CINEMA PROJECT TURNS 10, LOOKS BACK BEFORE MOVING FORWARD

Anyone who's glanced at this blog more than a few times knows that I have a big ol' soft spot in my heart for Cinema Project.  While they're not the only ones in town putting together incredible programs of experimental film (don't worry, EFF Portland, I love you, too), CP has kept their public exhibitions of outré cinema going for longer than most anyone would ever have expected possible.  You think it's difficult for indie and non-profit cinemas to turn a buck nowadays?  How's about a tight little crew of curators/film lovers without a permanent exhibition space and an exclusive focus on non-commercial works of art?  Needless to say, these folks are doing it for love, not money.

Which is why it's so fantastically inspiring that the organization is launching their 10th season this Saturday.  To celebrate their "tin" anniversary, CP is using their first screening of the fall to throw themselves a birthday party with a "best of" film presentation culled from the first 10 years of Cinema Project.

Here's what the good folks at the Project have to say about Saturday night's events:

Over the past ten years Cinema Project has organized and presented more than 100 unique film and video programs and only in rare instances do we ever show the same thing twice. The beginning of a ten-year anniversary, however, seems like a good time to break the rules and break into our own program archive. The first of two “best of” screenings (to be continued in Spring 2014), this program brings together a fun and unlikely mix of work that demonstrates the variety, breadth, and unique curatorial vision that Cinema Project is known for. Each past and present collective member has selected a favorite short film or video that he or she thinks deserves a second look, or that speaks anew to current political and cultural landscapes and personal outlooks. Older, newer, black-and-white, color, sound, silent, representational, abstract, psychedelic, poetic, diaristic, heavy, light: each is a skilled and personal production close to the artist who made it. This is the type of work we champion. 

At 10pm join us downstairs at the VFW Hall for a post-screening party and fall fundraiser kick-off, with DJs Cuica and Calle Danger, snacks, drinks, and sparkling conversation. Bring your dancing shoes!

Here's what's on tap for that evening:

Undefeated by Kevin Jerome Everson 

[US, 2008, video, b&w, sound, 1.5 min.] 

Associations by John Smith 

[US, 1975, 16mm, color, sound, 7 min.] 

 a-b-city by Brigitte Buhler and Dieter Hormel 

[West Germany, 1985, S8 transferred to video, color, sound, 8 min.] 

RE:THE_OPERATION by Paul Chan 

[US, 2002, Digital Video, color, sound, 26 min.] 

Nocturne by Phil Solomon 

[US, 1980/1989, 16mm, color, silent, 10 min.] 

Portrait, Tea Time, and Red Curtain by Helga Fanderl 

[Germany, 1992-2009, S8 blown up to 16mm, 18fps, color, silent, 7 min.] 

Offon by Scott Barlett 

[US, 1968, 16mm, color, sound, 10 min.] 

Ninety-Three by Kevin Jerome Everson 

[US, 2008, video, b&w, silent, 3 min.]

They had me at the inclusion Phil Solomon's Nocturne.  Need convincing?  How's about a look at another one of Solomon's films, PSALM III: "NIGHT OF THE MEEK" to wet your whistle before Saturday arrives.  It lives here.

Cinema Project celebrates their 10th year of existence on Saturday, September 28th at the VFW Hall (825 SE Mill St.).  More info available here.

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CINEMA PROJECT presents SOUND, SOUND, SOUND, SOUND, SCREEN!

Cinema Project closes out their Fall 2012 season on Tuesday and Wednesday night with Sound, Sound, Sound, Sound, Screen!, a selection of short films focusing on the relationship that sound has to image.  Curated by Andrew Ritchey, the program incorporates new works by Sarah RaRa and Robert Todd alongside films reaching as far back as Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray's 1926 collaborative experiment Anémíc Cinéma.

