM NORTHWEST FILMMAKERS’ EXPO 9 PM OPENING NIGHT PARTY
11:30 AM AND WE WERE YOUNG 2 PM DRAWING THE TIGER 4 PM THE WAY WE TALK 6 PM HADWIN’S JUDGEMENT 8 PM VOYAGERS WITHOUT TRACE
whitsell auditorium
7 PM
SHORTS I
FRI, NOV 13 whitsell auditorium
3 PM ARRESTING POWER: RESISTING POLICE VIOLENCE IN PORTLAND, OREGON 5 PM DIRECT ROUTE & HERS IS WHERE YOURS BEGINS 7 PM SHORTS II 9 PM THE SANDWICH NAZI SAT, NOV 14 whitsell auditorium
10 AM NORTHWEST FILMMAKERS’ UN-CONFERENCE 12 PM FRESH FILM NORTHWEST SCREENING 1:30 PM WELCOME TO THE CIRCUS 4 PM WHAT’S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE? 6:30 PM SHORTS III 8:30 PM THE CURIO & 198
MON, NOV 16 whitsell auditorium
7 PM SLACKJAW 8:30 PM BIRDS OF NEPTUNE TUES, NOV 17 the skype live studio
7 PM
MAKE MINE COUNTRY
whitsell auditorium
7 PM THE TREE INSIDE 8:45 PM DEATH ON A ROCK WED, NOV 18 whitsell auditorium
7 PM CHRISTIANIA—40 YEARS OF OCCUPATION
Pass to Northwest Filmmakers’ Festival screenings and parties, the Northwest Filmmakers’ Expo and the Northwest Filmmakers’ Un-conference: $50
TICKETS
GENERAL: $9 PAM MEMBERS, STUDENTS & SENIORS: $8 SILVER SCREEN CLUB FRIENDS: $6 CHILDREN (12 and under): $6
VENUES SCREENINGS: NORTHWEST FILM CENTER’S WHITSELL AUDITORIUM Portland Art Museum, 1219 SW Park Avenue THE SKYPE LIVE STUDIO 1210 SW 6th Avenue WORKSHOPS & EVENTS: SCHOOL OF FILM, 934 SW Salmon Street FIELDS BALLROOM, 1119 SW Park Avenue
BECOME A MEMBER
SILVER SCREEN CLUB FRIENDS receive discounted admission. SUPPORTER, DIRECTOR, PRODUCER, BENEFACTOR, and SUSTAINER members receive free admission with their valid Silver Screen Club cards. Join online at nwfilm.org. Print sources available on nwfilm.org.
SAT, NOV 21 whitsell auditorium
7 PM
UKSUUM CAUYAI: THE DRUMS OF WINTER
SPONSORS PRODUCING
SUPPORTING
CONTRIBUTING
See festivals.nwfilm.org/nwfest42 for current sponsors.
14
The 42nd Northwest Filmmakers’ Festival
FEATURED FALL CLASS DIGITAL EDITING
iFILM SERIES iFILM SHOOTING: TIPS & TRICKS
WEDNESDAYS, NOV 7-28, 6:30-9:30PM 4 sessions Tuition: $365 PAMELA MINTY Introduction to editing styles, concepts, and techniques using Final Cut Pro X. Bring your own footage or use provided footage. Get comfortable with the software and learn how basic digital film editing works, all while receiving instructor feedback and guidance. Topics: • How editing (sound and picture) creates meaning • Features and layout of Final Cut Pro X software • Setting up a project and organizing your materials • Defining what you are trying to accomplish • Principles of continuity: matching action and montage editing styles • Experimenting with rhythm and pacing • Adding sound effects, text, music, and narration • Basics of titles • How to troubleshoot along the way
iFILM EDITING: TIPS & TRICKS
SATURDAY, NOV 9, 9:30AM-NOON Tuition: $35
SATURDAY, NOV 9, 1-5 PM Tuition: $45
Learn to shoot on your iPhone or iPad with skill and confidence while getting instructor feedback and troubleshooting advice. This beginner-level workshop references the techniques of professional filmmakers to teach the basics of shooting with a mobile device.
Turn your iPhone or iPad into a video editing station. This beginner-level workshop shows how much you can accomplish using iMovie on an iOS device under the supervision and guidance of an experienced instructor.
Topics: • Understanding focus, exposure, and dynamic range • Camera framing and movement as part of storytelling • Audio recording techniques in the field • Recording narration • Using filters and apps • Getting a stable image, with or without a tripod • How optional accessories can improve or affect quality • Practice shooting different indoor and outdoor scenes
Topics: • Basic concepts of video editing • In-depth instruction on iMovie for iOS • Media management and sharing files from iOS to computer • Combining narration, music, sound effects (audio mixing) • Practice editing different kinds of footage together • Exporting your project to social media sites Bring your iPhone or iPad or use a Film Center iPad (for in-class use only)
Bring your iPhone or iPad or use a Film Center iPad (for in-class use only)
Tuition includes access to Film Center Edit Lab during the course of work.
