VISITING ARTIST—In their Oscar-nominated RESTREPO (2010), Sebastian Junger (author of WAR AND THE PERFECT STORM) and Tim Hetherington shared the experience of a year dug in with the 2/503 Battle Company in one of Afghanistan’s most strategically crucial valleys, revealing extraordinary insight into the surreal combination of back-breaking labor, deadly firefights, and camaraderie as the soldiers painfully push back the Taliban. Junger’s new film, KORENGAL, returns to the unused footage from the first film to make a very different one—more about the men who serve, illuminating their backgrounds, thoughts, and motivations rather than their experience. “How does fear work? Courage? What is it like to come home from war? Why do so many soldiers miss the war they were in?”—Sebastian Junger. “It’s definitive. If you want to know the war and who fought it, there you go.”—Military.com. (90 mins.)

Admission by contribution.

Director and journalist Sebastian Junger will introduce the film and answer questions.

Join the audience for Think Out Loud with Literary Arts.

THE REACH OF RESONANCE juxtaposes the creative paths of four musicians and sound artists from different parts of the world. Miya Masaoka, a composer who plays the koto, uses music to study the social behavior of insects and the physiology of plants. Using a violin bow, Jon Rose, a violin virtuoso, transforms barbed-wire fences into musical instruments. John Luther Adams’s work is inspired by his fascination with the landscapes of Alaska, while Bob Ostertag integrates sociopolitical issues into his performances. By contrasting the creative worlds of each of these artists—united by the renowned Kronos Quartet—the film explores music as a tool for developing meaningful relationships between people and the complexities of the world in which they live. (118 mins.)

With live performance by Turtle.

Co-presented with the Creative Music Guild’s Improvisation Summit of Portland, June 5-7.

Ai Weiwei is China’s most famous international artist and its most outspoken domestic critic. Against a backdrop of strict censorship and an unresponsive legal system, Ai has met the full force of the Chinese authorities, who have done everything but eliminate him to stifle his attempts to express himself and organize people through art and social media. Following his 2011 arrest and subsequent solitary confinement, THE FAKE CASE follows Ai Weiwei after his parole and battle with a thwarting suit for tax evasion: a lawsuit that he dubs “the Fake Case.” But the troubles with his enemies only continue to provide inspiration for making new art, the only outlet to vent his frustration. “Picks up where AI WEIWEI: NEVER SORRY (2009) left off, serving as not just an update but an even more galvanizing call for reform. Ai’s voice carries louder than ever before.”—Variety. (86 mins.)

Are you curious to know what goes on behind the doors of the School of Film? Come check out our open screening of the finished class and student projects from Winter Term 2014! Watch our student work, enter a free raffle, and join us afterwards at an informal reception where you can meet the filmmakers.

VISITING ARTIST—Almost a decade before Robert Flaherty immortalized the Inuit people in NANOOK OF THE NORTH (1922), Edward S. Curtis filmed IN THE LAND OF THE HEAD HUNTERS with an indigenous North American cast. Like Flaherty’s “documentary,” HEAD HUNTERS was both a reflection of contemporary life among the Kwakwaka’wakw people of British Columbia and a fiction that combined melodramatic elements with tribal customs. Lost in the decades after its release, Brad Evans and Aaron Glass worked with scholars, film archivists, and members of the tribe to reconstruct the film and its original orchestral score. Their recently published book, RETURN TO THE LAND OF THE HEAD HUNTERS: EDWARD S. CURTIS, THE KWAKWAKA’WAKW, AND THE MAKING OF MODERN CINEMA, includes a recounting of the film’s history, efforts to restore it, and other essays delving into the fascinating story behind this major piece of American film history. (70 mins.)

FREE ADMISSION.

Author Aaron Glass will introduce and discuss the film. Co-sponsored by the Oregon Historical Society and the Portland Art Museum’s Native American Art Council.

