Tonight the screen is yours. We throw open the doors of the Whitsell Auditorium and invite you to show your new short work. If you have something you’re proud of, sign up by contacting Thomas Phillipson by January 10 at thomas@nwfilm.org. First come, first served as time allows with preference given to works under ten minutes. Invite your friends—admission is free!

Students, friends, prospective Northwest Film Center School of Film attendees, and film lovers at large are invited to this special screening of short films created by students in last Fall and Summer Terms’ classes. Ranging from first films to more ambitious productions by intermediate and advanced students, they share in common the mentoring and collaboration received at the School—and the willingness of their makers (all students are invited to screen) to have their work shown on the big screen and presented to a live audience. Join in congratulating them on this important step in their continuing journey toward self-expression. It’s a wonderful moment in the learning process and perhaps an inkling of what you might be able to accomplish at the School if media making is your calling. (90 mins.)

FREE ADMISSION

VISITING ARTIST—Portland filmmaker Tom Chamberlin has been making films for more than four decades, from commercial documentary work for Encyclopedia Brittanica and Lucas Films to more recent community-based projects for social justice groups. Introduced to poet Sharon Doubiago’s “The Book of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes” in the summer of 1990 after several failed relationships, Chamberlin embarked on a “quest” to meet the author: “The quest to find Sharon and get to know her … came from a deep instinct to survive, to rid myself of a great weight.” Upon their meeting, Chamberlin shot footage of what he describes as a “liplock love story documentary,” spent the next 20 years thinking about it, and finally, in 2012, put together an edit for release. This intensely personal story wanders from Chamberlin, self-shot, reading Doubiago’s poetry to his own confessions as he chronicles a profound period in his life. (106 mins.)

VISITING ARTIST—From 1911 to 1913, a real “amazing race” was run. Envious of the tourists flocking to Seattle, the civic leaders of fledgling Bellingham, Wash., devised an elaborate PR stunt: America’s first mountain adventure race. Offering up $100 in gold coins to the first runner who could clamber up and down nearby Mount Baker, a 10,781-foot volcanic peak, they attracted 14 contestants consisting of wrestlers, milk inspectors, loggers, farmers, and miners. Narrated by Kevin Tighe (“Lost,” WHAT’S EATING GILBERT GRAPE), THE MOUNTAIN RUNNERS incorporates hundreds of vintage images, historic footage, graphics, digital effects, and dramatizations starring William B. Davis (“The X-Files”’s Cigarette Smoking Man). (90 mins.)

VISITING ARTIST—For his feature-length directorial debut, Academy Award-nominated cinematographer (and 2010 Oregon Media Arts Fellow) Jeff Streich turns to a local story. In 2003, 18-year-old Mount Hood Community College freshman Ben Cramer—described by those who knew him as soft-spoken and “extraordinarily ordinary”—was sentenced to life for the grisly murder of his friend, Cassondra Brown. Portraits of the teens emerge through interviews with family, friends, teachers, counselors, and Cramer himself, who, interviewed from the Snake River Correctional Facility, struggles to examine his past and his actions. Juxtaposing scenes of Brown’s mother sorting through her daughter’s belongings with Cramer’s mother sifting through her son’s car and baby clothes, Streich renders a complex exploration of the ripple effect of tragedies like these. (101 mins.)

Before tonight’s screening, the Northwest Film Center will announce the winner of the 2013 Oregon Media Arts Fellowship, funded through the support of the Oregon Arts Commission and the Gordon D. Sondland and Katherine J. Durant Foundation.

VISITING ARTIST—Olympia director Zach Weintraub’s (BUMMER SUMMER) second feature “follows Josh, a young American documentarian played by Weintraub, to Buenos Aires on assignment. Though Josh is there on business, he’s focused on pleasure: namely, an attempt to rekindle a relationship with an ex while simultaneously courting Anna (Sophia Takal), a pretty little American who is literally the girl next door in shared housing. Nandan Rao’s cinematography shines, filling the screen with bold off-center framings and vivid colors … Weintraub captures and embodies a certain hipster blend of self-importance in the face of alienation that seems to be the calling card of modern urban twentysomethings.”—Seattle Met (80 mins.)

VISITING ARTIST—A native and current resident of Corvallis, Nandan Rao learned filmmaking at New York University before working on numerous award-winning films as a cinematographer. In this, his second feature, twentysomething J. and two of his close friends are in the process of realizing their utopian dream: turning an abandoned cathedral into a grant-powered, environmentally sustainable art space. “Although the cast and crew hail from the Northwest, the filming of DODGE CITY took place in Detroit. The centerpiece of the film’s location (and its visual eye candy) is the church building where the trio spends much of its time. Director Nandan Rao, also the cinematographer, expertly captures each scene so that the physical space in all its beauty and decrepitude is an active player in the film.”—Local Sightings Film Festival (94 mins.)

VISITING ARTIST—Portland filmmaker Scott Ballard is a noted cinematographer (HOW THE FIRE FELL) and director of award-winning short films. For his first feature, Ballard wrote this quiet story of Hank, the night custodian at a public library whose evenings are sequestered in a methodical work routine. When a mysterious inheritance appears, the patterns of his life begin to unravel. WELCOMING DEPARTURE is a jazz-inspired portrait exploring the challenges of change. (80 mins.)