JUDGE'S STATEMENT
Summer of 2008 was my first extended stay in Portland while not under the pressures of making a film, though it’s through filmmaking that I’ve come to know the Northwest. It seems perfect to end this summer of non-work by watching the films of makers living in the region. The process of judging was imperfect and undemocratic—I just picked the films I liked. Films where I discovered a larger political truth through the minutely personal. Films that made me work. Where the controlled manipulation of sound and image gently pointed me in a direction, but I had to do my part to make the discovery. Where no emotion was delivered up via a sad note from an accordion or jaunty piano cord. I picked the films with subtext and form that for whatever reason, I went home and thought about. Few of them screamed or even whispered the great Northwest to me but like a good guide stayed out front and showed me something I hadn’t quite seen or heard before.

JUDGE'S BIO
Kelly Reichardt, currently a visiting assistant professor at Bard College, lives in New York City but has filmed her last two features, Old Joy (2006) and her latest, Wendy and Lucy (2008) in Oregon. Both have garnered wide critical praise at festivals worldwide, including Sundance, Cannes, and the Tiger Award at Rotterdam. Reichardt’s other films include her feature debut River of Grass (1994) and short films including Ode, Then a Year, and Travis.

SHORTS II: THE JUDGE'S SELECTIONS
SAT NOV 8 6:30 PM WHITSELL AUDITORIUM
SAT NOV 15 6 PM WHITSELL AUDITORIUM

SMILE
Julia Kwan / Vancouver, BC
A Chinese Family in 1980s Vancouver prepares to take a family photo.

THE TOURIST
Salise Hughes / Seattle, WA
This hand-altered fragment of Antonioni’s The Passenger isolates Jack Nicholson’s character from the landscape, moving the framing of the film to the forefront.

PORTRAIT OF A WOMAN 1947-2007
Margot Quan Knight / Seattle, WA
A woman, well-documented by home snapshots (Kodachrome to digital), ages before our eyes.

LITTLE PLEASURES
Jamie Marie Waelchli / Portland, OR
A maddening and excruciating piece demonstrating how self-destructive behaviors can stem from rituals intended to bring comfort.

ABOARD THE PATER NOSTER
Daniel Conrad / Vancouver, BC
This sequence of group dances choreographed by Aszure Barton was sumptuously filmed in Prague with, among other things, an odd people-moving contraption known as the “Pater Noster.”

NICKEL AND DIMIN’ IT WITH BUDDY
Tomas Soderberg / Portland, OR
Buddy, a homeless man in Portland, Oregon, makes his living returning cans and bottles.

SUFFRAGETTE SLASHER
Julie Perini / Portland, OR
Mary Richardson, a militant suffragette in the early 20th century, slashed a treasured painting in the National Gallery in London as a protest action.

THE RIFLE WORKBOOK
Vincent Caldoni / Portland, OR
A mysterious angelic figure presides over a ceremony populated by surreal hill-folk performing a series of bizarre rituals.

GREY ROOM
Storm Tharp / Portland, OR
Like the poem of the same name by Wallace Stevens, GREY ROOM examines the fluttering heart and worrisome mind of a sitter in pleasant surroundings.