How did I not hear about this earlier? The Portland Undergound Film Fest starts tonight! All showings $6 at the Clinton Street Theater.

Just wanted to give a shout out to my friend and fellow moviemaker Aaron Suring at Alaska Robotics for his outstanding performance at the World Beard and Moustache Championships. He placed second in the “Alaska Whaler” category. Check him out 28 seconds into this CNN video. Bravo, Aaron!

Peruse the recent posts at akrobotics.com for in-depth coverage of the event.

I added together all the movies I watched last week and the total came to 46. Sure, they were mostly short movies, but still.. 46 movies. And most of those locally made. I am experiencing an exquisite mixture of movie-making inspiration and movie-watching fatigue. Hopefully just the inspiration lasts.

PDX Film Festival

I was blown away by the quality of Portland films at the PDX Film Festival. The Friends and Neighbors showing showcased a bunch of great pieces from local filmmakers.. my favs were the pieces from Jeffrey Richardson, Dustin Zemel, Matt McCormick, Chris Lael Larson and Jeff Guay. And the Peripheral Produce Invitational was totally crazy! There were girls dancing to video, rock musicians rocking out to video, hacked nintendos, abstract visual mayhem, psychadelic glasses, a creepy interstellar seductress and between-movie bingo to boot (I won a kickball!) And also, since the Clinton Street Theater played host, beer!

This is the best local film event I’ve been to in Portland. The quality of films was very good and it was great to see all of the filmmakers in attendance. I have heard that Portland has a great indie film scene but honestly in the past six years I’ve lived here I just haven’t seen much evidence to support that. But now I’m starting to think maybe there is something to that claim. I definitely can’t wait to try to get some of my work in there next year!

Gold Coyote

I didn’t win any awards, but did get honorable mentions for two of my films.. that is, they were mentioned by the guy doing the judging for the non-audience choice award. I was happy that the audience laughed at the appropriate parts in “The List” and was surprised to learn that “Storytime Adventures Episode 1″ was on the short list of 13 movies picked to fill the 12 movie bill from a field of about 50 entries.

The audience-choice winner was a movie by Erin Wilkinson featuring a cute dog and a humorously accented voice-over. Imagine a wittier version of a clip of the family pet in America’s Funniest Home Videos to get the impression… or go watch it yourself on YouTube. The judge’s choice was a well-executed painting-over-painting-over-painting style animation by first time moviemaker Shelley Jordon.

The best movie of the night was “No Escape!” by Arman Bohn. He put together some awesome 8-bit atari-style graphics with a compelling storyline in the form of a music video. I voted for him and he ended up being one of a few runners-up.

Other notables included:

• Hey Remember When We Went to the Zoo Before I Hated Your Guts by Stephanie Whitney
• Johnny Appleseed by Emily S. Chapman
• Kiss by Miles Spreitsman

I just found out about PDX Film Fest which is happening at the Clinton Street Theater May 6-10th. Here’s their short description of one movie I plan on seeing:

We are very excited to present Brett Gaylor’s documentary RiP: A Remix Manifesto, which tackles the tricky subject of copyright in the age of the internet through the work of mash-up artist Girl Talk and Creative Commons founder Lawrence Lessig.

Deliver also looks interesting.. it’s an all-woman remake of Deliverance. PDXFF also features a bunch of full-length and short movies by locals.

I’ll be screening “The List” and “Storytime Adventures Episode 1″ at NW Film Center’s open screening Thursday night 7pm April 30th at the Whitsell Auditorium. Another good option that night is the Joanna Priestly premiere going on at the Hollywood Theater.. check out some clips of her really cool animation here. And of course don’t forget to come see “The List” at the Gold Coyote showing next Sunday May 10th!

This just in from the folks at Gold Coyote Super Short Film and Video Competition:

Thank you for entering your work to the Gold Coyote Super Short Film and Video Competition.  We are happy to inform you that we will be including your title “The List” in our evening’s program of films to be judged by the audience. Unfortunately, we will not be including your film “Storytime Adventures Episode 1″ in our final selection.  We had a large number of well crafted films and, sadly, cannot include every one.

Yay! See you there May 10th (if you’re not already going to Labyrinth, that is..)