VISITING ARTIST—Mann’s Academy Award-winning film version of Paddy Chayefsky’s lauded television drama is one of the screen’s most poignant portraits of loneliness, insecurity, and self-doubt. A burly, good-natured Bronx butcher, Marty (Ernest Borgnine) is insecure about his appearance and has resigned himself to a lifetime of solitude—until he meets shy schoolteacher Clara (Betsy Blair), who draws him out of his self-imposed shell. Tenderly depicting the plight of social outcasts and their ability to rise above their outward appearances, Borgnine’s eloquent turn as Marty earned him the Academy Award for Best Actor, with the film also winning Best Film, Director, and Screenplay Oscars. (90 mins.)

Tonight’s screening is hosted by TCM’s Ben Mankiewicz with special guest Ernest Borgnine in attendance.

FREE ADMISSION. Tickets available beginning March 22.

“Corinna Belz’s documentary is an unprecedented and oddly dangerous journey into the studios of Gerhard Richter, widely considered to be among the world’s most important living painters. Famously cranky and iconoclastic, Richter is an ideal subject to illuminate the deep fissures in the contemporary art world. His career has been a high-wire balancing act between eye-popping, colorful abstractions—seen in construction throughout much of the film—and enormously famous photorealist portraiture. He has also been an influential essayist on art-making and its place in the world. Though we see the 79-year-old artist talking with his legendary gallerist Marian Goodman, being feted at London’s National Portrait Gallery, and speaking with critics and collaborators, the film lives in his places of work: giant studios with taciturn assistants preparing toxic brews and giant canvasses for Richter to attack.”—Toronto International Film Festival (97 mins.)

VISITING ARTISTS—Perhaps the most famous and influential of all silent films, METROPOLIS is set in a now not-so-far-away 2026, when the populace is divided between workers who must live in the dark underground and a rich techno-oligarchy which enjoys a futuristic city of splendor. Much of the overwhelming impact of Lang’s precedent-setting futuristic vision was due to the magnificent design, intended at the time to beat Hollywood at its own game and presaging such sci-fi landmarks as 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY and BLADE RUNNER. The political allegory—exploring 21st-century industrialism, a robot-inspired worker mutiny, and the reconciliation between labor and capital—still inspires heated controversy, but the bold theatricality of the production remains as stirring as ever. “A glorious symphony of movement. ... the rhythmic progression ... of hitherto unimagined mechanical shapes.”—Luis Buñuel (140 mins.)

The score performed live by Cambridge’s Alloy Orchestra—featuring Roger C. Miller on synthesizer; Terry Donahue on junk percussion, accordion, saw, and banjo; and Ken Winokur on junk percussion and clarinet—heightens and propels the tension in fitting fashion. The Alloy has been performing its original scores for restored silent films since the early ’90s and is counted among the top silent film accompanists in the world.

Special thanks to our co-sponsors, Portland State University’s School of Fine and Performing Arts, Department of Theater & Film, Department of Art, and Department of Music, and Reed College’s Division of Literature and Languages.

ADMISSION: $15 general; $12 Silver Screen Club members and students

VISITING ARTIST—From the director of HOOP DREAMS and Alex Kotlowitz, the author of THERE ARE NO CHILDREN HERE, THE INTERRUPTERS is a gripping portrait of modern-day heroes. In Chicago’s CeaseFire organization, reformed gang members protect their community from harm through a unique, dangerous, and controversial method—by insinuating themselves personally into conflicts. Using lessons from their own complicated pasts, they gain access and credibility within stricken neighborhoods, forming personal bonds to break the deadly cycle of violence. “Mighty and heartwrenching.”—Roger Ebert. “An exemplary piece of both reportage and nonfiction filmmaking. One of the most engaging films you’ll see this year, full of vibrant, complex real-life characters whose troubles and joys will stay with you long after the movie’s done.”—Dana Stevens, Slate (125 mins.)

Producer Alex Kotlowitz will be in attendance. Tonight’s screening is presented in conjunction with Rebooting Democracy: A Festival of Ideas, Innovation, & Democracy, a program of the Bus Project Foundation. For the full week of activities,visit rebootingdemocracy.org.