Here's what Cinema Project has to say about their final screening at Yale Union until Spring 2013:

Sound, Sound, Sound, Screen! Curated by Andrew Ritchey Cinema Project at Yale Union (YU) At the cinema, sound is all part of the screen. Or is it? What happens between the sounds and screen? It takes time to work it out. From sound to screen, you'll see and hear all of what there is. But what is it? Do you think you know what you're seeing? Is this the cinema as you see it? Sometimes the sound sounds something before you, and you haven't even heard it. And then the screen screens something from you. Do you see it? Is this cinema? In every case it's cinema, because the cinema is all there is. It's all the sounds on screen! When you make sense of it you'll see and hear all of what we were all just pretending to be missing. 

ARSENIC gives you words before images. Do these words make sense? I don't think so. KINO DA! is a bit of Marxist propaganda. Is the poet just an epiphenomenon of film's material base? I guess so! Then, FOUR SHADOWS, each shadow cast from sound and image: a text by Wordsworth, a diagram after Cézanne, a family of Gibbon apes... like constellations wheeling round, a double chain of sight and sound in sixteen permutations. (That's what Larry Gottheim said, anyway.) 

You've seen ANÉMIC CINÉMA, I guess. Some say it goes well with the music of Ravel, played very, very softly, with all the captions translated. That's how we'll do it, and the wheeling words un-Ravel! (Some puns better left unsaid.) Then, THIS IS IT, which is really, really it. A child plays Adam in Eden's suburban housing developments. What could be more this than this? Perhaps A RAY ARRAY, which is all delay, from its beginning before the word. Is this it? All sixteen video chapters, waiting for you. How much time will it take to see it? Is this really, really it?  

Join us for this final event of the season – a program on two nights, curated by Andrew Ritchey. Featuring recent work by Robert Todd and Sarah RaRa (lucky dragons, Sumi Ink Club); and the belated Portland premiere of Larry Gottheim's masterwork of image-sound analysis, Four Shadows (1978), part three in the four-part "Elective Affinities" series.

Cinema Project presents Sound, Sound, Sound, Sound, Screen! on Tuesday, December 11th and Wednesday, December 12th at 7:30pm.  More info on the program available here.


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CINEMA PROJECT presents ALL DIVIDED SELVES

Switching things up a bit this month, Cinema Project hosts All Divided Selves, the new feature-length, experimental documentary on infamous psychiatrist R.D. Laing, blending his life and impressions concerning mental illness into a simultaneously riveting and sometimes alienating piece that at teeters towards evoking the psychosis on which the film's subject was a self-proclaimed expert.

Watching director Luke Fowler's work on Laing doesn't so much invite one into a easily digestible knowledge of the man and his work as much as it conveys the reeling sensation of entering into a position located somewhere between Laing's ideas and the basis for his theories.  All Selves Divided is a fascinating and uniquely discombobulating piece.  By refusing to go the easy route of relaying Laing's story simply, Fowler has arrived at far more impressionistic, intoxicating, and, quite often, more troubling result.

Here's what Cinema Project has to say about the film:

All Divided Selves is a sensorially rich and intellectually engaging visual biography of the charismatic and controversial Scottish psychiatrist, R.D. Laing, and his contemporaries. Luke Fowler's feature-length experimental documentary is constructed from countless hours of historical film and video recordings of interviews, television appearances, and instructional documentation. The video loosely follows a historical arc that details Laing’s media-captured transition from popular professional practitioner into something like a cult hero. Scene after scene features Laing explaining the experiential dimension of psychosis in language that is mesmerizing and lucid. The low fidelity archival film footage also provides a gritty, dusty, and anarchic rendering of Laing’s post-war Glasgow punctuated by Fowler’s original and highly personal visual refrains depicting colorful, textured abstract landscapes and poetic, subtle imagery. Fowler further galvanizes the visual dimensions of his high-definition video work with a surround-sound score that features original field recordings and music by Éric La Casa, Jean-Luc Guionnet and Alasdair Roberts. The result is a psycho-phenomenological viewing and listening experience that will emotionally envelop, transport and haunt viewers.

