CINEMA TROPICAL PRESENTS:
THE MIDDLE OF THE WORLD
DIRECTOR: VICENTE AMORIM
BRAZIL 2003

SAT, SEPT 10, 7:30
SUN, SEPT 11, 7:30
Guild Theatre

This charming and engaging story of hopes and dreams follows a family of seven as they bicycle 2,000 miles from Paraíba in the poverty-stricken Northeast of Brazil to Rio de Janeiro in pursuit of a better life. Based on the true story of an unemployed truck driver who took his wife and five children on this trip, the film is an honest portrayal of an unusual story. With soulful performances by an outstanding cast, Amorim depicts a family bonded by their love as they face strenuous circumstances. The locations are magically and imaginatively explored in an odyssey where the characters experience solidarity and indifference, aggressiveness and cordiality in their quest for a decent life. “ . . . a moving coming-of-age story that invokes memories of films such as PIXOTE and THE BICYCLE THIEF.” —VARIETY
(85 mins.)

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SILVER SCREEN CLUB PREMIERE
THUMBSUCKER
DIRECTOR: MIKE MILLS
US 2005

TUE SEPT 20, 7:30 PM
Whitsell Auditorium

Acclaimed music video director Mike Mills’ feature film debut—largely shot in Beaverton—emerges as a visually splendid and thought-provoking portrait of addiction, rooted in suburbia but relevant to everyone. At 17, a troubled Justin Cobb still sucks his thumb. His grades are lousy, his parents (Vincent d’Onofrio and Tilda Swinton) are deep in denial (‘Call me Audrey, ‘Mom’ sounds so old!’), the girl he adores won’t look at him and even his kid brother treats him with contempt. But then his orthodontist (Keanu Reeves), a wannabe life coach, tries to transform Justin’s life with the help of the wonder-drug Ritalin. Before long, Justin is considered a success—but is he really any happier? Adapted from Walter Kirn’s novel, THUMBSUCKER’s deadpan comedy is enhanced by beautiful production design, fine performances and a soundtrack highlighted by Polyphonic Spree and Elliot Smith. “...an ethereal aesthetic shapes a modern-day fairy tale filled with humor, charm and fragile love.”—SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL. (94 mins.)

PRINT COURTESY OF SONY PICTURES CLASSICS. TONIGHT’S SCREENING (EXCLUSIVELY FOR SILVER SCREEN MEMBERS) IS HOSTED BY THE OREGON FILM & VIDEO OFFICE. DIRECTOR MIKE MILLS AND ACTRESS TILDA SWINTON IN ATTENDANCE.

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PORTLAND SOLID GOLD

THUR SEPT 22, 7 PM
Whitsell Auditorium

Portland has long been known as an incubator for emerging musical talent, as the ascendance of bands like Sleater-Kinney, The Decemberists and The Shins can attest. Though partnership between musicians and filmmakers in Portland is hardly new—Jim Blashfield, Gus Van Sant, and Chris Slusarenko, to name a few, have all worked extensively in the genre—but the last year has seen an rapid increase in these collaborations. Tonight’s program showcases music videos that easily hold their own as short films in their own right, including: Sleater Kinney’s Jumpers (Matt McCormick), Bright Eyes’ At the Bottom of Everything (Cat Solen), Panther's You Don’t Want Your Nails Done (Whitey), Okkervil River’s For Real (Zak Margolis), The Thermals’ This is How We Know (Greg Brown), the Shins’ Past and Pending (Greg Brown and Matt McCormick), Ratatat’s Cherry (E*Rock), and more.