WINTER CLASS PREVIEW
WINTER BREAK CAMP
REGISTRATION OPENS NOV 16
DIGITAL MOVIEMAKING FOR 4TH–6TH GRADES
ART OF FILMMAKING I Hands-on introduction to visual, cinematic storytelling. 14 sessions—$1,145
STOP MOTION ANIMATION The techniques and tools of motion storytelling one frame at a time. 9 sessions—$765
DIGITAL EDITING Get comfortable with Final Cut X software and workflow. 4 sessions—$365
LIGHTING ON LOCATION Light a variety of scenes and situations, from industrial to sound stage. 9 sessions—$765
SCREENWRITING FUNDAMENTALS Use screenplay structure and formatting to create scenes and characters. 9 sessions—$765
RENT ME
16MM CINEMATOGRAPHY There's nothing like the look of actual film. Learn to shoot with it! 9 sessions—$865 (includes film stock and processing)
MONDAY-WEDNESDAY, DEC 21-23, 8:45 AM-3:30 PM 3 sessions Tuition: $145 MELISSA TVETAN Learn how filmmakers use camera angles, lighting, sound, and editing to tell stories and discover how film crews work together to make movies. In this camp, you’ll make short films in different styles and try your hand at live-action directing, shooting, and editing. Transport yourself to other worlds through green screen backgrounds and experiment with different visual storytelling techniques, adding music and sound effects for extra impact. The week will culminate in a family screening—complete with popcorn! Finished films will be compiled and uploaded to a special online class video album.
The School of Film supports the use of media in our community as a means of self-expression and cultural advancement by making its film/video equipment, editing rooms, and other facilities available to artist and non-profit users at subsidized rental rates, and to commercial users as availability allows. Download a Rental Rate Sheet at nwfilm.org/equipment for a complete list of available items, services, and pricing. Rental requests must be received at least 48 hours in advance and will be confirmed within 24 hours. For more information, contact 503-221-1156 or reserve@nwfilm.org.
Cameras for rent:
Editing Stations for rent:
Other equipment for rent:
Facilities for rent:
Film stock for sale:
Canon XA-10 Camera Package
Soundtrack Pro Audio Work Station Avid Media Composer Work Station Final Cut Pro 7 Work Station Final Cut Pro X Work Station
Microphones and Sound Mixers Digital Audio Recorders Light Kits and Grip Equipment On-camera LED Lights Tripods Portable Green Screen
Meeting Rooms (with projection) Voiceover Recording Room Casting and Audition Rooms Small Screening Room (private screenings only)
Color Negative Super-8mm Film Stock Tri-X B/W Reversal Super-8mm F ilm Stock Color Negative 16mm Film Stock Tri-X B/W Reversal 16mm Film Stock XX B/W Negative 16mm Film Stock
Panasonic DVX-100 Camera Package JVC EX555 Handycam Package Canon, Minolta and Beaulieu Super8mm Cameras Arri and Bolex 16mm Cameras
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ROUND TRIP HEART
JAPANESE CURRENTS
Like Japanese fashion and pop culture, Japanese film remains in the international vanguard, blending traditional genres and classical forms with cutting-edge technology and dazzling imagery. This year’s 9th annual Japanese Currents series highlights recent noteworthy Nipponese films, ranging from anime to jidaigeki, documentary to comedy, all while exploring issues important to contemporary Japanese society. Collectively, these selections offer a fresh take on Japanese culture and showcase the wealth of creative invention at work in Japan today. Special thanks to the Japan Foundation, Los Angeles with additional support from the Portland-Sapporo Sister City Association, Lane Powell PC, and the Consular Office of Japan in Portland.
DEC 4 FRI 7 PM
Hachiko Hojo (Yuko Oshima, formerly of pop idol group AKB48) is an unassuming, hard-working attendant on the Romance Car—so named because of its side-by-side seats without armrests between—a luxury tourist train that carries visitors from Tokyo to outlying destinations. On a normal workday, she meets a snaky film producer (Koji Okura) who tries to steal items from her concession cart. This simple act propels the two on a wayward journey to the stunning town of Hakone; there, the trip quickly becomes one of personal exploration and reflection as they develop a strangely honest relationship in which the layers of their personal histories slowly peel back. (97 mins.)
NORTHWEST FILM CENTER
JAPAN 20 14- 1 5
JAPAN 20 1 5
SAPPORO SHORTS PROGRAM DIRECTOR: VARIOUS
Our Portland Sister City colleagues at the Sapporo International Short Film Festival in Sapporo, Japan, return with a new program of highlights from this year’s tenth annual event. The program of new Japanese shorts includes A.T.’s SOCIOPATH, which revolves around a meeting between a normal girl and a mysterious, strange android; Kristof Sagna’s SAVAGE NIGHT, where a castoff baby is discovered by a prostitute working for the mafia, with potentially damaging consequences; Shigeyoshi Tsukahara’s JOSEITO, a look into the daily life of a schoolgirl during the Showa period; Toshimichi Saito’s A WARM SPELL, which follows Naoki, a young man at a crossroads following his mother’s funeral; Yu Shibuya’s THE APOLOGY, a poignant story of an apology that comes 100 years after the incident; and Atsuko Hirayanagi’s OH LUCY!, in which Setsuko, a 55-year-old “office lady” is given a new perspective on her identity when a colleague gives her a blond wig. (107 mins.)