Cinema Project presents All Divided Selves on Tuesday, November 27th and Wednesday, November 28th at 7:30pm.  More info on the program available here.


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CINEMA PROJECT presents THE SUPER-8 DREAMS OF SAUL LEVINE

Over the coming days, Cinema Project welcomes experimental filmmaker Saul Levine to town for a two-night presentation of his unique, mostly analog-based film work.  Dubbed The Super-8 Dreams of Saul Levine, the program's title is rather apt, as the pieces I've been fortunate enough to view have the feel of subconscious narratives arrived at during slumber; Levine's editing style operates in an additive mode, exposing and/or building connections instead of being purposed primarily toward erecting rhythms.  Levine points to his exposure to Maya Deren and Viking Eggling's work as a freeing moment, one that helped him stop "making editing decisions based on story and start making them based on shape, memory, and association."

No matter how he reached the underlying principles that inform those editing choices, he's created an impressive body of mysteriously associative work in his decades long dedication to experimental form.  At this week's event, Levine and Cinema Project will be highlighting over twenty works (each night is an entirely different set of films) and that doesn't even begin to cover his full output.  I've embedded three of Levine's works below, none of which are a part of The Super-8 Dreams of Saul Levine.  Why not check those out for a small inkling of what to expect at Monday and Tuesday's retrospective.

And what might the organizers of Cinema Project have to say about their booking?  Let's see:

Saul Levine has been making films for over 35 years, most of them in the small-guage formats of 8mm and Super8mm. His films record the extraordinary in the ordinary, making timeless images from daily events. His parents become your parents, a couple walking on the beach could be any couple, from any time. The intensive editing process provides a rhythm that gives even the silent films a sense of sound, while the sound films become masterpieces of noise and light. In Notes of an Early Fall, a melted record skips on the turntable providing the beat for a jumble of shots that in the end finds unity. Splice tape is a texture on the film landscape, lengthening and defining the time between shots, many of which are single frames. 

The Notes series celebrates the breathtaking beauty of daily life: children playing in the snow, romance in the afternoon light, a joke told in Hebrew, smoke curling in front of an open window. Note to Colleen cuts so quickly between the faces of people having their portraits drawn on the street and the portrait being drawn that the two become indistinguishable. His Light Licks series is a more formal tampering with the film frame and the relationship between space and image, light and darkness. Over two nights, Cinema Project shows a broad sweep of Levine’s work, from the 1960s to current films, to highlight his important and ongoing contributions to the American avant-garde.

Cinema Project presents The Super-8 Dreams of Saul Levine on Monday, November 12th and Tuesday, November 13th at 7:30pm.  More info on the program available here.


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CINEMA PROJECT presents TWO WORKS BY CHRIS MARKER

The Sixth Side of the Pentagon (image courtesy of Icarus Films)

Just three months after his passing, Cinema Project has arranged for a special screening of two of Chris Marker's (La Jetée, Grin Without a Cat) lesser seen works.  Made during the time during which he was engaged in political collective filmmaking with SLON, The Sixth Side of the Pentagon documents the October '67 march on the Pentagon by anti-war activists.  Marker provides his usual sometimes acerbic, sometimes playful commentary over images of Vietnam protesters gathering and then clashing with government forces outside the world's largest symbol of military power.

The Sixth Side of the Pentagon (image courtesy of Icarus Films)

A bientôt j'espère (Be Seeing You) captures a 1967 workers strike at a textile factory in Besançon, France.  The film offers a view of what is essentially a precursor to the larger protests of May 1968, as the factory workers incorporated non-economic demands into their action.  A bientôt j'espère is the rarer of the two works being shown this week; trust me, even the internet can't help you see this one with English subtitles (CP's screening of the film, however, will be subtitled in English).

