Recently in PDX Film Fest 2006 Category

The Tailenders, DV, 72'00, Adele Horne

Pvt. Boro, DV, 8'50, Alma Boro

Unfortunately, I had to skip this screening. I was in need of serious caffiene-ation and the feel of chill air across my face. Without it, I was doomed to a rapid descent into slumberland. Hopefully someone else will chime in about these films. The Tailenders sounded particularly intriguing.

You will find the program description for these films here

Brother Boy, DV, 16'00, Jalal Jemison (pre-feature short)
This wonderfully strange, carefully constructed effort completely entranced me. A brief glimpse into the life of two brothers and their father. Characterizations are left ambivalent enough that it is difficult to pigeon-hole them or form definitive attachments to any particular character. The acting is consistently good throughout, but each of the principal actors also stand out at different moments of the film. Part of that feeling might come from the story line structure which gives each character a key moment to become the key focus in the story. Very nice work with outstanding production values and lush and exceedingly careful cinematographic constructions.

Wild Tigers I Have Known, HD, 98'00, Cam Archer (feature)
This is a pretty amazing work. Complicated characters (aren't we all? Hello Hollywood, are you listening?), extremely subtle conflict development, be-a-u-ti-ful cinematography that flows and connects with the narrative structure in wonderfully surprising ways, outstanding use of color to influence mood in a rather surreal fashion, fascinating depictions of desire and the confusion that such intense desires can generate, excellent mood shifts that take the narrative in unexpected directions, fever dreams that blur the real and the imagined, and an acting style which always kept things slightly askew. I really liked this film, though a minor complaint is that it did drag in a few places because of certain structural repetitions. It is a film full of heart and very fresh narrative development. While the characters are active in their existence, they also exhibit a strong sense of entrapment within the world that surrounds them. For this reason the film reminds me of numerous issues that Fassbinder dealt with in several films, some of my favorites being "Berlin Alexanderplatz," "Why has Herr R Run Amok," "Bolwieser," and "The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant." Fassbinder is also appropriate to bring up in the context of his unwavering tenacity for dealing with complicated and controversial sexual issues. The big difference between his work and this film is that Cam, while he doesn't shy from such issues, is far less brutal with his characters, nor does he fall into the almost debilitating fatalism that pervades Fassbinder's work. This makes Cam's work much more hopeful and progressive than the works by Fassbinder I've managed to see.

Arachnogasmic! Short films by Martha Colburn

The first thing I must say about Martha is that she has the kind of acerbic and challenging wit that I truly enjoy. Never sour or bitter, but most certainly sharp and biting, she is hilarious in her observations and summations of the observed. This wit definitely infuses her films, though I can imagine many audiences being so shocked by her materials that they would miss this wit entirely. Fortunately, that wasn't the case with this PDX Fest audience, at least after a few of her films had shown. There seemed to be a collective discovery that emerged over time, an understanding that, while dark, her work is also very very funny.

I'm not going to comment on specific films, though I will list my favorites. Instead, I want to talk about an overall impression of her work.

Martha's films are raw and rough, with an intense DIY aesthetic. Her past work has strong and direct connections with a strain of punk/skronk/noise music that I've always sought out because I find it to be both hilarious and liberating. Her films have music in them from the group Red Balune, for instance, and people like Mick Hobbs and Jad Fair (to name a couple), and I would say her work would also have strong affinities with other groups like Ron Pate and His Debonairs, Shockabilly, KrackHouse, or any number of Shimmy Disc artists. A lot of those people have an extraordinary ability to create distorted and disturbed narratives that revel in their crudity. Her DIY aesthetic runs at the same pace so a collection of her work this large verges on the edge of onslaught. But, having seen this program, I wouldn't have missed it for any reason but an accident that left me unconscious or a death in the family.

I will make a brief comment on one of the films shown, however, because it demonstrated a very nice shift from the one-stop intensity of her older work which is more akin to pop songs than extended compositions. "Spiders in Love: An Arachnogasmic Musical," while containing stylistic affinities with older work, also presented more extended and inter-relational riffs, as well as a more nuanced pacing. For me, this helped her work become much deeper and more multi-layerd. I have no idea if this is an avenue she will continue to explore and develop but, if she does, I can see that evolving into much longer works with extended structures and more deeply developed themes. That kind of change might blow my mind right out of my brain pan though, so I guess I better be careful what I wish for!

My favorites from the program:

Skelehellavision
Groscher Lansangriff: Big Bug Attack
Cats Amore
Spiders In Love: An Arachnogasmic Musical
There's A Pervert In Our Pool!
I Can’t Keep Up
Evil Of Dracula

1pm Screening: David Gatten
"Secret History of the Diving Line, A True Account in Nine Parts (Parts 1-IV)"
Included: "Secret History of the Diving Line," 16mm, 20'00; "The Great Art of Knowing," 16mm, 37'00; "MOXON'S MECHANIK EXERCISES, OR, THE DOCTRINE OF HANDY-WORKS APPLIED TO THE ART OF PRINTING," 16mm, 26'00; "THE ENJOYMENT OF READING (LOST & FOUND)" 16mm, 16'00;

I'm going to skip this show to catch up with this all-consuming week of film viewing. Anyone wish to comment on these films? I know I'd like to see them, based on last years work screened by David but, alas, the need to make choices intervenes.