NEKO SAMURAI 2: A TROPICAL ADVENTURE
JAPAN 20 1 5
PAGE 16
DEC 5 SAT 7 PM
DEC 5 SAT 4:30 PM
ROUND TRIP HEART DIRECTOR: YUKI TANADA
DEC 5 SAT 2 PM
JAPAN 20 1 5
DIRECTOR: TAKESHI WATANABE
The beloved cat/samurai duo that charmed audiences in SAMURAI CAT are back in an adventure which finds our heroes Tamanojo (cat) and Madarame (samurai, Kazuki Kitamura of THERMAE ROMAE and KILL BILL fame) marooned on the remote island of Shikokou after Madarame goes out in search of work—turns out being a “cat person” doesn’t pay the bills in feudal Japan. When the not-so-fearless pair begin searching the island, they discover a local tribe that immediately starts to worship Tamanojo as a god, and will do anything to make her theirs—forever. But will Madarame roll over so easily? (85 mins.)
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2015 503-221-1156 NWFILM.ORG
I ALONE
DIRECTOR: SHÔ TSUKIKAWA
Buddy comedies come in many flavors, but few are quite as charming as Tsukikawa’s latest, which pits a mild-mannered corporate lackey and a teenage wannabe gangster in a fierce battle against the yakuza and the corrupt mayor of their unnamed city. A decidedly cute kidnapped baby is at the center of the action, which revolves around the mismatched pair’s attempts to keep the child free from harm while trying to thwart the mayor’s nefarious redevelopment plans and misguided attempts to hold on to his office despite a strong challenge from a new contender. Along the way, the two learn a great deal about themselves, their society and the perils of co-parenting. (109 mins.)
DEC 6 SUN 4:30 PM
HARUKO’S PARANORMAL LABORATORY JAPAN 20 1 5
DIRECTOR: LISA TAKEBA
Reminiscent of the early work of Michel Gondry but carving a path uniquely its own thanks to a decidedly rough-hewn aesthetic and a playfully dirty sense of humor, HARUKO’S PARANORMAL LABORATORY is one of the oddest and most eccentric films you’re likely to see this year. Lonely twentysomething Haruko (newcomer Moeka Nozaki) talks incessantly to her TV, but is more than a bit surprised when one day the TV sprouts a face, a body—and, most importantly, develops emotions. She gets more than she bargained for, however, as her new TV-man “boyfriend” becomes famous, adored by women across Japan. “Psychedelic, slightly twee but abundantly inventive.”—The New York Times. (76 mins.)
ECOTHERAPY GETAWAY HOLIDAY
WONDERFUL WORLD END
SANCHU UPRISING: VOICES AT DAWN
WHEN MARNIE WAS THERE
DEC 6 SUN 7 PM
ECOTHERAPY GETAWAY HOLIDAY JAPAN 20 14
DIRECTOR: SHÛICHI OKITA
Seven women of varying ages and backgrounds sign up for a chartered trip to a remote waterfall. Expecting relaxation and a tranquil setting far away from bustling city life, some are looking for a place to clear their thoughts, some to commune with nature, and some just for photographic opportunities. None of the women expect their guide to immediately go missing and leave them stranded. What could be a horror story, however, turns into a wonderfully comic, explorational journey that tests the women’s patience—with each other, with their situations back home, and with the environment—as their personal idiosyncrasies bloom into full view. (88 mins.)
DEC 10 THURS 7 PM
SANCHU UPRISING: VOICES AT DAWN JAPAN 20 1 5
DIRECTOR: JUICHIRO YAMASAKI
Yamasaki’s highly inventive take on the jidaigeki (historical drama) concerns a group of rural farmers treated poorly by tax authorities in the 18th-century Okayama town of Sanchu. On the verge of starvation, the farmers protest both the rising tax rate and the lack of access to the crops they grow... until samurai are dispatched to keep them under control. A devastating uprising appears inevitable. Combining glorious black-and-white cinematography in natural-light situations, animation, and an inventive final sequence that transports us to the modern day, SANCHU UPRISING is both unique in style and compelling in its theme of wrestling with difficult choices. (117 mins.)
