Tomorrow night, the NW Film Center will be screening a showcase of seven short films drawn from Filmmaker Magazine's selections for their 2012 list of the 25 New Faces of Independent Film. Among those films and filmmakers is Oregon's own Ian Clark whose Searching for Yellow is a study of a landscape painter (seriously, the guy literally paints the land) who's dealing with the dissolution of a complicated relationship. Clark will be at the screening to introduce the evening's presentation.
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| Hannah Fidell's The Gathering Squall |
Also in the program is Ian Harnarine's Doubles with Slight Pepper, which concerns a man struggling to make ends meet by selling food out of a mobile cart. When his father returns after a long absence, he is forced to come to terms with both issues of abandonment and mortality. Harnarine's film is well acted, emotionally authentic, and shows a sharp eye for camera placement
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| Ian Clark's Searching for Yellow |
A.J. Rojas' Hey Jane is a music video for the Spiritualized song of the same name. It follows the exploits of a transvestite hooker trying to make a living on the street. It's probably also the most energetic short in the program, kinetic as hell, really. This short is totally not safe for work, but, that's okay, 'cause you'll be far from the confines of your cubicle when viewing it.
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| Ian Harnarine's Doubles with Slight Pepper |
The best two shorts in the program are Jonas Carpignano's A Chjàna and Cutter Hodierne's Fishing without Nets. Carpignano's film sheds light on the experience of African immigrants living in a section of Italy known as "the Plains." The story picks up just as a riot breaks out in protest of violence against the immigrant population. There's an incredible amount of depth explored in just under 20 minutes here and Carpignano's cinematographer Maura Morales Bergmann knows just how to capture the action.
Fishing without Nets is a short film just dying to be expanded to feature length. Hodierne tells the tale of Somalian piracy through the eyes of the men planning to capture a large seagoing vessel. It features amateur actors, vividly captured imagery, and a considerable amount of tension building. This might be the best short I've seen all year.
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| Cutter Hodierne's Fishing Without Nets |
Hannah Fidell's The Gathering Squall is based on short story by Joyce Carol Oates. It's about a traumatic event in a girl's life. It's solid enough, but it might have been even better as a longer piece, since it feels a bit pinched for time as it draws down the curtain on its story.
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| A.G. Rojas' Hey Jane |
There's one more short included in Thursday's presentation (Ryan Coogler's Fig), but I wasn't able to view it before readying this post.
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| Jonas Carpignano's A Chjana (The Plain) |
Filmmaker Magazine's The 25 New Faces of Independent Film screens at the NW Film Center's Whitsell Auditorium (in the Portland Art Museum) on Thursday , September 27th at 7pm. More info available here.
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