A bientôt j’espère (image courtesy of Icarus Films)

Here's what the good folks at Cinema Project have to say about this Tuesday and Wednesday night's showcase:

Pioneer of the essay film, photographer, artist, and cat lover, Chris Marker will be missed. From 1967 to 1976, Marker was a member of the film cooperative SLON (Société pour le Lancement des Oeuvres Nouvelles / Society for the Production of New Works), which was dedicated to activist film production, based on the idea that cinema should not be thought of solely in terms of commerce. 

To inspire new activist filmmaking and to pay tribute to this prolific and influential figure, we bring two SLON produced works. A bientôt j’espère depicts workers at a textile factory on strike in pre-May 1968 France and The Sixth Side of the Pentagon chronicles the 1967 Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam protest march on the Pentagon.

Cinema Project presents Two Works by Chris Marker on Tuesday, October 23rd and Wednesday, October 24th at 7:30pm.  More info on the program available here.


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CINEMA PROJECT presents PETITS POÈMES FLEURIS - THE FILMS OF ROSE LOWDER

This event crept up on me in a BIG way.  I've been pretty distracted while working the hustle and bustle of Video Verite's going out of business sale and (somehow) I lost all track of when the Rose Lowder retrospective was going down.  That being said, the Cinema Project folks certainly did their part to keep me up to date with their plans, delivering multiple essays and e-mails my way.  Sometimes, it seems; I can be a slacker, despite all the furious multitasking I do.  But enough excuses, what about the show?

Monday and Tuesday night brings a special evening of cinematic works by the French experimental filmmaker Rose Lowder.  The program is packed with thirteen shorts of deeply saturated, frame-by-frame magic, all of which, as is Cinema Project's curatorial forte, are difficult to see anywhere else.

Here's what the good folks at "the Project" have to say about the lineup:

Focusing on the colors, lines, and textures of the natural environment--flowers are a frequent subject--many of French filmmaker Rose Lowder’s films are quite literally composed frame by frame. Trained as a painter and sculptor, and having worked as a film editor, Rose is a continual experimenter in incamera editing. The technique she developed for her film Les tournesols (Sunflowers) involves adjusting the focus for each individual frame of film, moving to the next subject rather than using a zoom. The effect is a simultaneous feeling of movement and stability, creating a series of jumps and overlaps of bright sunflowers. In Voiliers et coquelicots (Poppies and Sailboats), one sees a surprising cross between Impressionism and Structuralism where colors are forced side by side, like the deep orange of the poppies in one frame and the cobalt blue of the water in the next. At times the frames seem to multiply onto the image and at other times they seem to divide. Then suddenly for a moment the sailboats are gliding among the poppy fields. 

Portland will be Rose’s first stop on her West Coast tour this fall. Join us for two unique nights of her work, including discussion with the filmmaker herself. Rose will also be at the Northwest Film Center School of Film on Sunday, October 7th for the free event “A Conversation with Rose Lowder” starting at 4pm. For more information, check nwfilm.org/school.

Cinema Project presents Petits Poèmes Fleuris: The Films of Rose Lowder on Monday, October 8th and Tuesday, October 9th at 7:30pm.  More info on the program available here.


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CINEMA PROJECT presents TORSE

Cinema Project's fall season opens this coming Saturday and Sunday night with an extremely rare showing of a collaborative piece by Charles Atlas and Merce Cunningham.  Torse is a split-screen dance performance prepared for the stage and committed to film in late 70s by the duo.  The program kicks off Cinema Project's year-long residency at Yale Union.


Here's a description of the film from the Cinema Project website:

Merce Cunningham’s dance “Torse” focuses on the flexibility of the back, expanding on five basic positions (upright, arch, tilt, twist, and curve) into 64 possible movements, the total number of symbolic hexagrams in the I Ching. Steps and phrases are arrived at not by instinct or a sense of flow, but through a methodical approach that also happens to be chance driven. The stand-alone filmed version, Torse (1977), from long-time Cunningham collaborator Charles Atlas, continues mathematically. 