DEC 11 FRI 8 PM
DEC 12 SAT 4:30 PM
JAPAN 20 14
JAPAN 20 1 5
OW
WONDERFUL WORLD END
DIRECTOR: YOHEI SUZUKI
DIRECTOR: DAIGO MATSUI
DEC 12 SAT 2 PM
DEC 13 SUN 4:30 PM
JAPAN 20 14
JAPAN 20 1 5
An aimless young man still living with his parents well into his twenties spies a mysterious black orb floating in the corner of his bedroom. Transfixed by the moon-like object, he cannot move. Subsequent visitors fall under the spell of the orb until a full-fledged police operation is underway to investigate the mysterious epidemic. As (almost) everyone trapped in the room begins to “thaw,” a young, hungry journalist begins an investigation into the exact cause of the supernatural event. An explanation, however, will be tough to ferret out, considering the largely vegetative state of the survivors. “This enigmatic, deadpan mystery just might be a comment on the social malaise and inertia of 21st-century Japan.”—New Directors/New Films. (89 mins.)
WHEN MARNIE WAS THERE DIRECTOR: HIROMASA YONEBAYASHI
As the swan song of Studio Ghibli, one of the foremost animation studios in the world, WHEN MARNIE WAS THERE occupies a unique place within a filmography of unprecedented beauty and invention. After an asthma attack, shy and withdrawn schoolgirl Anna is sent to a seaside resort by her foster parents to live with her aunt and uncle. Upon her arrival, she happens upon a seemingly abandoned house, but a young girl, Marnie, says she lives there. Anna and Marnie quickly become friends, but is Marnie a real girl or just a figment of Anna’s imagination? “Just as Marnie and Anna’s fates are intertwined, just as history and the present exist in the same moment in the film, what Ghibli has meant to the world can’t be extricated from its last, beautiful cinematic gift.”—Rogerebert.com. (103 mins.) In Japanese with English subtitles.
Incorporating live video feed-style footage, text message overlays, and more than its fair share of on-screen emoji, Matsui’s film is a freewheeling peek into the world of teen fascination with fame and identity, focusing on Shiori (Ai Hashimoto), a small-time model struggling to boost her career via her interactive blog. She has one admirer: overly shy Ayumi (Jun Aonami), who has a habit of dressing in the same garb as Shiori and following her to shoots. The film amplifies their unorthodox friendship with liberal forays into fantasy and a clever regard for adolescent fickleness and internet-era indulgence. (84 mins.)
NUCLEAR NATION II DIRECTOR: ATSUSHI FUNAHASHI
Funahashi’s initial film, NUCLEAR NATION (2012), movingly followed a year in the life of refugees from the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster. Compelled to follow up with a longer-term chronicle of the impact of the earthquake and its ensuing tragedy, his new film provides a sober look at the lingering realities of thousands of people displaced from their homes and the radioactivity still spreading throughout Fukushima prefecture and beyond. Through Funahashi’s lens, we see town hall meetings and hear from locals still affected by the lagging cleanup and decontamination efforts—but Funahashi spares no one as he highlights the rampant infighting obstructing relief efforts. A vital document of a massive catastrophe with no end in sight. (114 mins.)
NWFILM.ORG 503-221-1156 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2015
NORTHWEST FILM CENTER
PAGE 17
CITIZEN KANE
BLACK MAGIC
DEC 19 21 SAT 2 PM MON 7 PM
THE THIRD MAN U K 1 948
DIRECTOR: CAROL REED
ORSON WELLES AT 100 The late film scholar Gilberto Perez referred to Orson Welles as “a director with an immediately recognizable style if there ever was one.” Perhaps no other filmmaker, with the exception of Alfred Hitchcock or Stanley Kubrick, has been as globally discussed by film critics and connoisseurs. Welles’ films—many of which were made under considerable scrutiny and now precariously exist in contested multiple versions—remain enduring cinematic pleasures of the highest order. On the occasion of his centennial year, the Northwest Film Center offers a primer of Welles’ work. While it proudly features some of his most lauded masterpieces, the series also dives deeper into some of Welles’ lesser-known work, as well as a handful of films he acted in and sometimes surreptitiously produced and directed. In grasping to capture Welles’ allure, film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum’s reflection speaks for many cinema lovers: “Though I wouldn’t necessarily call him my favorite, he remains the most fascinating for me, both due to the sheer size of his talent, and the ideological force of his work and his working methods...a major part of Welles’ talent as a filmmaker consisted of his refusal to repeat himself—a compulsion to keep moving creatively that consistently worked against his credentials as a ‘bankable’ director, if only because banks rely on known quantities rather than on experiments.”
DEC 12 14 SAT 7 PM MON 7 PM
DEC 17 THURS 7 PM
U S 1 941
U S 1 943
CITIZEN KANE
JOURNEY INTO FEAR
DIRECTOR: ORSON WELLES
Routinely voted—by critics, scholars, and filmmakers—as one of the best films ever made, CITIZEN KANE is many things at once: the first film of one of the 20th century’s most beloved and iconic artist-entertainers, the supreme technical achievement of the era’s classical Hollywood cinema, and a narrative delight of the highest order. Ostensibly retracing the life and loves of ambitious newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane (Welles), the film is really a meditation on loss of innocence and the collapse of the American Dream, long before those tropes became well-worn. With one foot in the past and one in the future, CITIZEN KANE is the “film that introduces the modern cinema, though it also represents the culmination of the classical.”— Francesco Casetti, “The Eye of the Century.” (119 mins.) Restored 35mm print courtesy of the UCLA Film & Television Archive.