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THE COMEDIANS OF COMEDY
DIRECTOR: MICHAEL BLIEDEN
US 2005

FRI SEPT 23, 7 & 9:30 PM
SAT SEPT 24, 7 & 9:30 PM
SUN SEPT 25, 5 & 7 PM
MON, TUE, WED SEPT 26–27-28, 7 PM
Guild Theatre

In September 2004, stand-up comedy stars Patton Oswalt (“King of Queens”) and fellow comics Brian Posehn (“Just Shoot Me,”), Zach Galifianakis and Maria Bamford headed out on the road on “The Comedians of Comedy Tour.” As an alternative to performing in conventional comedy clubs and festivals, the tour played indie rock venues and performance spaces in an effort to reach audiences that don’t frequent traditional comedy spots. Comedy writer, actor and first time director Michael Blieden and crew joined the foursome on their I-5 blitz, which included raucous stops in Seattle (Neumo’s), Portland (Dante’s) and Eugene (Wow Hall). Capturing the back of the bus, tourist (roaming Portland) and onstage antics, Belden mixes the irreverent hilarity with their fascinating personal insights into the comedy business. Each of them favor no-holds-barred observation and anarchic, intellectual humor over more traditional punch line jokes. What emerges is a laugh-out-loud portrait of four people who can make each other howl as well as whomever they get in front of. Adult audiences. (103 mins.)

DEPENDING SCHEDULING WE EXPECT ONE OR MORE OF THE “COMEDIANS OF COMEDY” THE OPENING NIGHT.

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THE CENTURY OF THE SELF
DIRECTOR: ADAM CURTIS
UK 2003

Guild Theatre

Adam Curtis’ acclaimed BBC series (never broadcast in the U.S.) examines the rise of the all-consuming self set against the backdrop of the Freud dynasty. Tracing Freud’s influence — from psychoanalysis to modern public relations and beyond, Curtis crafts a largely untold and sometimes controversial story of the growth of the mass-consumer society in Britain and the United States. At the heart of this compelling social history is the looming figure of Freud, whose revolutionary probing of the unconscious mind pointed the way towards understanding (and engineering) the secret desires of the masses. Essential viewing for political spin-doctors, marketing moguls and anyone else who believes that the pursuit of satisfaction and happiness is man’s ultimate goal. “Adam Curtis’ heady, imaginative approach to these society-defining issues will prompt raging debate long after the lights come up.”—Eddie Cockrell, VARIETY. (240 mins.) Shown in two 2-part programs.

PART 1 “Happiness Machines,” centers on Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays, the father of modern PR in the 1920s, Tapping hidden fantasies of status and luxury (such as introducing Hollywood product placement), Bernays played a leading role in turning notions about the supremacy of unconscious desires into a tool for mass manipulation.(60 mins.)

PART 2 “The Engineering of Consent,” focuses on postwar era and Anna Freud’s strict championing of her father’s idea that man is in constant struggle against an inner-barbarism. In the conformist Eisenhower era (with its Cold War paranoia and echoes of the Nazi experience) this extended to fear and desire around everything from the rise of suburban planned communities to consumer-product focus groups, to the control and overthrow of foreign governments.(60 mins.)

PART 3 “There Is a Policeman Inside Our Heads and He Must Be Destroyed,” charts rising opposition to such controls by Wilhelm Reich and others who sought to create new beings free of the psychological conformity implanted by business and politics. The rapid development of self-help movements—Werner Erhard’s Seminar Training (EST)—abetted the irresistible rise of a reborn expressive self: the “Me Generation.”
(60 mins.)

PART 4 “Eight People Sipping Wine in Kettering,” explores how politicians on the left (Blair and Clinton) turned to the techniques developed by business to their own ends. Using the focus group, an invention of psychoanalysis, they set out to mould their policies to people’s inner desires and feelings—just as capitalism had learned to do with products. Out of this grew a new culture of public relations and marketing in politics, business and journalism, one of its gurus being grandson Matthew Freud, following in the footsteps of his uncle, Edward Bernays. (60 mins.)


Episodes 1 & 2: FRI OCT 7, 7 PM; SAT OCT 8, 2 & 7 PM; SUN OCT 9, 2 & 7 PM; MON OCT 10, 7 PM; TUE OCT 11, 6 PM.

Episodes 3 & 4: SAT OCT 8, 4:30 PM; SUN OCT 9, 4:30 PM; TUE OCT 11, 8:20 PM.

SPECIAL ADMISSION: $10; $9 SILVER SCREEN AND PAM MEMBERS. ONE TICKET ADMITS YOU TO BOTH PARTS AT THE TIMES OF YOUR CHOICE.

