nwFilmCenter

Special Screenings

Thu, Sep 7, 2006 at 7 PM	THE HOUSE OF SAND (CASA DE AREIA) DIRECTOR: ANDRUCHA WADDINGTON BRAZIL Fernanda Montenegro (CENTRAL STATION) and Fernanda Torres (LOVE ME FOREVER, OR NEVER), real-life mother and daughter, shine in this magnificent, epic drama about the lives and passions of three generations of women struggling to find their place amidst the tough, inhospitable sand dunes of northern Brazil. In 1910, Aurea arrives by caravan with her insane husband, Vasco, who believes the barren land of Maranhao can be profitably farmed. Calamity hits, and she is left pregnant and alone in the desert with her mother, Maria. They eventually find food and friendship and though their dreams of escape never die as the years pass, the two begin to adjust to the rhythm of their alien surroundings. But while they find freedom in the least expected place, Aurea's daughter's lust for what might be beyond the dunes only grows. ( 115 min ) Tonight's screening is open to Silver Screen members and their guests.HOUSE OF SAND will open at the Fox Tower September 10. ^ Top
Fri, Sep 8, 2006 at 7 PM Sat, Sep 9, 2006 at 7 PM	BOUDU SAVED FROM DROWNING DIRECTOR: JEAN RENOIR FRANCE Jean Renoir's comic poem to anarchy. Michel Simon, co-producer of the film, plays a "loveable" wastrel rescued from a suicidal jump into the Seine by Lestingois, a very bourgeois antiquarian bookseller. Boudu insists that his rescuer is now responsible for him and proceeds to move into his house. All order is supplanted by havoc and in short order he seduces Lestingois' wife and maid, marries the maid, then accidentally falls into the river, whereupon rediscovering his liberty, returns to his wanderings. "A beautifully rhythmed film that makes one nostalgic for the period when it was made."-THE NEW YORKER. ( 81 min ) ^ Top
Sun, Sep 10, 2006 at 7 PM	THIS FILM IS NOT YET RATED DIRECTOR: KIRBY DICK US Mixing candid interviews with independent directors, critics and industry insiders with intriguing detective work, Dick (SICK: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF BOB FLANAGAN, SUPERMASOCHIST) has fashioned a witty, yet seriously revealing investigation into the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), its problematic rating system and its surprising influence on American culture. Long cloaked in secrecy and politics, MPAA censorship (by anonymous judges) has often times made it impossible for American audiences to be see certain films. Among the many joining the discussion on artistic control, moral thresholds and economic outcomes are Allison Anders, David Ansen, Darren Aronofsky, Atom Egoyan, Mary Harron, Kimberly Peirce, Kevin Smith, Matt Stone and John Waters. ( 97 min ) Tonight's screening is open to Silver Screen members and their guests. Kirby Dick will introduce his film. ^ Top
Tue, Sep 19, 2006 at 6:30 PM	ANDY WARHOL DIRECTOR: RIC BURNS - VISITING ARTIST US Following up on such heralded works as NEW YORK: A DOCUMENTARY FILM (1999), ANSEL ADAMS (2002) AND EUGENE O'NEILL (2005), Burns' moving film portrait is of the most important and resoundingly influential American artist of the second half of the twentieth century. Combining unique and penetrating on-camera interviews and never-before-seen still and film footage with the testimony of Warhol's bewilderingly vast body of work-including paintings, drawings, photographs, films, television shows, magazines, books, songs, musical performances and more-the film is the first to exploit in depth the immense archives at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and the complete spectrum of an astonishing artistic output stretching across five decades. "I'd prefer to remain a mystery. I never like to give my background and, anyway, I make it all up different every time I'm asked." ( 220 min ) Ric Burns is scheduled to attend and introduce his film. ^ Top
Tue, Sep 26, 2006 at 7 PM Wed, Sep 27, 2006 at 7 PM	GRIN WITHOUT A CAT (LE FOND DE L'AIR EST ROUGE) DIRECTOR: CHRIS MARKER FRANCE Chris Marker's (LE JETTE, SAN SOLEIL) sweeping film-essay is a philosophical and political meditation on the roots and impact of the revolutionary struggles in Vietnam, Bolivia, Cuba, France, Czech Republic and Chile-and how these events, and the images documenting them, have shaped the political imagination, success and failure of the left. Reworking and adding material 15 years after the original film, Marker interweaves footage from the Vietnam War, May '68 in Paris, the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, the Shah of Iran, Régis Debray, Salvador Allende and other key events and icons of the era. "This film is a mirror held up to each of us, a mirror that wanders through all the paths that we have taken or crossed . . . and encourages us to reflect along with it about the journey and its goal."-Regis Débray, ROUGE. ( 180 min ) Co-presented with Cinema Project ^ Top