Shot at the University of Washington with three 16mm cameras—two mobile and manned by Cunningham and Atlas to capture close-ups and a third stationary—Atlas edited the piece to appear on two screens side by side. This strategy allows viewers to see the dance from various vantage points at once. From Einstein’s theory of relativity, Cunningham took the idea that there are no fixed points in space, therefore no intended perspective point, no preferred seat from which to watch. 

This recent HD restoration also includes the original soundtrack by composer Maryanne Amacher. As with many of Cunningham’s works, the music is created completely separate from the dance. In Torse, then, rhythm is felt then not through musical timing, but through the speed of and weight change from one position to the next. 

Cinema Project presents Torse on Friday, September 29th and Saturday, September 30th at 9pm.  More info on the program available here.


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CINEMA PROJECT & THE CREATIVE MUSIC GUILD present 13 SUMMERS

It's nearly impossible to talk about Timothy Treadwell without acknowledging the impact that Werner Herzog's 2005 documentary Grizzly Man has had on the public's understanding of him and his work.  For most, myself included, Herzog's incredible film was an introduction to the man, one that focused attention primarily on his demise, negating much of what his intent as a naturalist might have been as he spent his summers communing with the natural world.

 Photo © Timothy Treadwell

As Cinema Project's spring season draws to a close, they've put together a rare opportunity for Portland to view Treadwell's work as a filmmaker and photographer, divorced of any commentary associated with his end.  Heather Lane, one of the organizers of the collective, states that, "this is an attempt on our part to change the focus on Timothy Treadwell from who he was (and how he died), to what he accomplished as a filmmaker and photographer."
"The footage does not include him, but focuses on the animals and landscape. It is amazing that we have been given access to this footage and have been allowed to edit it for this show, something that Cinema Project has never done before as an organization."

Photo © Timothy Treadwell 

The result, 13 Summers, draws from the footage that Treadwell shot over the course of his time in the Alaskan wild.  This single-night event, arranged in conjunction with the opening of The Creative Music Guild's Experimental Music and Art Festival, will pair the images with live musical accompaniment, courtesy of an ensemble of local and traveling musicians. 

 Photo © Timothy Treadwell

Here's Cinema Project's press release detailing the presentation:

This program features a multi-screen projection performance of footage from filmmaker and naturalist Timothy Treadwell. With live accompani­ment by an ensemble of local and international musicians, this event opens the Creative Music Guild's Experimental Music and Art Festival. Treadwel spent thirteen summers in Hallo Bay and Kaflia Bay in Alaska, living among and filming grizzly bears. His life and death have been well docu­mented, but his work as a filmmaker and photographer has been some­what overlooked. 

This screening is an attempt at un-tethering the footage from narration and from media-driven perspective, in order to highlight the beautiful and majestic images as they are. With the addition of a live musical soundtrack, the audience's experience of the natural world and theanimalsweshareitwith becomes more immediate, and more personal Timothy Treadwell's footage was generously made available to us through Grizzly People, a grassroots organization devoted to preserving bears and their wilderness habitat in the hopes that humans will learn to live in peace with the bear, wilderness, and fellow humans. 

UPDATE: The Creative Music Guild's Facebook page reports that the ensemble for the event will include:

Tim DuRoche- percussion
Reed Wallsmith - saxophone
Jon Shaw - bass
Doug Theriault - guitar, noise
Dan Duval - guitar
Joe Cunningham- saxophone
Maybe more too.
 

Cinema Project & The Creative Music Guild present 13 Summers at the Bamboo Grove Salon on Friday, June 8th.  More info on the program available here.


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CINEMA PROJECT & EFF PORTLAND present THE ANIMALS & THEIR LIMITATIONS: FILMS BY JIM TRAINOR

Cinema Project joins forces this week with the premiere edition of EFF Portland (more coverage of the fest here) to present the animated films of Jim Trainor.  Trainor, who once received the mixed blessing of being shit on by the Mercury; an honor that was later re-examined by an article in the Art Institute of Chicago's student publication where Trainor questioned some people's ability to "get" the work, creates his films mostly with pen and ink on paper, which he then captures on 16mm. 