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CINEMA PROJECT AND THE NORTHWEST FILM CENTER PRESENT:
PETER KUBELKA: FILMS AND LECTURES
We welcome Austrian filmmaker and theoretician Peter Kubelka for three nights of lectures and screenings. Since the beginning of the 1950s Kubelka has been a leading exponent of international avant-garde film, co-founding the Austrian Film Museum and Anthology Film Archives in New York City. In the Seventies, Kubelka began pursuing his lifelong goal of “de-specialization”—practicing and teaching not just film but also cooking, archaeology, music and cultural history. By leaving filmmaking behind, he would avoid becoming trapped within the routines of virtuosity. We are pleased to be presenting his entire body of his film work over the last 50 years. In addition, October 9, Kubelka will present “The Edible Metaphor,” a lecture in which he establishes cooking as the first communicative art. 7:30pm at Cinema Project/New American Art Union, 922 SE Ankeny. These programs have been partially underwritten by Stumptown Coffee Roasters and funded in part by the Oregon Council for the Humanities.

PETER KULBELKA: METRIC FILMS

TUE OCT 11 7:30 PM
Whitsell Auditorium

Kubelka’s “Metric Films” focus on the notion that a projected film consists of 24 still images per second, which Kubelka uses as the basis for his art. Constructed from the most basic of elements, the films strip cinema down to its essentials, making way for the film to relate to the essential aspects of existence. ARNULF RAINER (1958/60) is composed of nothing but inter-cut black and white film frames; SCHWECHATER (1957/58) is a dense abstraction of footage shot for a commercial for Schwechater beer; and DICHTUNG UND WAHRHEIT/POETRY AND TRUTH (2003)—Kubelka’s first film after a 26-year hiatus—is an accumulation of unedited originals from advertising films. "‘Metric,’ derived from the Latin word ‘metrum,’ means that every part of the film is precisely measured and set into relation to the film as a whole, and that every part of the film communicates with all the other parts.... The principle that cinematic articulation takes place not between shots (as Eisenstein had proclaimed), but between single frames.”—Thomas Korschil.

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PETER KUBELKA: METAPHORIC FILMS

THUR OCT 13, 7:30 PM
Whitsell Auditorium

Kubelka’s METAPHORIC FILMS center on the filmmaker as archaeologist; they examine the detritus of society (found images and sounds) and re-work them to point us towards a cumulative and collective cultural legacy. UNSERE AFRIKAREISE (1961-66) presents a series of relationships organized from records of a hunting trip to Africa, while MOSAIK IM VERTRAUEN (1955), Kubelka’s first film, is a finely crafted image and sound collage that aims to exploit the fullest potential of cinema’s possibilities. “Peter Kubelka is the perfectionist of the film medium; and, as I honor that quality above all others at this time finding such a lack of it now elsewhere, I would simply like to say: Peter Kubelka is the world’s greatest filmmaker – which is to say, simply: see his films!”—Stan Brakhage.

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13 LAKES
DIRECTOR: JAMES BENNING
US 2004

FRI OCT 14, 7 PM
Guild Theatre

Experimental filmmaker James Benning is one of the major exponents of “structural” and “landscape” film and his new 13 LAKES is a striking, poetic addition to both genres. A series of moving paintings that focus on the play of light and reflections, Benning literally shot his film at 13 different American lakes, the choice of camera position and moment of image making at each location chosen with great care. Each lake is the focal point of a 10-minute, fixed camera shot, and despite the limits imposed by the rigor, the visual inventory offers intoxicating variety, beauty and the reward that come with close observation. Indeed, as much a portrait, it is a lesson in looking—learning to look for what might not be seen in cursory observation. Starring Lake Michigan, Great Salt Lake, Hiamna Lake, Lake Okeechobee, Lake Pontchartrain, Red Lake, Lake Champlain, Salton Sea, Lake Powell, Lake Winnebago, Flathead Lake, Goose Lake and Moosehead Lake. (135 mins.) His companion piece, 1O SKIES, screens October 16.