Wed, Oct 4, 2006 at 7 PM	AN EVENING WITH HENRY SELICK DIRECTOR: HENRY SELICK VARIOUS Tonight we welcome Portland animator Henry Selick for an animated evening of surveying the fascinating range of work he has directed over the last two decades. A graduate of Cal Arts and a Disney design program alum, Selick's work has incorporated elements of puppetry, 3-D CGI, traditional cel animation and rarely used cut-up animation styles as well as his own very unique style of stop motion. His singular body of films include the features NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS (1993), made with Tim Burton, and JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH (1996), and such award winning shorts as the underground comic inspired MONKEYBONE (2001), the surreal SLOW BOB IN THE LOWER DIMENSIONS (1990), produced for MTV's Liquid Television, and the recent MOONGIRL (2005), the whimsical story of a girl who guards the Moon's light from evil doers. Currently working on pre-production for his new animated feature CORALINE, produced by Portland's Laika, Selick's work has taken masterful delight in the world fantasy and the magic of images fashioned from imagination. ^ Top
Fri, Oct 6, 2006 at 7 PM	DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE LIVE SCORE BY THE DEVIL MUSIC ENSEMBLE DIRECTOR: JOHN S. ROBERTSON US Tonight we welcome the return (they presented NOSFERATU here last year) of Boston's Devil Music Ensemble for a live performance of their new score for Robertson's adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's seminal novella. A meditation on the dual nature of man and the thin line between good and evil. the classic tale concerns the upstanding Victorian physician Dr. Jekyll, deviser of a drug that unleashes his nefarious alter ego, Mr. Hyde. John Barrymore's virtuoso performance and startling transformation (no elaborate makeup or cgi here) was, in its day, shocking in its realism. Considered to be the first American horror film. Even today it is easy to understand the power the film once had. ( 74 min ) SPECIAL ADMISSION: $12 GENERAL, $10 MEMBERS.The Devil Music Ensemble has established itself among the premiere American groups composing and performing for silent film. The Ensemble features Brendon Wood, electric and lap steel guitar, banjo, accordion and synthesizer; Jonah Rapino, electric violin and vibraphone; and Tim Nylander, drums and percussion. ^ Top
Fri, Oct 6, 2006 at 9 PM Sun, Oct 8, 2006 at 7 PM	LUNACY DIRECTOR: JAN SVANKMAJER CZECH REPUBLIC A joyously pessimistic masterpiece from Jan Svankmajer (LITTLE OTIK), the master of Czech surrealism, LUNACY is Loosely based on two short stories by Edgar Allan Poe and inspired by the works of the Marquis de Sade. In nineteenth-century France (albeit one full of deliberate anachronisms) a young man, Jean Berlot, is plagued by nightmares in which he is dragged off to a madhouse. On the journey back from his mother's funeral he is invited by a Marquis he meets at lunch to spend the night in his castle. There Berlot witnesses a blasphemous orgy and a 'therapeutic' funeral. Berlot tries to flee but the Marquis insists on helping him conquer his fears and takes his guest to a surrealistic lunatic asylum where the patients have complete freedom and the staff are locked up behind bars. Described by Svankmajer as a 'philosophical horror film," LUNACY combines live action and stop-motion, sex and violence, grand guignol terror and gallows humor, and a lot of animated meat. "LUNACY will scour cant from your mental walls, unclog grimy sentiment from the drain of your heart, put the shine back on those scuffed eyes and ears, and leave your whole earthly domicile smelling as fresh as ground chuck."-Stuart Klawans, THE NATION. ( 121 min ) ^ Top
