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The Portland Documentary and eXperimental Film Festival
(PDX Film Fest for short) will take place April 15-18, 2004 at the historic
Guild Theatre. Founded and organized by local filmmakers, the festival
will showcase provocative, artistic, challenging, and firmly uncompromising
films from around the globe that are created outside of the parameters
of mainstream entertainment.
The festival, now in its second year, is an offshoot of Peripheral Produce—
an independent screening series that started in Portland in 1996 by filmmaker
Matt McCormick. Peripheral Produce is an important link within the local
film community, and has been credited as a driving force behind Portland’s
recent emergence as an important center for experimental cinema.
special guests: This year, the PDX Film Festival is very
excited to be bring famed experimental filmmaker Jem Cohen
and media-activist extraordinaire Dee Dee Halleck to
Portland. Each will present selections of their work, and engage the audience
in a discussion after each screening.PDX
Film Festival
DIRECTOR: YASUJIRO OZU “TOKYO TWILIGHT takes place in a dark, wintry
Tokyo, a nocturnal town of smoke-filled bars and seedy mahjong parlors.
Chishu Ryu plays a father whose wife left him years ago with a subordinate,
and whom he has made his daughters Takako (Setsuko Hara) and Akiko believe
are dead. At a time of crisis for both sisters —Takako returning
to her family home following an argument with her abusive husband, Akiko
seeking an abortion after a futile search for her boyfriend—the
long-missing mother makes a visit to Tokyo with her new husband to devastating
result. One of Ozu's darkest films that courts melodrama as it paints
the picture of a forlorn generation severed from past traditions and bereft
of hope for the future.”—Film Society of Lincoln Center. (141
mins.)
DIRECTOR: YASUJIRO OZU “Ozu’s last film and one of his most
sublime. Distilled and rending, suffused with an autumnal sense of the
end of things, but often gently humorous in its satire of contemporary
Japan, AN AUTUMN AFTERNOON returns to a favorite Ozu theme: a widower’s
decision to marry off his only daughter, despite her objections. It is
the last panel in that great fresco, which so completely captures Japan
as it, is . . .The simplicity of the picture is the result of a style
brought to perfection. Nothing is wanting, nothing is extraneous. At the
same time there is an extraordinary intensification in the film—it
is autumn again, but now it is deep autumn. Winter was always near, but
now it will be tomorrow"—Donald Richie. "Ozu at his most
breathtakingly assured" —Tom Milne (113 mins.)
DIRECTOR: KONSTANIN LOPUSHANSKY “A comprehensive catalog of Lenfilm
productions put out by the studio itself lists, lists the film's genre
as "anti-utopia." Whether or not such a genre exists, a more
apt description of Lopushansky's film can't be imagined. Assistant to
Tarkovsky on STALKER, Lopushansky continues and evolves that imagination
of a postapocalyptic world. A mishap sets off nuclear war, and years later
the few wretched survivors struggle to cling to whatever life is still
available to them. Many of the surviving children have been left mute,
and they and others deemed unfit are left to die from the slow effects
of the lingering radiation. Meanwhile, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist,
Larsen (Rolan Bykov), who sees himself as responsible for what has happened,
composes imaginary letters to his dead son, Eric. The film is short on
special effects but rich in texture and ideas; winner of 14 international
prizes, LETTERS so impressed Ted Turner that he arranged to have the film
broadcast on TNT.”—Film Society of Lincoln Center. (88 mins.)
DIRECTOR: FRIEDERICH ERMLER “One of the many Soviet-era artists
in need of serious re-evaluation (or just plain discovery), Friedrich
Ermler spent practically his entire career at Lenfilm. Based on the short
story The Cave by Yevgeny Zamatkin, HOUSE IN THE SNOW DRIFTS tells the
story of the inhabitants of a small apartment house in the winter of 1919
- 1920, as the battle between "red" (communist) and "white"
(tsarist) forces was raging outside the city. For most of these characters,
survival is the most important concern, ideological or other interests
falling far behind the drive to just stay alive. Among them is a young
musician, who feels his art places him somehow above the struggle going
on all around him. Ermler's treatment of his characters is remarkably
evenhanded, their weaknesses and even deceptions understood against a
backdrop of fear and deprivation.”—Film Society of Lincoln
Center. (63 mins.)
DIRECTOR: GRIGORY KOZINSTEV, LEONID TRABERG “ALONE is based on the
true story of a young woman graduate of Leningrad's teacher-training institute
who accepts a job in far-off Siberia but then almost dies when her sleigh
driver abandons her on a vast snow-covered plain. Almost shelved after
being attacked by some critics for its supposed "individualism,"
the film was later given an award by a workers' committee (for being "lifelike")
and went on to be a great popular success. One of the first Soviet sound
films, ALONE is a powerful example of an innovative use of sound that
relied heavily on counterpoint and nonsynchronized sounds. In the central
role, Elena Kuzmina gives a steely powerful performance.”—Film
Society of Lincoln Center. (80 mins.)
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