Tomorrow night's event includes seven of Trainor's idiosyncratic films.  For more on the program, here's the Cinema Project press release:

Since the harmony of nature is actually based on an unhappy system of things destroying other things, I am continually struck and amused by nature documentaries' almost compulsive tendency to try to comfort us instead of leaving us stranded in existential horror, where we belong. —Jim Trainor 

As part of the first-ever Experimental Film Festival Portland, Grand Detour and Cinema Project are pleased to present Chicago filmmaker Jim Trainor. Trainor's strange animation takes the traditional set-up of science and anthropological films and turns it on its head, giving the power of narration to the animals and the headhunters themselves. "I killed my identical twin sister, " a hyena confesses in Harmony. "I killed my sister. But then since I am only an animal, I kept looking for her everywhere." In Magic Kingdom, live-action shots of animals in the zoo are interspersed with the ever-pres­ent animated dots that act as tender representations of the pulse of living beings. Working almost exclusively on 16mm, Trainor often starts out simply with Sharpie and white paper. Perfection is not the point, instead the films purposefully quiver, underlining the subject matter's dark humor.

And here's the lineup of films:


The Presentation Theme [2008, 16mm, b&w, sound, 14min.] 
The Bats [1998, 16mm, color, sound, 8 min.] 
The Moschops pt. I [2000, 16mm, b&w, sound, 6 min.] 
The Moschops pt. II [2000, 16mm, b&w, sound, 6 min.] 
The Skulls and the Skulls and the Bones and the Bones [2003, video, color, sound, 13 min.] 
Harmony [2005, 16mm, color, sound, 13 min.] 
The Magic Kingdom [2002, 16mm, color, sound, 7 min.]

Cinema Project & EFF Portland present The Animals and Their Limitations on Thursday, May 24th.  More info on the program available here.  More info EFF Portland's showcases, tickets, venues and special events available here.


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CINEMA PROJECT presents SHOW & TELL: THE WORK OF DANI LEVENTHAL

Early next week, Cinema Project is bringing a 2-day presentation of video works by New York-based artist Dani Leventhal to Portland.  Harnessing an approach to moving images that points to a background in sculpture and illustration, there's a transparency of origin present within her videos that speaks to strategies based in additive and subtractive processes.  Leventhal gathers materials constantly; the piece 54 Days This Winter 36 Days This Spring for 18 Minutes is the product of an extensive period of videotaping, culling from life the raw materials of her art.  It's the manner in which she then collages these elements into resolutely non-narrative and constantly shifting finished works that makes them uniquely her own. 

A still from Draft 9

Can I tell you specifically what any of the three videos of hers I've seen is about?  Not really; again, we're talking about aggressively non-narrative work here.  But the confounding paths traced within each piece achieve a lot more than just holding one's attention.  Draft 9, for example, inspires both recoil and fascination, offering up disquieting images of taxidermy and roadkill stitched together with visions of geese taking flight over snow covered ground, blended with dives into dense fields of hair and skin, etc.

A still from 54 Days This Winter 36 Days This Spring for 18 Minutes

Maybe it's best to just jump in and experience the works for yourself.  Or defer to Leventhal herself for explanations of intent.  Here's a very good interview with Leventhal about her background, process, and the how the connections that she identifies within the images she films help guide the shapes of the finished pieces.