Presented in conjunction with an exhibition of the work of Yuji Agematsu which runs through June 29, these two rarely screened films by Canadian artist Michael Snow, one of the most influential experimental filmmakers of the last 50 years, reflect on the found-object aesthetic of Agematsu’s work. SIDE SEAT PAINTINGS SLIDES SOUND FILM (1970) is, in Snow’s words, “a 20-minute film made of the projecting and verbal identification of slides of paintings in various media made by myself from 1955 to 1965. It is not autobiographical. The film is a recycling, a conversion which, by employing the illusion of temporal alteration that film and sound recording make possible, becomes a new experience.” A CASING SHELVED (1970) consists of one still 35mm slide photograph narrated by Snow, who meticulously describes the contents of a bookshelf in his studio space, one that was featured in Snow’s landmark structural film WAVELENGTH (1967). (65 mins.)

VISITING ARTIST—The latest film from archivist and filmmaker Rick Prelinger (PANORAMA EPHEMERA, 2004) explores the highways and byways of a period in American history that may well be in our rearview mirror. A journey from the Atlantic to California made from a collection of 9,000 home movies, NO MORE ROAD TRIPS? reveals hidden histories embedded in the landscape and seeks to blend the pleasures and compulsions of nomadic travel with premonitions of its end. Focusing on road culture and postulating on the idea of “peak travel,” the film is a participatory experience that depends upon audiences to provide the soundtrack and narration. A perpetual work-in-progress, it’s a piece that cannot be completed until you, the audience, lend your invigorating voice to the images of this one-of-a-kind interactive social-cinema experience. (79 mins.)

Director Rick Prelinger will introduce the film.

VISITING ARTISTS—A lively chapter in Portland’s indie, “keep things weird” history is the unheralded story of the renegade Portland Mavericks baseball team. When Portland lost its longtime AAA team, the Beavers, Hollywood actor Bing Russell (Clem on “Bonanza” and father of Kurt), bought the minor-league affiliate rights and formed a new single-A team to operate independently of major league baseball’s farm system. Russell was in it for the love of the game, not the business, and when his team of castoffs—mostly assembled from open tryouts—took the field in 1973, the spirit of baseball was alive in Portland in a special way. Setting attendance records, the quirky Mavericks managed to whip the professionally stocked opponent teams, and today, in an era when professional sports seem ever more driven by cynicism and commerce rather than ideals, the Way brothers’ affectionate remembrance is more than just colorful local history. (73 mins.)

Directors Chapman and Maclain Way, along with baseball writer and broadcaster Rob Neyer, will introduce the film.

All advance tickets are sold out for this show.  A small number of rush tickets may be sold on the night of the screening, but not until 10 minutes before showtime.

Long out of American distribution, Rohmer’s third installment of his “Tales of Four Seasons” cycle offers a vivid and witty scrutiny of French society and adolescent love. Dinard is a seaside resort in Brittany famous for its grand houses and ocean breezes. Gaspard has come to the beach to rendezvous with his girlfriend Lena, but while waiting for her, he attracts the attention of two other young women. Though he presents himself as fate’s plaything, we watch his growing determination to master the romantic opportunities presented to him. In dividing his attention between the two women, he seeks refuge, advice, and friendship from the funny, academic Margot, while flirting with the sultry disco diva Solene. Being neither particularly adept at the art of seduction nor sure of what he really wants, Gaspard finds himself boxed into a predicament of his own making: he has soon invited all three women—Lena appears days later without warning—on a side trip to Quessant. (113 mins.)

Winner of nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, this glorious depiction of Belle Époque Paris stars Leslie Caron as a precocious girl groomed to be a kept woman, who comes to realize she’d rather marry for love instead. Featuring some of Lerner and Loewe’s finest songs (“Thank Heaven for Little Girls”) and the suave Maurice Chevalier and Louis Jourdan, it was the last of the great MGM musicals and crowned the career of director Vincente Minnelli (AN AMERICAN IN PARIS, MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS). (115 mins.)

FREE ADMISSION. Outdoor screening in the Portland Art Museum's Evans H. Roberts Sculpture Mall.

Presented by Portland Parks and Recreation’s “Movies in the Park” program in conjunction with the Portland Art Museum's “Paris on the Park Blocks” weekend celebrating the summer special exhibition The Art of the Louvre’s Tuileries Garden (on view June 14 - September 21).