Special thanks to the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication’s George S. Turnbull Center, presenting Kotlowitz’s lecture “Words, Sounds or Images: Just Tell Me a Story” on April 18, 6-7 p.m. Visit journalism.uoregon.edu/turnbull for more information.

Winner of the Best Feature Award at the Annecy International Animation Festival as well as the French César for Best Animated Film, THE RABBI’S CAT is based on Safar’s own hit comic book series about a talking cat. Rabbi Sfar lives a quiet life by the sea with his beautiful daughter Zlabya and her pet cat in 1920s Algeria, a country full of Arab, Jewish, and European inhabitants. After swallowing his archrival the family parrot, the cat receives the miraculous gift of speech, with no intention of ever shutting up! This irreverent, quick-witted feline loves discussing philosophy and Jewish law and demands to have a Bar Mitzvah. When a mysterious stranger arrives in the city, the Rabbi, his cat, and an array of motley characters set off on a fantastical Indiana Jones-style adventure into the unknown heart of Africa. (110 mins.)

Each year, the Northwest Film Center conducts the regional jurying of entries submitted for the annual Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences® Student Academy Awards. Students from colleges and universities in California, Oregon, Washington, and other western states vie for a regional award this evening, thereby earning advancement to the national finalists’ competition in Los Angeles juried by Academy members. This is a unique opportunity to assess the quality of work coming out of some of the top film schools in the nation. Whether you’re a student, parent, filmmaker, or film lover, the night is always full of surprises and discovery. (120 mins.)

FREE ADMISSION

VISITING ARTISTS—How are artists working across boundaries in film, video, animation, and sculpture to create hybrid art practices? Today, an informed panel comes together to think out loud about the current landscape of experimental cinema/animation and the multiple ways that artists and collectives are independently realizing ambitious projects both large and small. The conversation is held in conjunction with the Portland Art Museum’s exhibition John Frame: Three Fragments of a Lost Tale, on view through May 27. Frame is a California-based sculptor who since 2006 has been working toward the creation of a stop-motion animated drama featuring an eclectic cast of fully articulated characters composed of found materials and meticulously carved wood. Joining Frame in this discussion panel are Rose Bond, artist and chair of the Contemporary Animated Arts Department, PNCA; Laura Heit, artist and professor of Experimental Animation, Cal Arts; and curators from Portland’s Cinema Project. (75 mins.)

Co-presented with the Portland Art Museum and PNCA.

Free for members or with Museum admission. Space may be limited. Advance tickets are recommended and available online or on site.

Dash's debut, made history in 1992 as the first full-length film by an African-American woman to have general theatrical release. DAUGHTERS OF THE DUST is a languid look at the Gullah culture of the sea islands off the coast of South Carolina and Georgia where African folk-ways were maintained well into the 20th Century and was one of the last bastion of these mores in America. Set in 1902. (112 mins.)

Julie Dash in attendance.

$4 per person. Tickets available at the door.

VISITING ARTIST—Tonight we welcome Opera News features editor and author Brian Kellow. Kellow will discuss and sign copies of his new biography, PAULINE KAEL: A LIFE IN THE DARK, a richly detailed look into the life of one of cinema’s legendary film critics and tastemakers. For movie lovers (not to mention critics) of a certain age, the name Pauline Kael—who almost singlehandedly raised film criticism to the level of popular conversation, if not art—is a hallowed one. On paper, her razor-sharp insights, endless wit, and willingness to take on sacred filmmaking cows endeared her to millions of readers who read her weekly column (from 1967 to 1991) in The New Yorker and her many film collections. Kael reigned during a creative, halcyon period in American movies, and a rave from her was strong enough to help kickstart the success of many a troubled or overlooked film. (80 mins.)