A still from Hearts are Trump Again

And here's the press release from Cinema Project:
Dani Leventhal’s videos are the result of a commitment to constantly recording her immediate world, carrying her camera with her every­where, often mounted on her bicycle. From this process she stitches images together in a loose essayistic or diaristic style—a montage that takes us on a journey, but with a destination that is anything but clear. The individual shots seem mundane, but together become hyperreal, giving fresh insight into a personal contemporary world. In the award-winning Draft 9, Leventhal cuts between skinned animals, well-fed pets, her grandfather’s Holocaust-tattooed arm, and her own romantic liaisons to create, in the words of critic Genevieve Yue, “something that is extraordinarily immediate, both fresh and painful, hard to watch and yet impossible not to watch.” In Show and Tell in the Land of Milk and Honey, Leventhal juxtaposes bucolic shots of farm life with tales of sexual harassment and sick chickens while living and working in Israel while in 9 Minutes of Kaunaus, she captures the fanta­sies of a wide-eyed boy whose older brother serves in the Israeli army. 

"While Dani is often tagged as a diary filmmaker, the works as a whole complicate that term so much that it becomes ultimately rather unhelpful for understanding her project. At times, her videos can recall the way that Nathaniel Dorsky’s films spin the majestic from the mundane. Like Dorsky, Leventhal seeks out images with singularity and weight, alive to the imme­diacy of the moment—a moment that will never return."
 —Chris Stults 

Cinema Project presents Show & Tell: The Work of Dani Leventhal at the Hollywood Theatre on Tues., May 15th and Wed., May 16th at 7pm.  With the exception of Draft 9, which plays both nights, Tuesday and Wednesday night's programs are made up of entirely different material.   More info on the program available here.


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CINEMA PROJECT presents ROCK & RELIGION: THE MEDIUM OF WORSHIP

Cinema Project's April presentation pairs together two very different portraits of religious fervor rooted in American culture.  Peter Adair's 1967 documentary, Holy Ghost People, focuses its attention on a small Appalachian church in West Virginia as its Pentecostal congregation communes with the spirit.  Also on the program is Dan Graham's Rock My Religion, an audio and video collage from the early 80s that attempts to align foundational religious movements of the American past with the devotional and spiritual connotations of the rock and roll experience.

A still from Holy Ghost People

Adair's film falls firmly within the cinéma vérité tradition, evoking comparisons to the best work by the Maysles and Frederick Wiseman.  As the piece opens, individual members of the church describe their practices of speaking in voices, snake-handling and drinking strychnine as a means of invoking ecstatic religious experience.  The film quickly moves into a worship situation; the service rapidly shifting from a simmer to a convulsive boil of singing, writhing and improvisational dance as Adair's cameras quietly capture the congregation's fervent acts of devotion.

A still from Holy Ghost People

Holy Ghost People is a hypnotic viewing experience that deserves inclusion in the canon of great American non-fiction cinema.  It's mandatory viewing for anyone interested in religion, subcultures or subjects based in Americana.  Plus, the church music captured in the piece is, believe it or not, exceptionally groovy.

A still from Rock My Religion

Graham's film is a far more experimental work, stitching together its video components with musical and spoken elements in an intentional stop/start pattern, suggesting at first the disorganized ramblings of a wandering consciousness.  It's a potent mix that revels in the sideways proving of Graham's thesis; drawing parallels between Ann Lee's Shakers and the quasi-religious relationship between rock music, its icons, and its fans, via less than conventional means.

A still from Rock My Religion

Rock My Religion is a mysterious object that befuddles as much as it intrigues; there are sequences throughout the work when two messages (one spoken, the other conveyed in text) unfold simultaneously, playfully disallowing full comprehension of what's being forwarded.  The best sequence might very well be when Graham layers the strains of No Wave-based punk over images of "holy rollers" overtaken by the spirit.  It's a heady, sometimes confusing piece that, with its jarring edits and unexpected juxtaposing of material, constantly dares the viewer to extrapolate beyond what's being presented onscreen. 

Cinema Project presents Rock & Religion: The Medium of Worship at the Hollywood Theatre on Tues., April 17th and Wed., April 18th at 7pm.  More info on the program available here.