Thu, Oct 12, 2006 at 7 PM	RURAL REALITIES: THE METHAMPHETAMINE AWARENESS PROJECT DIRECTOR: VARIOUS DIRECTORS US The Northwest Film Center's Young Filmmakers Program's four-year, national model collaboration with Oregon Partnership, Inc. stands out as a dynamic example of how the media arts can make a difference in the lives of individual youth and help them facilitate public involvement in their local communities. Through this series of artist residency projects, with support from the US Office of Substance Abuse Prevention, more than 250 Yamhill County teens from Sheridan, Newberg, Dayton and Yamhill-Carlton High Schools have had the opportunity to work with independent filmmakers to create original documentaries and public service announcements for their peers and communities about the dangers of club drugs and methamphetamine. Tonight, with many of the filmmakers in attendance, we celebrate their achievements as student scriptwriters, videographers, actors and musicians, and acknowledge the important contributions they are making to the drug education and prevention field here in Oregon and beyond. Admission is free. ( 90 min ) ^ Top
Sat, Oct 14, 2006 at 4:30 PM Sun, Oct 15, 2006 at 5 PM	STOLEN DIRECTOR: REBECCA DREYFUS US In 1990, the famed Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston suffered a stunning art theft. Thieves disguised as policemen lifted five Degas, three Rembrandts, one Manet, one Flinck, and, most famously, "The Concert" by Johannes Vermeer, now considered the world's most valuable piece of stolen art. 16 years later, while rumors and innuendo still swirl, none of the paintings-valued at over $300 million-have been recovered. STOLEN follows 75-year old wizard-detective Harold Smith, a renowned fine art sleuth, on the trail of the missing works, a trail filled with forks, mysteries and a cast of colorful characters and theories outside the bounds of the wildest imagination. While following the chase, Dreyfus fills us in on the history of the museum and the fascinating woman who founded it in 1926. "A treasure trove of outrageous characters, personal obsessions, and the rarefied world of art collecting."-THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER. ( 85 min ) ^ Top
Tue, Oct 17, 2006 at 7 PM	THE CASE OF THE GRINNING CAT (CHATS PERCHÉS) DIRECTOR: CHRIS MARKER FRANCE Shortly after 9/11, Paris-based Chris Marker (GRIN WITHOUT A CAT, September 26 & 27), began to notice graffiti artist images of "M.Chat," a grinning, yellow cartoon cat, affixed to surfaces all over the city. As master cine-essayist Marker captures images of the ubiquitous M.Chat, he also tracks street demonstrations and the social turmoil in the Parisan air, ruminating on it all and wittily digressing through the gamut of personal and political observations with reflective abandon. "Lively, engaged, and provocative."-J. Hoberman, VILLAGE VOICE. "When this genius makes a new film, you go. And when the film happens to concern the director's favorite subject-kitty cats-you go twice. Wrowr!"-TIME OUT, NEW YORK. ( 58 min ) ^ Top
Tue, Oct 17, 2006 at 7 PM	TO BE SEEN DIRECTOR: ALICE ARNOLD US Art battles commerce on the sidewalks and walls of New York City as artists vie with advertisers for your attention. Arnold's film is both a study of visual culture and a critical look at consumer society as seen through the eyes of artists who use the city as their canvas. ( 30 min ) ^ Top
Wed, Oct 18, 2006 at 7 PM	ANXIOUS ANIMATION DIRECTOR: VARIOUS ARTISTS VARIOUS These ten films by six contemporary animators all veer into the surreal worlds of delirium and paranoia in this collection of experimental works anthology organized by San Francisco's Other Cinema. The reigning proponent of cut-and-paste, Lewis Klahr (LULU, ALTAIR and PONY GLASS) nourishes intensely private visions on the compost heap of collective fantasy through old magazines, comic books, and cocktail iconography. Complex, full of charm, and pervaded by themes of loss, Janie Geiser (IMMER ZU, LOST MOTION) simultaneously creates and deconstructs fantasies through doll-like figurines, cut-outs, and found objects in her cryptic narratives. Jim Trainor's handmade animations (THE BATS, MOSCHOPS) explore the inner lives of animals that appear strangely self-aware even as they instinctually copulate, feed, fight, kill and die. Finally, the Bay Area collective of Rodney Ascher, Syd Garon, and Eric Henry conjure diabolical visions with digital savvy (WHEEL OF TORMENT, SNEAK ATTACK, SOMEBODY GOOFED) accompanied by the manic music of Buckethead and DJ Q. "This ain't no Pixar. This is ain't no Disney. This ain't no foolin' around."-OTHER CINEMA. ( 81 min ) ^ Top