VISITING ARTIST—A terminal “road movie,” LAST CHANTS single-mindedly follows the path of its central character, Tom Bates, through an unspecified period of time as he talks to a hitchhiker and then throws him out of his truck, visits his wife and has a fierce argument with her, talks to a man in a breakfast cafe, picks up a woman in a bar and has a one-night stand with her, leaves the woman, and finally, cruising in his truck on a backroad, pulls over to help a man with his broken-down car and, for a few dollars, shoots and kills the man. “LAST CHANTS does what virtually no other film made in the US in the ’70s does—it exemplifies the possibility of a radical alternative cinema, radical and alternative in economic, aesthetic, and political terms—which does not inevitably condemn itself in advance to an avant-garde elitist or otherwise narrow audience.”—Jim Hillier (90 mins.)

Jon Jost will introduce his film. He will also teach a workshop on digital production on June 2 and 3.

SINGLE OR DOUBLE FEATURE (Double feature with PARABLE)

Double features cost an additional $3 to stay for both films. To purchase an advanced ticket for the double feature, be sure to select the DOUBLE FEATURE rather than the single ticket.

VISITING ARTIST—“PARABLE works on a visual and visceral level for which a synoptic summary is impossible. It is a reflection of ‘The Time of Bush in America,’ a squalid period of corruption equal to our country’s worst, or, if possible, even the worst. The film tackles this era with a mélange of genres typical of our culture, a culture which distills reality down to cartoons and in which a trajectory from domestic melodrama leads axiomatically to Abu Ghraib. PARABLE is history as farce, an American tragedy limned by ‘The Flintstones’ and ‘The Simpsons,’ where seriousness has been subsumed by ‘reality TV’ and the populace has been reduced to zombie-like consumers busy eating themselves.”—Jon Jost (72 mins.)

Jon Jost will introduce his film. He will also teach a workshop on digital production on June 2 and 3.

SINGLE OR DOUBLE FEATURE (Double feature with LAST CHANTS FOR A SLOW DANCE (DEAD END))

Double features cost an additional $3 to stay for both films. To purchase an advanced ticket for the double feature, be sure to select the DOUBLE FEATURE rather than the single ticket.

Topping Indiewire’s 2011 Critics’ Poll of “Best Undistributed Films” (since remedied), THE COLOR WHEEL—self-described as an “objectionable comedy about disappointment and forgiveness”—introduces us to JR just as her relationship with her professor has come to an unpleasant end. JR calls on her sometimes brash, sometimes bashful younger brother Colin (director Perry) to help her move out of the professor’s apartment, so the siblings pack into her ragged car for a road trip—only to rediscover why neither of them can stand the other. Along the way, they encounter a world full of people whose opinion of the duo is equally low. “Perry picks up the baton of shame and self-loathing from the novels of Philip Roth, mixes it with the films of Vincent Gallo and Jerry Lewis, and drives it down the psychosexual American highway, reveling in awkwardness and embarrassment.”—Vancouver Film Festival. “A harsh, sarcastic twist to the intimate rivalry of siblings. ... Perry directs these uproarious rapid-fire flareups with exquisite comic timing and incisive comic framing.”—Richard Brody, The New Yorker (83 mins.)

VISITING ARTIST—“Three professional women go to the seaside, two of them to comfort the other, who has been left by her husband. In the process of attempting to console, the other two are dragged into the maelstrom of her sadness. This work is more a tone poem than a narrative, in which the real subject, the impact of 9/11 on European and Italian intelligensia, is never mentioned but lays in the background invisibly distorting the characters. LA LUNGA OMBRA was made in five days in an improvised manner with no script whatsoever—only a vague thought to address the disquiet which pervades, a disturbance which works unacknowledged and of which little is ever said.”—Jon Jost (77 mins.)

Jon Jost will introduce his film. He will also teach a workshop on digital production on June 2 and 3.

SINGLE OR DOUBLE FEATURE (Double feature with IMAGES OF A LOST CITY)

Double features cost an additional $3 to stay for both films. To purchase an advanced ticket for the double feature, be sure to select the DOUBLE FEATURE rather than the single ticket.