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Me & Cinema Project...we go waaaayy back

Okay, it turns out I lied...sorta.  I'd said in my earlier post today that I'd seen my first Cinema Project presentation back in 2008.  Not at all true.  Having mentioned Janie Geiser in that previous entry, I began thinking about a TBA (Portland's annual Time-Based Art festival) presentation of her work that I'd seen not long after returning to Oregon from Berkeley.  Turns out that event was co-curated by Cinema Project & PICA.  So a correction is in order.  Me and Cinema Project...we go waaaayy back...to 2004.

Here's a link to the promotional page for The Emotional Lives of Inanimate Objects, Ms. Geiser's career-long retrospective program from '04.  She was in attendance at the event and what she had to say was greatly inspiring to my own process, even though my work shares little in common with hers.

And here's a couple samples of that work:

Remember, Cinema Project still needs help making their programming and operational budget for this and next season.  Anyone interested in kicking in some much needed funds should head here immediately.  These folks do great work and only have 8 days remaining in their online funding campaign.  With Kickstarter campaigns, it's all or nothing, so help out if you can!


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Cinema Project needs a boost from YOU!

Local non-profit Cinema Project is nearing the final week of a Kickstarter fundraising campaign that will help keep them operational all the way through next season.  As PDX's shining star of experimental and art film exhibition, the organization is absolutely worthy of your support.

My own first encounter with Cinema Project dates back to 2008 when they were able to secure the scarcely seen short films by Apichatpong Weerasethakul for a screening at the Whitsell Auditorium.  Other notable past presentations have included Jonas Mekas' mind-blowingly epic cinematic diary Walden, the most recent work by experimental puppet theater and film director Janie Geiser and far too many other rare gems to recount here.

An excerpt from Walden (1969) by Jonas Mekas:

An excerpt from Worldly Desires (2005) by Apichatpong Weerasethakul:

Even a quick perusal of this season's schedule reveals that Cinema Project's programming is unlike anything else on offer in Portland.  We're extremely fortunate to have these folks kicking around our town, especially when one considers how few organizations like this are available on the national scene.

Here's a link to their Kickstarter page, complete with a budgetary breakdown of what operations the funds will cover.  And as of this writing, they've got about 8 days left to raise just under $2K.  As with most Kickstarter campaigns, there are "prizes" associated with the various levels of support.  Lend them a hand, if you can.  And don't forget to check out one of their upcoming screenings...the next one's on October 11th at 6p.m.


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Cinema Project & NW Film Center present EMPTY QUARTER

Cinema Project and the NW Film Center are banding together this coming Friday, January 28th at 7pm to present a special screening of the new 16mm film by directors Alain Letourneau and Pam Minty.  Empty Quarter is, as the film's promotional website describes it:

"...about the region of Southeast Oregon, an area populated by ranching and farming communities, in Lake, Harney, and Malheur counties. The region is roughly one-third of Oregon’s landmass yet holds less than 2% of the state’s population.

Southeast Oregon, though familiar by name is a foreign place, particularly to those who reside in urban environments. It is a landscape in the making, constantly undergoing change, being re-worked. It is a highly politicized landscape, evoking differing opinions concerning resource management and land use. It is also a landscape that is, despite some beliefs, rich with diversity, as seen by the presence of East Indian families, Japanese families, ancestors of Basque sheep herders, home to the Paiute tribes people, and to Latinos who have come to help work the land.

Empty Quarter borrows from earlier forms of documentary. Rather than subscribe to a modern form of documentary replete with talking heads and B-roll images, Empty Quarter presents stark portraits, waiting to be explored and digested by the viewer. Their meaning can be felt in the slow process of accumulation and measured response. Through a series of stationary shots, recording open landscapes and activities of local residents, Empty Quarter reflects on the character of the region. Natural areas are viewed among images of industry, various labor processes, resource management and recreation. Voices of local residents describe the history of pioneer settlement, social life of rural communities, and the struggles of small town economies."

Empty Quarter screens at the Whitsell Auditorium at 7pm this coming Friday night (1/28).  The Whitsell Auditorium is located at 1219 SW Park Ave.  Portland, OR 97205