The PDX Fest, Day 3.1

1pm Screening: "Shorts Program #1"
underground + experimental

Here Take these Drugs, DV, 1'00, Andy Spore
Marv Newland like line animations. Crude, jiggly, and constantly morphing, this is wonderful animation wrapped around a quick, short premise.

Inhale Exhale, DV, 7'00, David Borengasser
Nice, initially meditative visualization/motion study of falling samaras. A strange thing started happening while I was watching it, however. It started getting quite creepy for me as the buildup of individual samras spining toward the camera suddenly strarted to remind me of a moth infestation that took place it Portland in the mid-70s. It was beautiful at night watching those moths swirl under streetlights, but as you approached the lights you quickly discovered you were walking on and crushing thousands of dying moths. If you stood directly under the light they immediately surrounded and crawled all over you, like in a movie about insect plagues. Visually this piece also reminded me of a quite stunning section of Canadian filmmaker Chris Gallagher's "Undivided Attention," though without Gallagher's interest in humor.

28 Years In the Implicate Order, DV, 1'00, Pascual Sisto
Sorry, I don't remember this piece

Five County Fair, DV, 8'05, David Ellsworth
Very nice exploration of a county fair that uses extensive shutter experimentation. Strong visual composition and excellent juxtaposition of sound. Quite a tactile experience.

This Video Edited By Computer, video(?), 1'30 min, Jesse England
Fun, surprisingly sweet and sentimental piece; quite amazing when you consider it was edited by the computer, not just on it. Liked this piece a lot.

Bobby XP1, DV, 3'45, Tommy Becker
Quite funny and bizarre sense of humor in this piece. For me it harkens back to some of the crazy stuff by groups like ant farm (http://arts.ucsc.edu/faculty/Lord/AntFarm.html) or individuals like Portland underground video artist Michael Lastra, which is stuff I like a lot.

The White Bunny, DV, 7'00, Katja Straub
Highly stylized (1930s?) with beautiful production values. The video comes across like a real fairy tale with undertones of darkness and visceral dream qualities. Katja does a great job of balancing--actually, hovering might be a more appropriate description--between what is apparently real and what is not. Beautifully shot and acted with not a single word spoken. Very strong work.

Square Millimeter: Cars, DV, 2'00, Luke Lamborn
First of two films by Luke; very simple and surreally funny; appears like a loop at first, but you realize it is an entire auto line passing around a curve, one color following another. Will it ever end? I liked this piece.

Tops, DV, 5'30, Brian Nelson
An OK, Eames-like film focusing on wooden tops. Quite nice exploration of the material qualities, and beautiful tops they are. But, ultimately, I got a bit bored.

Drew Getting Hit by a Car on Belmont While Eric Watches, DV, 1'00, Andrew Francisco
First of two pieces by Andrew. This is a completely bizarre and seemingly random impact video; I don't know if this guy is an impact addict like David Leslie (implist and impact) or just completely unlucky, but this is absolutely hilarious even if it looks like it involves serious pain.

not listed in the program:
Drew in India On the Banks of the Ganges During Monsoon Season Getting Bitten by a Monkey, or something like that. Just as funny as the first installment. Also, like the first installment, the end result seems to come out of nowhere, or at least innocence. I think that is one of the things that makes these two pieces so funny.

Shoot, DV, 2'30, Joe Nanashe
A funny concept at first: let's shoot the camera with a gun! Increasingly creepy if you imagine yourself in the cameras' position. Certainly disrupts any sort of voyeuristic pleasure principle!

For Laika, DV, 1'00, Bryan Boyce
More great humor from Bryan. Laika, the first animal in space, dreams of her future adventures (most of the time). This is The Right Stuff for the REAL first astronaut!

Animal Animal, DV, 1'50, Tommy Becker
Aggressive and charged tone poem. Not to everyone's taste, I'm sure, but I liked it.

Jawswipe, DV, 2'30, Jesse McLean
Nice, fun idea for the first 45 seconds; less interesting for the remaining 1&3/4 minutes. Basically just sawtooth wipe patters timed to sync with an amateur interpretation of the "Jaws" musical theme.

Hotel Pinball Venus, DV, 1:00, Anne McGuire, Katya Knyazeva, Stan Yan
No recollection of this piece.

(Dis)Placement, DV, 5'00, Aaron Valdez
Very nice technique but ultimately rather empty feeling. I sensed no connection between the home movie footage and the manipulations going on so the piece quickly began to feel like little more than an exercise.

Square Millimeter: Houses, DV, 2'00, Luke Lamborn
Luke Lamborn's second piece, also very nice. Great compositing. For some reason I kept thinking of Swedenborg during this piece, or at least Peter Blegvad's Kew. Rhone. interpretation of one of the philosopher's ideas: "Angels fucking shed light." Don't ask me why, 'cause I don't know.

I'm in the Mood, DV, 4'30, Bryan Konefsky
This was a fairly simple split-screen piece, but I found the combination of images and sound oddly affecting. On one screen is a street performer named Shakey Jake, on the other a wind-inflated effigy. While visually uncomplicated, the audio created by Shakey Jake turns this piece into something I can't quite pin down.

Five More Minutes, DV, 17'00, Dena Decola + Karin Wandner
A searing gestalt film concerned with a loss which can never be regained, the trauma that loss can generate, and the struggles and wrenching emotions one goes through when trying to confront all these issues at once. This piece was rippingly honest and raw--at one point the actress can't go on with the scene and, rather than leaving this on the cutting room floor, the disruption to the narrative flow is left in for all to see. Quite impressive and brave work. I was reminded of three equally raw works during this film: Moe Ginsberg's "Coming Apart" and his equally devastating "The City Below the Line" (both contained on the Kino DVD release) and The Plastic Ono Band, where John Lennon bares his heart and soul. Not easy works, but deeply rewarding.

Lanka, DV, 6'00, Kevin Allen
A quite beautiful road movie of sorts. The sense of traveling through a country was well-captured, and there was also some very nice metaphorical uses of image that helped this piece transcend being a simple travelogue. Very tactile manipulations of imagery contribute to the beauty of this piece. I'd like to see it again.

Diagrams 1-5, DV, 5:00, Colin Polombi
These five pieces were interspersed throughout the evening's program. Two were particularly strong. I believe they were Diagrams 1 and 4. I liked these pieces because they had resonance beyond their components, creating a feeling of connection and empathy in me. They also really seemed truer to the signature which ended each piece: "Made for me." The personal nature of these two pieces I liked held true to the intimacy such a postscript engenders. Unfortunately the remaining three segments were less satisfying as they came across as a bit too reflexive and ironically "witty" rather than genuine. Whether any of the segments are "genuine" at all is anyone's guess, but the two which struck me as strongest seemed so to me.