The film I am most disappointed about missing is "Moxon's Mechanik." Sounds quite amazing.

For PDX Fest program info on the films go here: David Gatten.

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.

7:15pm Screening: "A Quest of Origins - Films by Larry Gottheim"
Included: "Our Television Traveler," 16mm, 17'00, and "Tree of Knowledge (Elective Affinities IV)," 16mm, 58'00

This program got off to a rocky start with projection problems, but Larry handled them with grace and great humor. This proved to be fortuitous as his humor probably helped to defuse potential over-serious analysis as well as open the viewing experience to the amount of play going on in his mind and the films we ended up seeing.

The first piece shown, "Our Television Traveler," appeared to be made up of loops of specific lengths. These loops built on top of themselves with each repeat. For instance, the first loop seemed comprised of footage showing second and third stage rocket separations in outer space. This visual loop was combined with an audio loop of a Spanish conversation. When these two loops repeated for the second time, a third loop was added in, and so on for perhaps five total loops. This is very dense work, so multiple viewings are in order and I can't attest to the accuracy of my breakdown of the film's structure.

The second piece, "Tree of Knowledge (Elective Affinities IV)," also appeared to be structured in a loop pattern, but a much more extended pattern that appeared to also loop back on itself, repeating the opening scene as the ending scene. As to whether there was an actual fulcrum point in the film, I am uncertain. This piece was far more complex than the first and, based upon its construction I would guess that repeat viewings would reveal new subtleties each time. Part of that comes from our brain's struggle to make connections between what is being seen, what is being heard, what is remembered from earlier moments, and what is anticipated from upcoming moments. I feel Larry affirmed this experience when he spoke about returning to these works himself as a result of the restoration they recently underwent. Having not watched his older work for some time, he implied that he was discovering (rediscovering?) connections and layers he had not seen before or forgotten about.

It was quite interesting to hear direct responses from other people after viewing another of Larry's films ("Harmonica") in the workshop sponsored by the Cinema Project which took place at the Northwest Film Center. Consisting of one continuous take of a man improvising on harmonica in the back seat of a moving vehicle, I was very pleased to hear people talking about breaking away from the performance to notice the surrounding events such as loose fabric in the vehicle flapping in the wind, houses or guard rails passing by, hills in the distance prominent at one point but then the harmonica player's hand slapping his knee taking prominence at another. I think one of the great strengths of Larry's work is the space it allows for film audiences to learn to observe on an experiential level rather than pursue or be fed specific objectives. Some people will discover this in his work and others won't. That will probably also determine whether they like his work or not.

The complexity of Larry's work perhaps explains why I find myself being so vague on what was actually going on within his films. They are so open that one finds personal points of relation (personal justification of relations?) that are consistently shifting. At the same time, because of the finite material included, the pieces feel very closed. I found myself shifting between those two states of mind, finding connection and drifting from connection. In his workshop Larry said "I am a mass of contradictions." That was a very revealing comment which helped me better understand how the work was affecting me personally--besides reminding me of my own mass of contradictions. I expect I would react to his work differently with every viewing, not only because of the new connections I make with each viewing but also as a result of whatever emotional condition I happened to be in at the time. Though I've seen hundreds, if not thousands, of films by now, I've not experienced that many films, experimental, avant-garde, narrative or otherwise, about which I would make that claim.

you expect a shorts compilation with the title "friends and neighbors," featuring local filmmakers to be a distilled microcosm of the personalities and styles found in our fair city, and unsurprisingly, that's exactly what you got on saturday afternoon. I've long believed that the best part of the ethos, zeitgeist, je ne sais qois, ya ne znayu, or whatever bullshit tag you want to put on what's going on artistically in portland is the sense of electicism and daring, with a fair amount of humor and/or Lefty Outrage thrown into the mix.

while i only have two friends on the program (for one film, The Great Crane-Off), i feel like the variety and unpretentiousness of all of these filmmakers make them seem quite the neighbors, emblematic of the prototypical Portland, the city that's just so Gosh Darn Friendly.

we started with (i believe) Representing Abstraction, a beautiful, silent parade of film effects, water stains, burn marks, and more flickering past you in the form of animated stills, with a slowly changing color palette that finds warm browns and yellows to dark blues and reds. I found it both eerie and fascinating.

After the 16mm nostalgia-inducing "Happy Times", we were treated to a brilliant one-two punch to the gut in the form of "3 Out Of 4" and "Staring Newscasters". The former, a 1 minute ode to rotating advertisements and proper nutrition, paired nicely with latter's re-tooled footage of local news anchors, resulting in a subversive hilarity out of seemingly nothing.