DIRECTOR: ROBERT STEVENSON
U S 1 942
Following the success of CITIZEN KANE, Welles embarked upon one of the most famously disastrous productions of the 1940s. THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS tells the story of a wealthy family unable to adapt to the changing times in the years following the Industrial Revolution. Despite the fact that he lost control of the editing of the film (which had a full hour of footage cut by the studio) when he left to shoot his ill-fated Latin American film IT’S ALL TRUE, THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS—narrated by Welles and starring regular collaborators Joseph Cotten and Agnes Moorehead—remains one of the classics of the Hollywood studio era and one of Welles’ greatest creations, featuring his trademark deep focus shooting and bravura ensemble direction. (88 mins.)
NORTHWEST FILM CENTER
DEC 18 FRI 7 PM U S 1 943
THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS
PAGE 18
Packed to the gills with his Mercury Theatre players, JOURNEY INTO FEAR is a Welles product through-and-through (though it was directed by Norman Foster, a previous collaborator of Welles’.) In the end Welles is only credited with acting in the film, donning a thick Turkish accent in his role as Colonel Haki, leader of a secret police force, who meets Graham (Joseph Cotten), an American trying to return home from Russia but who is being hunted by Nazis in Istanbul. Welles and his Mercury cohorts were famously fired from RKO during post-production, leaving the film to be cut by the studio, but it remains a unique entry in his filmography. (68 mins.)
JANE EYRE
DEC 13 15 SUN 7 PM TUES 7 PM
DIRECTOR: ORSON WELLES
DIRECTOR: NORMAN FOSTER
Charlotte Brönte’s gothic 1847 novel about a penniless girl’s resolute journey through life stars Welles as the mysterious, brooding Edward Rochester, wealthy lord of Thornfield Hall who employs (and falls in love with) the titular heroine (Joan Fontaine). We follow Jane from girlhood through her early adulthood, from brutal reform schools to her work as governess of Thornfield and finally through her turbulent courtship with the mercurial Rochester. While Welles is credited as one of three producers, his considerable influence looms large within the film’s thick, intense atmosphere, infused throughout with Bernard Herrmann’s magnificently understated score. (97 mins.) Archival 35mm print courtesy 20th Century Fox Archive.
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2015 503-221-1156 NWFILM.ORG
Pulp novelist Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) travels to shadowy postwar Vienna at the invitation of an old friend, black-market opportunist Harry Lime (Welles), only to find himself investigating his friend’s mysterious death. Thus begins this twisting, subversive tale of love, deception, and murder. Thanks to brilliant performances, Anton Karas’s famously evocative zither score, Graham Greene’s razor-sharp dialogue, and cinematographer Robert Krasker’s dramatic use of light and shadow, Reed’s THE THIRD MAN has continued to grow in stature as the years pass. “One great shot after another. I’ve seen it 50 times and it’s still magic.”—Roger Ebert. (104 mins.)
DEC 19 SAT 4:30 PM
THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI U S 1 948
DIRECTOR: ORSON WELLES
Here writer/director Welles smolders alongside bombshell Rita Hayworth (Welles’ second wife) in a wildly stylish film noir that was years ahead of its time. Welles plays a tough, footloose Irish sailor who takes a job on a wealthy lawyer’s private yacht, only to fall in love with the sinister man’s beautiful wife. The story’s multiple double-crosses come to a boil in San Francisco, where some of Welles’ (and cinema’s) most memorable visualizations of a twisted world of corruption and evil unfold with surreal delight. “The film’s bravura moments resonate beyond pyrotechnics, especially the magnificent sequences of reflexive cinema in the macabre Hall of Mirrors scene and the confession of love in a ‘fishbowl’—the San Francisco Aquarium.”—Pacific Film Archive. (87 mins.)
DEC 19 SAT 7 PM
MACBETH U S 1 948
DIRECTOR: ORSON WELLES
Welles’ passion project was made at the scrappy Republic Pictures on discarded lots previously used for Roy Rogers Westerns. At the time of its production it was only the fourth Hollywood adaptation of a Shakespeare work. Despite its low-budget origins, MACBETH retains a striking visual style consistent with Welles’ earlier films in addition to a psychological intensity found in few films of the period. Welles stars at Macbeth, an ambitious Scottish general intent on acquiring power by any means necessary, whose moral corruption is spurred on by Jeanette Nolan’s conniving Lady Macbeth. Welles dives into the role, his immense dramatic powers channeled through a thick Scottish brogue. (107 mins.) Reconstructed and restored 35mm print courtesy of the UCLA Film & Television Archive.
