Last year's Chinese submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar—a rare documentary in a category dominated by narrative films—offers a fascinating, human perspective on Beijing's preparations for the 2008 Olympics. Filmed over the course of five years, DREAM WEAVERS follows five interwoven story lines: the plight of one of the 4,000 families who were relocated to make room for the Olympic Village; the construction of the innovative, welded-steel Bird's Nest stadium; the grueling regime of young female gymnasts; the training of hurdler Liu Xiang; and the training of the Beijing SWAT team.

Admission is free for Portland Art Museum members or with admission ticket to “China Design Now,” on view until January 17.

San Francisco film and video maker George Kuchar is one of the most interesting and prolific (over 200 works) media makers working today. With his homemade Super-8 and 16mm potboilers and melodramas of the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s, he became legendary as one of the most distinctive and outrageous American underground filmmakers. In the 1980s he transitioned to video, making dozens of subversive, witty, often diaristic works employing friends, students (at the San Francisco Art Institute), and whatever might be creatively (“no-budget”) at hand. Tonight’s sampling of recent works includes, along with other surprises, THE HAIRY HORROR (2009), a short meditation on a tall terror in the trees that shade shadowy giants from the glare of sanity; BURRITO BAY (2009), a video diary about the making of another of his films, TROPICAL VULTURE, which “blends Hollywood glamour and drama with an all-too-real-life approach”; PORTRAIT OF GENIE (2008)—"An ex-student of mine opens up in the privacy of her home and shows me her etchings (watercolors) as we talk of art and things that slip under the fabric of daily attire";  and X MASS (2008)—“A California winter turns the left coast into a brew of foaming festivities while landlubbers leap for joy in the spray of salty slurping.” "[Kuchar’s films] were my first inspiration…the pivotal films of my youth, bigger influences than Warhol, Kenneth Anger, even THE WIZARD OF OZ."—John Waters.

Co-presented by QDoc: Portland Queer Documentary Film Festival. Kuchar also visits the School of Film for conversations with filmmakers.

George Kuchar will give a free lecture on February 1, 2010 as part of PSU's MFA Monday Night Lecture Series. Click here for more information.

Bernice Rose, currently the chief curator of the Menil Collection’s Drawing Institute and Study Center, was director of the PaceWildenstein gallery in New York when she joined with its owner, Arne Glimcher, to develop an ambitious gallery show on Braque and Picasso. The 2007 exhibition and book, “Picasso, Braque and Early Film in Cubism,” explored the neglected influence of early cinema on Picasso and Braque’s revolutionary art movement. Glimcher’s hunch was that the new medium, with its multiple perspectives and fractured space, inspired the painters to push their medium further. Out of the exhibition came this film, directed by Glimcher, which makes the case anew with a treasure trove of early film clips, including those of trick filmmaker Georges Méliès and pioneer modern dancer Loïe Fuller. The film also benefits from narration by the film’s producer, Martin Scorsese, film buff extraordinaire. Two highly articulate contemporary painters, Chuck Close and Julian Schnabel, add fascinating commentary on how stillness and motion are transposed onto canvas. (60 min.)

WITH

EL CERCO
DIRECTORS: RICARDO ISCAR, NACHO MARTIN
Spain, 2005
(12 min.)

Variety review

New York Times review

VISUAL ACOUSTICS celebrates the life and career of Julius Shulman, the world’s greatest architectural photographer, whose images brought modern architecture to the American mainstream. Shulman, who passed away last year, captured the work of modern architects since the 1930s, including Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Neutra, John Lautner, and Pierre Koenig. His images epitomized the singular beauty of Southern California’s modernist movement and brought its iconic structures to the attention of the general public. Bricker’s film is both a testament to the evolution of modern architecture and a joyful portrait of the magnetic, whip-smart gentleman who chronicled it with his unforgettable images.

Forty years in the making, THE PAINTER SAM FRANCIS is Perkins’ intimate portrait of a friend, mentor, and leading light of American abstract art. He retraces Francis’ life (1923-1994) and career from his childhood in California to his artistic maturation in post-war Paris, his time spent in Japan, and his return to the United States. Interviews with friends, family, and fellow artists—including Ed Ruscha, James Turrell, Bruce Conner, Alfred Leslie, and others—illuminate a mysterious and complex personality and its reflection in a body of work that is simultaneously diverse and singular. “Perkins asks us to bask silently in the majesty of an artist in his element; in one unforgettable shot, Francis stands atop a newly finished canvas, utterly transfixed. It’s a stirring snapshot of that strange space where the act of creating can be a religious experience.”—Time Out.

Rarely has an architect caused as much sensation outside of the architecture community as Rem Koolhaas. His outstanding creations—from his house in Bordeaux to our own Seattle Public Library—are working examples of his visionary theories about design and urban society. Yet for Koolhaas, provocation through a wide range of activities is more important than individual masterpieces. This playful and visually inventive new documentary takes the Dutch architect’s ideas and approach to heart. Koolhaas discusses his life and work, including his early experiments with filmmaking and his seminal 1978 publication “Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan.” Including interviews with friends and colleagues, among them architects Joshua Ramus and Richard Meier, and a lively discussion between Koolhaas and German sociologist Dirk Baecker, A KIND OF ARCHITECT is a thought-provoking portrait of a true visionary.

In 1957, photographer Robert Frank’s groundbreaking book “The Americans” generated both acclaim and derision for its unvarnished images of a country where significant poverty, racism, and conservatism were counterpoints to the official image of moderate, middle-class affluence. In AN AMERICAN JOURNEY, Seclier travels back to the small towns and rural communities the photographer immortalized—exploring the world as Frank saw it and as it survives today. Artist Edward Ruscha, publisher Barney Rosset, photographers John Cohen and Raymond Depardon, and curators/critics Vicky Goldberg, Sarah Greenaugh, and Peter Galassi explore the feelings of anger and alienation which fueled the Swiss-born Frank in his American journey. (60 mins.)

FOLLOWED BY

FIRE IN THE EAST: A PORTRAIT OF ROBERT FRANK
DIRECTOR: PHILIP BROOKMAN
US, 1986

An intimate view of four decades of Frank's life, films, and photography featuring Allen Ginsberg, Emile de Antonio, Jonas Mekas, and Rudy Wurlitzer. (28 mins.)

"The purpose of architecture is to create timeless, free, joyous spaces for all activities in life." That was visionary genius John Lautner's credo, and the guiding principle of this stunning tribute. After breaking with his mentor Frank Lloyd Wright, Lautner went on to build an amazing legacy of his own, substantially influencing Frank Gehry and others. His life was marked by innovation and inspiration, endless battles with building codes, an accidental leap into the epicenter of pop culture, bitterness at lost opportunities, and finally, by monumental achievement. Lautner was idolized by young modernists, criticized by academics, and beloved by the clients who worked side by side with him to build their houses.