VISITING ARTIST—“IMAGES is a portrait of an old area of Lisbon, primarily the Alfama but also other central areas—Castello Sao Jorge, Graca, Bairro Alto, and elsewhere. It was shot in 1997-98, over the span of more than a year. Like those places, its pace is languid and it wears the sense of ‘saudade’ (nostalgic longing for the lost) which defines Lisbon and Portugal. Having no narrative, it was in a sense difficult to edit—hence the long period between the shooting and the completion of it. Such work requires a completely different sense of rhythm, time, attentiveness to ambient sound, and figuring out how to orchestrate it through time without the easy hooks of ‘a story’ or some ‘topic.’”—Jon Jost (92 mins.)

Jon Jost will introduce his film. He will also teach a workshop on digital production on June 2 and 3.

SINGLE OR DOUBLE FEATURE (Double feature with THE LONG SHADOW (LA LUNGA OMBRA))

Double features cost an additional $3 to stay for both films. To purchase an advanced ticket for the double feature, be sure to select the DOUBLE FEATURE rather than the single ticket.

An enchanting fable about looking past appearances and cultivating unlikely loyalties in times of need, A CAT IN PARIS turns the streets of Paris into a delicately animated watercolor study. Dino, a cat, lives a double life. By day he lives with Zoe, whose mother is a police detective; by night he sneaks out the window to work with Nico, a slinky cat burglar. Dino’s two worlds collide when he has to team up with Nico to save Zoe from a team of bumbling thieves plotting to steal the so-called Colossus of Nairobi. A humorous love letter to classic noir films and the stylized wit of “Pink Panther” cartoons, children of all ages will root for the undercats in this droll thriller, while the moody cityscape and cool retro jazz soundtrack will appeal to their elders. (70 mins.)

Nominated for Best Animated Feature Film at the Academy Awards, French Cesar Awards, and European Film Awards.

The screenings for A CAT IN PARIS have been cancelled. The following films will screen instead:

Friday, June 8
7 p.m. - MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO (dubbed)
8:45 p.m. - THE TRIPLETS OF BELLEVILLE

Saturday, June 9
5 p.m. - MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO (dubbed)
7 p.m. - THE TRIPLETS OF BELLEVILLE
8:45 p.m. - MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO (dubbed)

Sunday, June 10
5 p.m.    THE TRIPLETS OF BELLEVILLE
7 p.m.    MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO (dubbed)

The third Studio Ghibli feature tells the story of two young sisters, Satsuki and Mei Kusakabe, who move with their father into a new house near a vast forest to be closer to their ailing, hospitalized mother. Discovering wondrous forest spirits and dust bunnies, they also encounter Totoro, a giant lumbering bunny-esque creature. “Here is a children’s film made for the world we should live in, rather than the one we occupy. A film with no villains. No fight scenes. No evil adults. No fighting between the two kids. No scary monsters. No darkness before the dawn. A world that is benign. A world where if you meet a strange towering creature in the forest, you curl up on its tummy and have a nap. MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO has become one of the most beloved of all family films without ever having been much promoted or advertised.”—Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times (86 mins.)

Dubbed in English from Japanese.

When The Triplets of Belleville first swept onto the public stage in 2003, it was a quirky, critically acclaimed upstart. Seven years later, this animated gem, nominated for two Academy Awards® in 2004, has become an indelible classic in the hearts and minds of music lovers, bicycle enthusiasts, and film buffs alike. Set to a splendidly retro soundtrack inspired by French jazz of the ‘30s and ‘40s, this gloriously eccentric feature proves that music truly does transcend the language barrier. The bizarre story focuses on a young man named Champion, his grandmother, Madame Souza, his endearingly pathetic dog, Bruno, and his aspiration to win the Tour de France. When two mysterious men in black kidnap Champion, his grandmother’s desperate quest to rescue him leads her to the metropolis of Belleville. It is here that Madame Souza meets and enlists the aid of the triplets of the title, a renowned trio of aging female vaudeville singers whose curious and hilarious approach to life is exactly what Champion’s rescue operation calls for. Beautifully animated backdrops contrast with grotesquely drawn characters to create an endlessly entertaining visual adventure. (78 mins)