DEC 20 SUN 4:30 PM
BLACK MAGIC U S/ITALY 1 949
DIRECTOR: GEORGE RATOFF
Meteoric rise and precipitous fall—hallmarks of Welles’ work, especially in the 1940s—are given the magical treatment in BLACK MAGIC, an adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’ 1848 novel CAGLIOSTRO. Welles plays the magician Cagliostro, who, following a literally torturous childhood, rises to fame after he learns the art of hypnosis and uses his new skill to exact revenge on the court of Louis XV. The film bears many of Welles’ signature cinematic flourishes, including stunning use of point-of-view camera. (105 mins.) 35mm preservation print courtesy of the Library of Congress.
ORSON WELLES THE TRIAL
OTHELLO
JAN 2 SAT 4:30PM
MAGICIAN: THE ASTONISHING LIFE AND WORK OF ORSON WELLES u s 20 14
DIRECTOR: CHUCK WORKMAN
DEC 20 SUN 7 PM
OTHELLO
U S/ITALY/M O RO CCO/FRAN CE 1 9 52
DIRECTOR: ORSON WELLES
Among Welles’ finished films, OTHELLO has one of the most troubled production histories. Financed largely out-of-pocket and shot intermittently over a three-year period, OTHELLO nevertheless remains one of Welles’ most beautiful works; a compact, powerful drama fraught with taut atmospheric pleasure. As with MACBETH before it, Welles takes liberties with Shakespeare’s original work, which concerns the Moorish general Othello (Welles) and his new wife Desdemona (Suzanne Cloutier), who are manipulated and betrayed by their jealous subordinates. Winner of the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. (90 mins.) New digital restoration of the 1992 reconstruction, originally supervised by Beatrice WellesSmith.
DEC 22 TUES 7 PM
THE STRANGER U S 1 946
DIRECTOR: ORSON WELLES
Welles’ post-war thriller tackles Nazism head-on as UN War Crimes Inspector Wilson (Edward G. Robinson) searches for Welles’ fugitive Franz Kindler, an architect of the Holocaust now posing as a schoolteacher in small-town America. Kindler, now Charles Rankin, is married to the daughter of a Supreme Court justice and lives an unassuming life. But when Wilson releases Kindler’s former associate (Konstantin Shayne), the Nazi fugitive falls squarely in Wilson’s crosshairs. His secret double life is threatened with exposure, and he’ll do anything to keep it under wraps. (95 mins.)
DEC 26 28 SAT 4:30 PM MON 7 PM
TOUCH OF EVIL U S 1 9 58
DIRECTOR: ORSON WELLES
Celebrated as one of the greatest film noirs ever made, Welles’ mid-career morality tale sees him writing, directing, and starring as detective Hank Quinlan, a corrupt, exalcoholic cop working just north of the US-Mexico border. The legendary three-minute tracking shot that opens the film introduces us to Mike Vargas (Charlton Heston), a Mexican police detective who begins to investigate the mysterious death-by-explosion of two Americans at the border crossing. As Vargas uncovers more and more layers of corruption in the unnamed border town, Quinlan simultaneously falls off the wagon and tightens his deadly grip around Vargas and his comely new bride (Janet Leigh.) (95 mins.)
CONFIDENTIAL REPORT AKA MR. ARKADIN
“Oscar-winner Chuck Workman’s (famed for his Academy Award clip montages and iconic trailers) impressive, comprehensive documentary tells the tragic, extraordinary story of Orson Welles, a great filmmaking genius whose masterpieces were interspersed with films compromised by studio intervention or never completed at all. Workman tells Welles’s story through a wealth of interviews with the director and actor, an impressive assortment of clips, and testimonies by luminaries including Martin Scorsese, Peter Bogdanovich, George Lucas, Walter Murch, and Steven Spielberg.”—Telluride Film Festival. (91 mins.)
DIRECTOR: ORSON WELLES
JAN 2 SAT 7 PM
DEC 26 27 SAT 7 PM SUN 4:30 PM
FRAN CE/S PAI N/SWITZER LAN D 1 9 55
Bearing key similarities to THE THIRD MAN, Welles’ noir concerns small-time smuggler Guy Van Stratten (Robert Arden), who overhears a dying man whisper the name “Gregory Arkadin.” Armed with this clue and in search of blackmail money, Van Stratten works his way into the inner circle of well-to-do amnesiac Arkadin. Arkadin hires Van Stratten to research his former life before the amnesia, but as Van Stratten digs deeper people begin turning up dead. Full of delirious canted angles and gorgeous location photography spanning Europe and Mexico, CONFIDENTIAL REPORT is “extraordinary, and unjustly unrecognized.”—Richard Brody, The New Yorker. (93 mins.)
CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT AKA FALSTAFF
FRAN CE/S PAI N/SWITZER LAN D 1 9 65
DIRECTOR: ORSON WELLES
DEC 27 SUN 7 PM
His third “finished” Shakespeare adaptation, CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT, sees Welles dulling his edges a bit in offering up a highly poetic vision of Falstaff, a recurring character in the Bard’s works. Falstaff, the rotund sidekick of the devious Prince Hal (Keith Baxter), plays audience proxy as the Prince ascends to the throne following the defeat of Henry IV’s (John Gielgud) enemies. “The one Welles film that deserves to be called lovely. Restrained and even serene, it is ample proof of how sensitive and subtle an artist he is.”—Dave Kehr, The Chicago Reader. (113 mins.) New digital restoration courtesy of Janus Films.
U S 1 9 59
JAN 3 4 SUN 4:30 PM MON 7 PM
COMPULSION
F FOR FAKE
DIRECTOR: RICHARD FLEISCHER
If anyone was born to play a high-powered, world-weary lawyer defending two murderers against the death penalty, it was Orson Welles. With archetypal bravado, but never looking more exhausted, Welles defends Judd and Artie (Dean Stockwell and Bradford Dillman), who have killed a schoolboy seemingly out of pampered, silver-spoon boredom. Based upon the infamous real-life Leopold and Loeb murders and shot in beautiful black-and-white CinemaScope with frames populated by ornate locations—libraries, Ivies, courtrooms, and well-heeled brats—Fleischer’s film showcases Welles’ range while offering trenchant commentary on a topic still very relevant today. (103 mins.) New digital restoration courtesy of 20th Century Fox Archive.
DIRECTOR: ORSON WELLES
F FOR FAKE, a pseudo-documentary revolving around the shadowy world of art forgery, sees Welles at his most globe-trotting and literally magical. Beginning as a kind of portrait of notorious forger Elmyr De Hory, the film quickly spirals away from any linear narrative, instead becoming a loose tapestry of forgers and fakers, not least of whom is Welles himself. “Hoax-biographer” Clifford Irving and Welles’ muse Oja Kodar appear at various points; the pace steadily increases, and the narratives interweave to the point of dizzying disorientation. “There is fascination and poignancy in seeing Welles’ elegant retreat into this hall of mirrors.”—Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian. (89 mins.)
JAN 3 SUN 7 PM
JAN 1 2 FRI 7PM SAT 2 PM
THE IMMORTAL STORY
THE TRIAL
FRAN CE 1 9 68
FRAN CE/WEST G ER MANY/ITALY 1 9 62
DIRECTOR: ORSON WELLES
FRAN CE/I RAN/WEST G ER MANY 1 973
Welles translates one of Franz Kafka’s best-known literary works into a disorienting black-and-white cinematic world of crime and punishment. After relatively anonymous bank officer Josef K. (Anthony Perkins) is spontaneously arrested and charged with an unnamed crime, he struggles in vain to discover exactly what it is he has done. While Kafka’s novel is famed for its psychological modernism, Welles’ film delves deep into the psyche of Josef through Perkins’ nervous tics and the unnamed city’s white walls and modernist cubes. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. (119 mins.)
DIRECTOR: ORSON WELLES
Welles’ first color film—significant considering the development of scores of color processes since the 1920s—tells the story of Clay (Welles), a wealthy but aging Macao merchant, who, upon hearing a story in which a young sailor is paid to impregnate an elderly man’s wife, decides to recreate the legend for himself. The problem: he’s unmarried. Enter Virginie (Jeanne Moreau), the daughter of Clay’s former business partner, “hired” to be Clay’s wife and enact his twisted fantasy. However, Virginie has a score to settle with Clay and the myth turns upon him. “Thematically and poetically it exemplifies Welles’ late lyrical manner. . . It’s awkward yet exquisite.”—Jonathan Rosenbaum, The Chicago Reader. (70 mins.)