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NOSFERATU
DIRECTOR: F.W. MURNAU
GERMANY 1922

SAT OCT 15, 7:30 PM
Guild Theatre

Tonight we welcome Boston’s Devil Music Ensemble for a live performance of their score for Murnau’s classic adaptation of Bram Stoker’ novel Dracula. The first gothic horror film, and a key work of German expressionism, the film was based on Freud’s new ideas of sexual repression. Max Schreck is the gangly, pointy-fingered master of the Carpathian castle who travels by coffin across the sea in search of his love, bringing plague and pestilence with him. Marked by its eerie cinematography and special effects, a constant feeling of anticipation oozes from the ominous symbols, heightened by the Devil Music Ensemble’s atmospheric synthesis of sound. (84 mins.)

THE DEVIL MUSIC ENSEMBLE FEATURES BRENDON WOOD, ELECTRIC AND LAP STEEL GUITAR, BANJO, ACCORDION AND SYNTHESIZER; JONAH RAPINO, ELECTRIC VIOLIN AND VIBRAPHONE; TIM NYLANDER, DRUMS AND PERCUSSION.

SPECIAL ADMISSION: $10 GENERAL; $ 8 MEMBERS AND STUDENTS.

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TEN SKIES
DIRECTOR: JAMES BENNING
US 2004

SUN OCT 16, 7 PM
Guild Theatre

“TEN SKIES is a companion film to 13 LAKES. It too looks at light; here, directly at its source—the sun. All 10 skies were filmed from my backyard in Southern California: skies formed from weather systems, mountain land currents, wildfires, pollution, and the wind; skies as a function of landscape; the sound giving clues about the land below. Each sky is a detail selected from the whole; sometimes filled with drama, sometimes a metaphor for peace. I’m really interested in the ways the sky changes in reaction to the landscape below—how the clouds look above the mountains, over flat lands, above a forest fire, which was kind of creating its own weather system. I think of my landscape works now as anti-war artworks—they’re about the antithesis of war, the kind of beauty we’re destroying. TEN SKIES came about because I’m thinking about what the opposite of war is.”—James Benning. “In turning his unwavering gaze upward, Benning risks staring into nothingness. What he finds instead is beauty and despair, drama and jubilation. In short, everything.”—Holly Willis, LA WEEKLY. (101 mins.)

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WILLIAM EGGLESTON IN THE REAL WORLD
DIRECTOR: MICHAEL ALMEREYDA
US 2005

THUR OCT 20, 7 PM Wthisell Auditorium
SUN OCT 23, 5 PM Guild Theatre

“In 1976, William Eggleston’s hallucinatory, Faulknerian images were featured in the Museum of Modern Art’s first one-man exhibition of color photographs. John Szarkowski, MOMA’s Curator of Photography called his work “the beginning of modern color photography” and Eggleston’s work since has earned him regard as one of contemporary photography’s most significant figures. Michael Almereyda’s intimate portrait tracks the photographer on trips to Kentucky, Los Angeles and New York, but gives particular attention to downtime in Memphis, Eggleston’s home base. Revealing a deep connection between an enigmatic personality and groundbreaking work, Almereyda also reveals parallel commitments as a musician, draftsman and videographer. A sphinx-like renegade, Eggleston at age 65 has become an icon and inspiration to artists worldwide.”—FILM FORUM. (86 mins.)

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SUPER-8 OPERA PRIMA ENCORE

THUR OCT 20, 7 PM
Guild Theatre

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of Super-8 film, the Film Center invited 10 artists—many with no experience in film, and none who had ever touched a super-8 camera before—to create a masterpiece with the small format medium. The resulting program of short films, many presented with live musical accompaniment, was beautiful, chaotic, experimental and surprising, exactly the qualities that have brought artists back to super-8 filmmaking despite the trend towards digital media. Tonight we present an encore of the 10 artist projects, with the original score by Tara Jane O’Neill recorded live. Included in the program are risk-taking experiments by painter Ryan Boyle; video-sound artist Zachary Reno; painter-sculptors Sean Healey and Andrea U-Ren; visual artist Chris Johanson; video artist-web designer-musician Chris Larson; musician Philip Cooper experimental filmmaker Matt McCormick; Filmmaker and curator Morgan Currie and filmmaker-conceptual artist Melody Owen.