Sat, Oct 21, 2006 at 9:15 PM Sun, Oct 22, 2006 at 7 PM	OUR DAILY BREAD DIRECTOR: NIKOLAUS GEYRHALTER GERMANY A meditation on industrial food and high-tech agriculture, OUR DAILY BREAD, like BARAKA or TRIUMPH OF THE WILL, is a hypnotic visual essay that relies on its powerful images rather than narration to make its impact. Cutting between men in space suits spraying peppers to startling environments where little yellow chicks shoot out of slides by the hundreds and orchards of apples bob in a titanic swimming pool, Geyrhalter's riveting film underscores the fascinating polarity that such a messy business as eating starts in these robotic dreamscapes. "Some will see a horrifying indictment of the industry's cruelties, others a realistic depiction of mechanized farming, and some a soft-spoken tribute to manual labor. Meanwhile, precisely composed lensing and painstaking sound design create moments of sublime beauty" - Variety ( 92 min ) ^ Top
Fri, Oct 27, 2006 at 9 PM Sat, Oct 28, 2006 at 7 PM Sun, Oct 29, 2006 at 7 PM	LOUD QUIET LOUD:A FILM ABOUT THE PIXIES DIRECTOR: STEVE CANTOR, MATHEW GALKIN Combining punk-influenced rock with a distinctive surf sound and fronted by the offbeat vocals of Black Francis, the Pixies' eclectic style heavily influenced the alternative rock explosion of the 90s. Kurt Cobain cited the band as the inspiration for Nirvana's signature tune, "Smells Like Teen Spirit," while Bono has simply called them "one of America's best bands ever." Eleven years after an abrupt and acrimonious break-up, loudQUIETloud follows the band in the wake of their reformation in 2004, revealing their rambunctious touring stage show and more subdued moments backstage. The Pixies' unmistakable music is as strong as ever, even if the band's backstage relationship has cooled somewhat since their earlier years together. Providing a fascinating glimpse into the workings of a band rekindled and featuring first-rate concert footage, Cantor and Galkin's beautifully made film is an essential document for any Pixies fan. ( 82 min ) ^ Top
Sun, Nov 5, 2006 at 7 PM	I'LL SHOW YOU MINE IF YOU'LL SHOW ME YOURS AN EVENING WITH MELINDA STONE DIRECTOR: MELINDA STONE A somewhat anachronistic filmmaker, curator and researcher, San Francisco based Stone dabbles in it all to create an eclectic show that highlights her on-going interest in land use, amateur filmmaking, history and outdoor film extravaganzas. Stone's impresario instincts borrow from the past and infuse each unique show with a mix of sing-alongs and other participatory fare and she stands behind the implied promise of her show's title. Come find out what she means as she presents selections from her most recent site-specific film events-"The California Tour" and "A Trip Down Market 1905/2005,"-at least one amateur film club offering, a brand new sing-along, and a couple films from her on-going Audience Analysis series. For her Film Center show she is also looking for adventurous folk to participate in her "Pioneer Woman Film Screen Tests." Participants will shoot and hand-process the film during an afternoon workshop and premiere it at tonight's screening. Registration information is in the School of Film section. ( 90 min ) ^ Top
Tue, Nov 7, 2006 at 7 PM	FUNNY GAMES DIRECTOR: MICHAEL HANEKE AUSTRIA Since our retrospective of Austrian director Michael Haneke's work in 2002, his most recent film, CACHÉ (HIDDEN, 2005), has found him a much broader new audience. Before its release, his best-known film was this provocative, and profoundly serious, variation on the murder thriller in which a couple and their son find their home invaded by two ultra-polite but terrifyingly sadistic young men. Haneke breaks the rules of the genre by using Brechtian tactics to confront us with our own consumption of violent images and narratives, showing not violent acts themselves, but their horrific physical and emotional consequences. "Masterly, dark, disturbing and utterly relevant." - BFI ( 109 min ) ^ Top
Wed, Nov 8, 2006 at 7 PM	BENNY'S VIDEO DIRECTOR: MICHAEL HANEKE AUSTRIA An unsparing essay on evil in modern society, BENNY'S VIDEO examines a 14-year-old boy's apparently motiveless, remorseless murder of a girl he has just met and the tortured decision facing his parents to either call the police or cover up the crime. At once a meditation on the numbing emotional impact of technology and a condemnation of a cultural fascination with media violence, Haneke's film packs a riveting punch. "The problem is not how do I show violence, but how do I show the viewer his own position in relation to violence and its portrayal?" Haneke's gaze is societal, and his questions are about what it is that we want and value in post-industrial life. What he dares to see is a complex web of social, political and ethical issues. He does not promise that the watching is easy. ( 105 min ) ^ Top