NWFILM.ORG 503-221-1156 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2015
NORTHWEST FILM CENTER
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FILM CALENDAR
NWFilmCenter
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2015
FILMS SCREENED AT NORTHWEST FILM CENTER • WHITSELL AUDITORIUM PORTLAND ART MUSEUM 1219 SW PARK AVENUE
SUNDAY
NOVEMBER
7:30 PM CERTIFIABLY YOURS: NEW FILMS FROM THE SCHOOL OF FILM (P.3)
MONDAY 1
TUESDAY 2
WEDNESDAY 3
NUCLEAR NATION II—P.16
8
9
7 PM SCHOOL OF BABEL (P.3)
THURSDAY 4
7 PM DOWNTOWN 81 (P.3)
10
7 PM NO LAND’S SONG (P.3)
FRIDAY 5
SATURDAY 6
7:30 PM THE WHITE SHEIK(P.3)
4:30 & 7 PM 2015 BRITISH ARROW AWARDS (P.4)
15
7 PM SLACKJAW (P.12) 8:30 PM BIRDS OF NEPTUNE (P.12)
16
7 PM @ THE SKYPE LIVE STUDIO MAKE MINE COUNTRY (P.12) 7 PM THE TREE INSIDE (P.12) 8:45 PM DEATH ON A ROCK (P.12)
17
7 PM CHRISTIANIA– 40 YEARS OF OCCUPATION (P.12)
9 AM–5 PM NORTHWEST FILMMAKERS’ EXPO (P.9) 7 PM SHORTS I (P.10) 9 PM THE 42ND NORTHWEST FILMMAKERS’ FESTIVAL OPENING NIGHT PARTY (P.9)
12
3 PM ARRESTING POWER (P.11) 5 PM DIRECT ROUTE PRECEDED BY HERS IS WHERE YOURS BEGINS (P.11) 7 PM SHORTS II (P.10) 9 PM THE SANDWICH NAZI (P.11)
13
10 AM–4 PM NORTHWEST FILMMAKERS’ UNCONFERENCE (P.9) 12 PM FRESH FILM NORTHWEST SCREENING (P.13) 1:30 PM WELCOME TO THE CIRCUS (P.11) 4 PM WHAT’S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE (P.9) 6:30 PM SHORTS III (P.11) 8:30 PM THE CURIO PRECEDED BY 198 (P.11)
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18
7 PM ARCHIVAL SCREENING NIGHT (P.4)
19
5:30 PM THE GREAT NORTHWEST (P.3) 7:45 PM PARIS IS BURNING (P.4)
20
11 AM THE THANHOUSER STUDIO AND THE BIRTH OF AMERICAN CINEMA (P.4) 1 PM THIS IS CINERAMA (P.4) 7 PM UKSUUM CAUYAI: THE DRUMS OF WINTER (P.4)
21
PM NEKO SAMURAI 2—P.16 26 72015 BRITISH ARROW AWARDS (P.4)
27
7 PM 2015 BRITISH ARROW AWARDS (P.4)
28
4
2 PM SAPPORO SHORTS PROGRAM (P.16) 4:30 PM NEKO SAMURAI 2 (P.16) 7 PM I ALONE (P.16)
5
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25
29
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2
THE IMMORTAL STORY—P.198 7
3
ARRESTING POWER—P.11 4:30 PM HARUKO’S PARANORMAL LABORATORY (P.16) 7 PM ECOTHERAPY GETAWAY HOLIDAY (P.17)
6
4:30 PM NUCLEAR NATION II (P.17) 7 PM THE MAGIFICENT AMBERSONS (P.18)
13
7 PM CITIZEN KANE (P.18)
14
7 PM THE MAGIFICENT AMBERSONS (P.18)
4:30 PM BLACK MAGIC (P.18) 7 PM OTHELLO (P.19)
20
7 PM THE THIRD MAN (P.18)
21
7 PM THE STRANGER (P.19)
4:30 PM CONFIDENTIAL REPORT AKA MR.ARKADIN (P.19) 7 PM COMPULSION (P.19)
27
7 PM TOUCH OF EVIL (P.19)
28
9
7 PM SANCHU UPRISING: VOICES AT DAWN (P.17)
10
15
16
7 PM JOURNEY INTO FEAR (P.18)
17
22
23
24
29
30
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CHRISTIANIA— 40 YEARS OF OCCUPATION—P.12 4:30 PM F FOR FAKE (P.19) 7 PM THE IMMORTAL STORY (P.19)
3
7 PM F FOR FAKE (P.19)
4
5
7
11
THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI—P.18 11:30 AM AND WE WERE YOUNG (P.12) 2 PM DRAWING THE TIGER (P.12) 4 PM THE WAY WE TALK (P.12) 6 PM HADWIN’S JUDGEMENT (P.12) 8 PM VOYAGERS WITHOUT TRACE (P.12)
7:30 PM ALWAYS FOR PLEASURE (P.3)
6
$9 GENERAL ADMISSION $8 PAM MEMBERS/STUDENTS/SENIORS $6 SILVER SCREEN FRIENDS/ CHILDREN UNDER 12
7
7 PM ROUND TRIP HEART (P.16)
DECEMBER 5:30 PM TASTE OF CHERRY (P.3) 8 PM OW (P.17)
11
2 PM WHEN MARNIE WAS THERE (P.17) 4:30 PM WONDERFUL WORLD END (P.17) 7 PM CITIZEN KANE (P.18)
12
7 PM JANE EYRE (P.18)
18
2 PM THE THIRD MAN (P.18) 4:30 PM THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI (P.18) 7 PM MACBETH (P.18)
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25
4:30 PM TOUCH OF EVIL (P.19) 7 PM CONFIDENTIAL REPORT AKA MR.ARKADIN (P.19)
26
7 PM THE TRIAL (P.19)
JANUARY
1
2 PM THE TRIAL (P.19) 4:30 PM MAGICIAN: THE ASTONISHING LIFE AND WORK OF ORSON WELLES (P.19) 7 PM THE CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT AKA FALSTAFF (P.19)
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BOX OFFICE OPENS 30 minutes before showtime. ADVANCE TICKETS are available online at nwfilm.org. SILVER SCREEN CLUB Directors, Producers, Benefactors & Sustainers receive free admission to all REGULAR ADMISSION programs.
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