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BENEFIT SCREENING:
THE THREE RABBIS
DIRECTOR: GLORIA LOHMAN FEVES
US 2005

SUN OCT 23, 2 & 4:30 PM
Whitsell Auditorium

THE THREE RABBIS tells the story of three devoted and passionate men—Rabbi Joshua Stampfer, Rabbi Emanuel Rose and Rabbi Yonah Geller—each of whom has played a pivotal role in the growth and emergence of Portland’s Jewish community over the last 50 years. Their extraordinary contributions to Oregon through their education and leadership, exemplified in their outreach to other faiths and numerous civic endeavors, parallel an era of tremendous change and conflict within both the religious and secular world. Through interviews and historical accounts, important issues—discrimination, civil rights, the Vietnam War and Israel, along with their views on women’s rights, intermarriage and life in Portland—are seen through the eyes of these inspirational leaders. (60 mins.)

PRODUCED FOR OREGON PUBLIC BROADCASTING, TODAY’S PREMIERE SCREENINGS ARE A BENEFIT FOR THE OREGON JEWISH MUSEUM, JEWISH FAMILY AND CHILD SERVICES AND THE PORTLAND JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL.

TICKETS ARE $36; $18 STUDENTS. PATRON TICKETS, $100, INCLUDE A RECEPTION WITH THE RABBIS AND FILMMAKERS, WHICH WILL BE HELD BETWEEN SHOWS. ADVANCE TICKETS ARE AVAILABLE FROM THE OREGON JEWISH MUSEUM, 310 NW DAVIS STREET, 503-226-3600.

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PANORAMA EPHEMERA
DIRECTOR: RICK PRELINGER
US 2004

FRI OCT 28, 7 PM
Guild Theatre

Cinema archivist Rick Prelinger’s film, at first resembling a compilation of found footage, soon reveals itself to be an evocative journey through American landscape and history, a story emerging between the ephemeral images. Composed of sequences drawn from a wide variety of industrial, advertising, educational and amateur films capturing conflicted American landscapes, it focuses on familiar and mythical: children, animals, farmers, industrial workers, superheroes, pioneers heading West, crash test dummies and more. Many creatures, objects, and substances that at first seem in the background take center stage, fashioning an often-skewed vision that reconstruct a history filled with horror and hope in familiar and unexpected ways. Unlike many films made using archival footage, Prelinger juxtaposes a combination of sequences rather than a collage of individual shots. While other found-footage or archival films speak as if in words, syllables or even phonemes, PANORAMA EPHEMERA speaks in sentences and paragraphs. “Beautiful and bizarre...a compelling narrative of our collective conscious.”—Manohla Dargis, NEW YORK TIMES. (89 mins.) PRELINGER WILL BE ON HAND TO PRESENT HIS FILM.

Rick Prelinger, founder and builder of the 48,000-film Prelinger Archives and President of The Internet Archive, an on-line repository of public domain films, will host “Time Out From the Copyright Battles: Making Sense of Rights, Reproduction and Remixing,” an October 29 workshop for filmmakers and others interested in the current state of copyright and intellectual property issues.

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EDVARD MUNCH
DIRECTOR: PETER WATKINS
SWEDEN/NORWAY 1976

SAT OCT 29, 9PM Guild Theatre
SUN OCT 30, 7 PM Whitsell Auditorium

“Considered by many to be the most successful portrayal of the artistic process ever depicted on film, this is the intensely personal biographical recreation of the early struggles endured by Norwegian painter Edvard Munch. Crucified by critics and the public alike in the late nineteenth century, Munch is seen here as a young man in battle with puritanical Norwegian society and beset with various family tragedies and resultant depressions, all the while wrestling to give expression to his own artistic voice. Hailed by Ingmar Bergman as a work of genius, Watkins’s portrait speaks not only to a specific creator and his milieu but to the filmmaker’s own artistic enterprise and to intricate issues of contemporary life.”—Harvard Film Archive. (167 mins.)

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