testing 1 2 3

Hooliganship sound check at the Holocene. This show is gonna be awesome! 

Jacob testing out karaoke. kicked some serious ass this afternoon! 

day 3: ready to party!

I hope that everyone has been enjoying the festival. I had to work all day so I missed the two incredible (early) event of the day.  

Just a reminder to everyone that the Peggy Ahwesh program starts in a little under an hour and she'll be in attendance tonight, so it's definitely not one to be missed.  I saw some of her work years ago and am excited for this collection of films (old and new.)

After that, the Karoake Throwdown will be happening at Holocene. This event is A LOT of fun and  was a hit last year! There will also be performances by Rush-N-Disco and Hooliganship. Expect twittering throughout!

a night at the festival

RiP: A Remix Manifesto screening

I wondered how much this film would be relevant to me. As an artist I don't deal with copyright issues on a daily basis, in practice maybe not theory at least but...... this battle recently was thrown into my face by a recent heated debate about what defined "stealing" and what is appropriate. Should filmmakers create their own music for all of their films? Is borrowing music to make a project without getting consent illegal? Or moreover morally okay? These questions have been thrown around recently. As I watched this film unfold, I realized that for myself creativity is limited by rules, and we all must conclude for our own personal use what is appropriate to follow and what is oppressive. And no matter what our choice is, stand by our beliefs and don't back down. Progression can only happen with a fight. I am choosing creativity and swimming through the rest.

I highly recommend this film. It is truly inspiring. 

so much on day 2

Ben Coonley is a genius. His powerpoint last night which involved a lot a dialogue with his cat Otto was amazing. If you were not able to check it out here is a small portion of what you missed. 

Shorts Program #1 - Battle Scars: New Experimental Documentaries

Apologies are due for not getting my morning coffee before attending this screening. Skipping that coffee prevented me from staying attentive during what may have been one of the strongest pieces in this program, Adaptation Fever. Hopefully someone else will comment on this piece or I will get a chance to see it again on a screener copy so I can do the work justice.

There were several pieces in this program I liked a lot. Poor Audrey and Still Life with Ho Chi Minh were the standouts, though I also liked The Sixtus Project quite a bit. A Film Far Beyond God was, for me, completely impenetrable and, in certain assumed conventions (the references to masculine bravado/machismo, Che Guevara, Jim Morrison and Arthur Rimbaud), came across as utterly pretentious. I did not care for this film at all, even on a technical level, as its use of cinematography and superimposition seemed no more than arbitrary. As for the topic of pre-Islamic gods, how that subject relates to anything in this film is beyond me.

Poor Audrey, in contrast, is a beautiful, concise, carefully constructed and emotionally resonant portrait piece. At first it appears to be about the tragedy of Hank Williams life and the superficially possessive reactions after his death. But the real tragedy revealed is Audrey's, Williams wife, who suffered much the same fate and disparagements as Yoko Ono (and, I'm sure, a number of other "wives of famous men"). Great use of minimal imagery for maximum impact. I also really like that this film only hints at the story behind the story. The film makes you wonder rather than causing you to feel like you "know."

Still Life with Ho Chi Minh is another excellent short film. Using untranslated conversations with Minh's personal photographer, the film applies superimposed dirt and filmic debris quite effectively as a metaphor for difficult times and the fragments of history which manage to be passed along in place of the "whole" story. I found the decision to not provide subtitles to be an excellent one as it forced me to concentrate on the footage and the emotional tenor of the voice of the photographer. Like Poor Audrey, a beautiful film I'd like to see again.

The Sixtus Project is quite minimal in its construction. Consisting solely of long takes of docking and unloading ships and a diaristic voiceover, the film manages to quite successfully evoke an attempt at communication between the filmmaker and a man nearing and reaching the end of his life. There are successes and failures within these attempts, but ultimately the film reminds us that we all die alone and that the experience of death is, in many ways, only about the survivor's attempts to find solace by projecting their own desires upon the person who has passed.

If I get an opportunity to watch Adaptation Fever while fully attentive and not nodding off–which I hope I do before the festival is over–I will add to this post.

pdx soup

the fine folks from the PDX Soup Night project swung by the PDX Film Fest with some delicious free soup! PDX hearts PDX!!!