PERIPHERAL PRODUCE SHOWS THE KIDS HOW IT'S DONE

Those in attendance at this year's first installment of EFF Portland no doubt heard a lot of conversation about Portland's past as a mecca for experimental film.  To a certain extent, the mission statement of the new festival centered around rebooting that legacy.  One could easily point out the loose collective of video and film artists known as Peripheral Produce as being one of the touchstones of Portland's experimental past.  From the mid-90s through the first decade of the new millennium, the film collective dipped their paws into exhibition, distribution and, perhaps most influentially, began a local festival (PDX Fest) for highlighting experimental fare.

This Saturday night Peripheral Produce rises from the ashes to celebrate the re-release of their 1996 video compilation the Auto-Cinematic Video Mix Tape.  Collective organizer Matt McCormick has cobbled together a showcase of new and old experimental work for the evening's entertainment, replicating the feel of the collective's legendary experimental film nights.  Audiences can expect to see works by McCormick, Miranda July, Vanessa Renwick, Andy Blubaugh, Ashby Lee Collinson, Orland Nutt, Rob Tyler and many more.

Consider it a forum of sorts between the wizened elder statesmen (okay, statespeople...this is the 21st century, after all) and the new school of underground film kids.  By all means, take notes, folks...this is how it's done.

Let's all take a moment to gaze upon an excerpt from the press release:

The August 4th show will feature seminal Portland works along with a selection of new works from Portland’s fast rising “next generation” of experimental filmmakers. The show and DVD features acclaimed artist and filmmaker Miranda July’s 1996 video Atlanta. Atlanta was July’s first significant video piece, and shows the makings of her sharp sense of humor and attention to detail found in her later blockbuster works (Me and You and Everyone We Know, The Future). 

The show and DVD also include writer/filmmaker Jon Raymond’s 1997 piece Battles on the Astral Plane, a clever mocking of the popular Mortal Kombat video game that shows Raymond’s crafty, self-effacing wit that can still be found in his books and screenplays (Wendy and Lucy, Meek’s Cutoff, Livability). Vanessa Renwick, Chel White, Rob Tyler and Matt McCormick also offer works from early in their career. 

Also included in the program is new works from NW Film Festival winner Orland Nutt and TBA darling Ashley Lee Collinson, as well as work from Stephen Slappe, Andrew Blubaugh, Ben Popp, Jim Blashfield, and many others.

The Peripheral Produce manifesto

the subconscious art of graffiti removal (excerpt) from matt mccormick on Vimeo.


Peripheral Produce's dvd release party for the Auto-Cinematic Video Mix Tape happens at the Hollywood Theatre on Saturday, August 4th at 8pm.  More info available here.


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EFF PORTLAND WINDS DOWN WITH CHARISMATIC MEGAFAUNA & MORE

EFF Portland is already nearing the end of its first year's run.  If you still haven't made it out to this year's festival, there's still plenty of stuff to see.  This evening, there's a two-part presentation of shorts going under the name The Upper Crust (part one's at 6pm, here's a link to part two, which begins at 8pm) and more (live performances, a premiere of work by Evan Meaney at 3pm, etc.).

Tomorrow night marks the official end of the festival.  And the good folks at EFF Portland have put together two enticing events to bring it all to a close.  Sunday afternoon at 1pm, the Clinton Street Theater hosts The Dill Pickle Club's latest installment in their ongoing lecture series, A Place Called Home: Lectures on Filmmaking in Portland.  For this month's edition, the D.P.C.'s rounded up local filmmakers Jim Blashfield, Brooke Jacobson and Matt McCormick (a piece on his most recent film was recently featured on the blog here) to talk about their craft and its relationship to place.

The official festival closing spot is occupied by the Portland premiere of Vanessa Renwick's  Charismatic Megafauna at the Hollywood Theatre.  Via e-mail, Renwick communicated that Charismatic Megafauna is the third piece she's made on the topic of wolf reintroduction (this installation piece being one of the others), part of a twelve year process of making a larger work on the topic.  The event will feature a live score performed by Lori Goldston, Jessika Kenney, Dylan Carlson and Greg Campbell.

Here's a snippet from the press release:
Portland Oregon-based radical documentary film maker Vanessa Renwick places 16mm film footage from her own teenage life in inner city Chicago, living with a wolf dog with stunning video documentation shot by biologists reintroducing wolves into the western USA in the late 90’s. We watch the wolf dog scavenging in the gutters of Chicago, and we watch humans performing the act known perversely as “wildlife management” on wolves.


The evening will also feature a rare screening of Renwick’s “Mighty Tacoma.”

Sound and Vision & EFF Portland present Charismatic Megafauna on Sunday, May 27th at the Hollywood Theatre.  More info on the program available here.  More info EFF Portland's showcases, tickets, venues and special events available here.


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