A diversity of film events turn up at once, making for a rich and hectic week.
Vito Russo from "Vito" at QDocsThe weather may be hollering, ‘get outside,’ but Portland filmlovers have ample reason to head for the great indoors in the coming week.
Two festivals of note and a barnstorming film tour highlight a truly eclectic crop of movie choices, and we’ve got the skinny on all three.
QDoc (by Grant Butler)
Portland’s
Queer Documentary Film Festival, kicked off at
McMenamins Kennedy School on Thursday night with “Wish Me Away,” about country singer Chely Wright, followed by a big party at downtown’s new restaurant Corazon. But the festival kicks into high gear today, with screenings of 11 additional films being held Friday through Sunday. Here are five of the standouts:
“King of Comics” German cartoonist
Ralf König has been shocking and entertaining readers since the 1980s with his graphic and often hilarious comic books
“Gay Comix.” His drawing style is reminiscent of
R. Crumb, with a touch of delicious crude humor. This portrait of the artist shows him giving a hilarious reading of some of his best stories, intermixed with a melancholy look at his life, which has involved broken relationships and loneliness, showing there can be tears behind the laughter. This is a 21-and-over screening.
(9 p.m. Friday; 80 minutes; Germany) B+
“Question One” President Obama’s endorsement of same-sex marriage earlier this month is just the latest chapter in the ongoing debate over marriage equality, and this documentary offers an even-handed look at the emotions on both sides of the issue. In 2009, Maine’s state legislature approved same-sex marriage, prompting a constitutional ballot battle that ended with voters overturning the right to marry by a significant margin. Filmmakers
Joe Fox and
James Nubile follow both gay activists fighting the ballot measure, as well as Christian supporters and ministers who believe that marriage can only be defined as between a man and a woman. The film captures the complex thoughts and concerns of people on both sides of the referendum — no easy task. The filmmakers and one of their subjects,
Darlene Huntress, will be in attendance.
(6 p.m. Saturday; 113 minutes; United States) A “This Is What Love In Action Looks Like” Gay-conversion therapy is one of the most-controversial practices by some churches today. It prompted a national firestorm in 2005 when a Tennessee program called
Love In Action became the focal-point of protests after a 16-year-old gay boy was forced into the program by his parents against his wishes. Memphis bloggers and activists began protesting outside the treatment facility, eventually getting the attention of national TV news, leading to the eventual dissolution of the program. This film asks questions about the intersection of Christian faith and free will, and whether any gay-conversion programs have any merit — not just those directed at teens. Director
Morgan Jon Fox will be in attendance.
(11:30 a.m. Sunday; 70 minutes; United States) B+
“Love Free or Die” Gene Robinson made international news when he was made a bishop of the Episcopal Church in New Hampshire in 2003, prompting the Anglican Church to ban him from its 10-year conference of bishops five years later. But Robinson went to England anyway, shadowing the conference with speeches at a handful of churches that dared to invite him to preach. The portrait shows how Robinson’s efforts to get the Episcopal Church to recognize same-sex marriage and the role that gays and lesbians have in the clergy is fleshed out with snapshots of his homelife, including his own marriage to his longtime partner when it became legal in New Hampshire. Director
Macky Alston will be in attendance.
(4 p.m. Sunday; 82 minutes; United States) A- “Vito” Gay film historian
Vito Russo helped show the dismal way that Hollywood has treated gays and lesbians on film with his landmark book
“The Celluloid Closet” and his live presentations in the 1980s that showed hundreds of examples of homophobia on film. But Russo was more than a scholar, becoming an outspoken activist in the early years of the AIDS crisis, before the disease cut his own life short. Interviews with family, friends, and archival interviews with Russo create a full portrait of someone who loved cinema, and wanted to see gays and lesbians depicted fairly in the medium. Director
Jeffrey Schwarz will be in attendance.
(7 p.m. Sunday; 93 minutes; United States) AFull ticket and program information
The Great Northwest Film Tour
(by Shawn Levy)
The Oscar-nominated cartoonist
Bill Plympton is, of course, a native son of Oregon, so it’s only right and proper that he bring a film about his life and art to his home state. And by that you can take it to mean
the whole state -- or as much of it as hosts a McMenamins brewpub movie theater.
“Adventures in Plymptoons,” directed by
Alexia Anastasio and featuring interviews with a great many of Plympton’s peers and chums, both local and national, will play at no fewer eight of the McMenamin brothers’ theaters in a span of nine days. And Plympton and Anastasio will be on hand throughout the event to discuss their project.
The
tour, which has been mounted by the
Oregon Media Production Association trade group, begins on Saturday at the
Mission Theater in Portland, followed by screenings at the
Old St. Francis School in Bend (Sunday), the
Kennedy School in Portland (Tuesday), the
Grand Lodge in Forest Grove (Wednesday), the
Olympic Club in Centralia, Washington (Thursday), the
Edgefield Powerstation in Troutdale (Friday, May 25), the
Bagdad Theater in Portland (Saturday, May 26) and the
St. Johns Theater in Portland (Sunday, May 27).
Saturday’s event is being billed as an “Industry Premiere,” with many of Portland’s famed animators and filmmakers expected to attend. And the next-to-last show, on May 26, is a gala fundraiser for the OMPA, with musical performer Weird Al Yankovic adding to the festivities.
Full ticket and schedule informationExperimental Film Festival Portland (by Shawn Levy)
It’s been a few years since
Peripheral Produce has held one of its seminal
PDX Film Fests, and that hasn’t been because there’s been a lack of new experimental film projects created in this most creative of towns. Rather, PDX Fest honcho Matt McCormick has been working busily films of his own and simply hasn’t been up to the heavy task.
With the thought that it would take a whole collective of people to replace McCormick and his team, the filmmakers in the group called
Grand Detour have combined their talents to mount a new festival dedicated to film on the margins.
Experimental Film Festival Portland (or, cheekily, EFF Portland) will run from Tuesday, May 22 through Sunday, May 27, with premieres of new works from, among many others, Portlanders Vanessa Renwick, Pam Minty, and Karl Lind.
The several programs, comprising dozens of films in all, bear names like “Eruption,” “Mycology” and “Magma Flow” and screen at various locations around town. It all climaxes on May 27 with the Dill Pickle Club history group hosting a symposium on experimental film at the Clinton Street Theater,featuring new work from McCormick, Brooke Jacobson and Jim Blashfield, and, later in the day, the premiere of Renwick’s new film, “Charismatic Megafauna,” presented at the Hollywood Theatre with live musical score.
Full ticket and schedule information