But as far as subversive laughs go, there was no denying the standouts of the program, a set of unsettling and darkly humorous films by the Olsen Brothers, "Acmos L'equilibre Enegetique" and "Sacrificio Del Uno Mismo." the first, acting as a stage-setter, poses as found footage of an early 20th-century medical education film, with french narration. Our patient, though, happens to have a bulbous, maniacally smiling clown head, and his innards seem stomach-churningly soft and goopy. "Sacrificio," on the other hand, starts slowly and builds to a surreally visceral climax. A "normal" subject's metamorphosis is documented as a violent, disturbing transition between mankind and clownkind that has the viewer simultaneously laughing and cringing. "Unsettling" hardly does it justice, and the end, with its super-saturated colors and Central and South American religious homage, is downright brilliant.

Continuing the eclecticism, no Portland artistic event is complete without a nod to our liberal underpinnings, and this came in the form of "Air", a too-short look at racism and the Asian experience in America, centering around a specific incident of on-air racism from a New Jersey station. I wished that there was more time and resources available for this subject, because it has a long and untold history in this country (and especially in Portland's history), but the format here only allowed the film to be a short primer and came across more as an advertisement for KBOO than anything else. "Brave New Girl," set to a song by le tigre, said more with less. Rife with suggestive symbolism as a woman chows into a tableful of Betty Crocker dessert classics, pain, sublimation, violation, and exploitation are all brought to the fore without a word other than the samples in the musical track. I found it moving and raw.

"Self Portrait With Johnny," while not explicitly political, touched on the immigrant's life in America, and was also quite moving in its understatement, tracing the thoughts of one half of a post-war era couple as they move between central California and Portland. The simple outlines and warm colors were very evocative and helped universalize the narrative theme.

Of course, there was so much more to talk about, so much more than i have the words for. The surreal gay porn mashup of "Anatomy of a Line," the dark tone return to abstractionism of "Suture," the beautiful electro-color palette of "Best Not Sleep Through It All," the earnest hilarity of "The Great Crane-Off." I wish i had the words and the energy to talk about them all; each so different, and each so very, very, Portland.

Wow. There is good reason that this is such a popular event. Those films were entertaining, exciting, experimental, engaging... I could go on. My absolute favorite was "You Come Home to This, Portland, Oregon" by Orland Nutt. He animated hundreds (thousands?) of still pictures of Portland homes, emphasizing certain design elements that the homes have in common. That sounds simple, doesn't it? It was simple, I suppose. But it was poetic and beautiful.

There were a bunch of other films worth commenting on, but I'm no completist. I will leave the detailed reviewing to DB, who will do an admirable job with that, I'm sure.

The night ended on a very strange note, as Ted Passon went up front and gave an extended introduction to his film. He described the intense affinity he discovered he had with fellow filmmaker Vladimir. He had seen her work the previous year, and claimed to discover that he was actually Vladimir, trapped in the body of Ted. His film consisted of a clip from The Little Mermaid, with Passon's head pasted over the Mermaid's. And we all sang "Part of Your World." Experimental, baby! And also fun.

But then I went home, not to the victory party at Rake Gallery, where the winner of the audience vote was to be announced. So, this is the reader participation part of our program. Please tell us who won, and anything else interesting from the party at Rake, in the comments. Goodnight!

Despite several of the UrbanHonking crew being in attendance at the "Friends and Family" shorts presentation earlier today, we have been unable to blog the shit out of it, due to an experiment we participated in prior to the event, the details of which I will not go into at this time.

I am now sitting in the theater, eagerly anticipating the start of the Invitiational. I'm quite sure every seat will be filled by the time we get rolling. We were given viewmasters and bingo cards as we entered. All sorts of equipment is laying about, including various guitar amps, and a slide projector. What is in store for us at the PDXFF Invitational?

My first day of the fest. I don't usually get the opportunity to attend these kind of events so I wasn't sure what to expect. Since it was a shorts progam, I'll keep this brief.

I walked in on a trippy, repeating image of what appeared to be flower petals falling down. Next up was "Five County Fair", which contained some great sound editing at a rural county fair. A few shorts in a row then featured computerized voices, which seemed a bit excessive, but they were funny and a reminder of the need for human/computer cooperation.

Other shorts of note for me:

"The White Bunny" was a fresh, foreign perspective on things, with some great dream sequence cinematography on a train.

Luke Lamborn's two segments, "Square Millimeter: Cars" & "Square Millimeter: Houses" were highlights for me--the combination of the wonderfully conveyed simple uniformity of life, and the strikingly abstract chaos stayed with me throughout the night. Check out lucidstraw.com to see these and other videos.

"Jawswipe" (it's exactly what it says it is) was cute but ultimately too trivial for me.

"Hotel Pinball Venus" deserves mention as probably the only short where I couldn't figure out what it was, or when it was actually starting (and for that matter, ending).

"Five More Minutes" seemed to require some prerequisite film to explain the dynamic of its two characters. I felt left on the outside of this one.

"Drew Getting Hit By A Car On Belmont" & its companion piece (not sure of the actual title, but it was something like "Drew Getting Bit By A Monkey While Trying To Take A Photo") were great, brief moments captured in apparent, non-scripted video documentation.

Well, that's all from me for now--excited to see the local shorts tomorrow!