A Wild Week of Movie Watching
May 13th, 2009
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: