nwFilmCenter

Eco-Sicko

As you experience the diverse films in ECO-SICKO, we hope you'll join us in reflection and wonderment about what or who our environment really is and consider the factors that shape the worlds we live in. We've selected works of passion and imagination that grapple with prophetic eco-systems affecting man, woman, and beast/machine. The implications are myriad, and notions of "inside"and "outside" are swirled. Though survival is a theme, it is even more so a dream. ECO-SICKO is an effort to establish the terms for a filmic enviro-awareness that is both fantasy-friendly and eyes-wide-open committed. Thanks to Portland writer Jacques Boyreau for the inspiration and program notes for this series. Boyreau is the author of "Trash: The Graphic Genius of Xploitation Movie Poster Art," "The Male Mystique," and the upcoming "Supertrash." He is soon to open Night Gallery (nightgallerypdx.com), a salon mixing cinema and fine art. Thanks also to Pacific Film Archive curator Steve Seid

Sat, Oct 6, 2007 at 7 PM	SAFE DIRECTOR: TODD HAYNES US SAFE is an oracle of anxiety and converging sicknesses. In the character of Carol White (Julianne Moore), director-writer Haynes succeeds in hybridizing the glamorous, consumptive heroine of, say, Garbo in CAMILLE, or de Havilland in THE SNAKE PIT, with the Barbie doll shell of a Stepford Wife. The result is a lonely housewife who picks up an "environmental illness" comprising fear of disease, self-accusation, dread of the unknown, sexual frigidity, and existential suffocation. With much artistic delicacy, Haynes spins the horrors of life's uncertainties into beguiling real-fables, silently screaming in the invisible toxic cloud. ( 119 min ) ^ Top
Fri, Oct 12, 2007 at 7 PM	BURN! DIRECTOR: GILLO PONTECORVO ITALY/FRANCE After his mondo-revolutionary hit, BATTLE OF ALGIERS, Pontecorvo concocted a brainy parable about colonial war profiteering. Imperialist stooge Sir William Walker (Marlon Brando) kicks the Caribbean island of Queimada into civil war; years later he is rehired, this time to hunt the rebel-leader he schooled. Like HEAVEN'S GATE, BURN! shows a natural environment overwhelmed by economics driven invaders, where people are just interchangeable enemies and disposable allies. A rogue blend of Italian neo-realism and spastic fumetti, BURN! is spearheaded by Ennio Morricone's intrepidly blithe score and Brando's catty performance. ( 112 min ) ^ Top
Sat, Oct 13, 2007 at 7 PM	THE HELLSTROM CHRONICLE DIRECTOR: WALON GREEN, ED SPIEGEL US Talk about an expeditionary filmmaker, Walon Green has an exotic body of work that includes scripts for THE WILD BUNCH, SORCERER, and SOLARBABIES; he directed iconoclastic docs like THE SECRET LIFE OF PLANTS and tonight's film, HELLSTROM CHRONICLE, wherein he argues that insect, not man, will acquire the Earth. As campus expellee Dr. Nils Hellstrom, Lawrence Pressman has the role of a lifetime, subtly teaching audiences to be terrified. David Seltzer's screenplay is a probing jeremiad that totters man's arrogance through awe of bugs. Lalo Schifrin's jazz fusions stoke the macro-imagery into alien revelations. Extremely rare, not-to-be-missed screening. ( 90 min ) SCREENWRITER DAVID SELTZER WILL INTRODUCE THE FILMS. Double feature with Prophecy. Double feature tickets are an additional $2 above the regular ticket price. Click here to buy tickets for the double feature. ^ Top
Sat, Oct 13, 2007 at 9 PM	PROPHECY DIRECTOR: JOHN FRANKENHEIMER US PROPHECY splits opinion regarding its "fright" value and credibility as a health omen—a fit predicament for a hyper-smart monster movie. Perhaps due for considerate re-appraisal, PROPHECY shows how a beast-centric, imaginatively disgusting, people-get-chewedhorror ride can mesh surprisingly well with a politically charged scenario. Screenwriter David Seltzer draws a connection between urban blight and the manipulation of Native Americans, and his argument that the environment is "really us and it's being mangled" finds a rich interpreter in Frankenheimer, whose direction is filled with force and uncommon macho liberalism. Underpinning all is a gross, bloody reproof against unregulated industry, water contamination, mutagenic fetus-busters and schizophrenic raccoons. PROPHECY is basically one of the strangest popcorn movies ever made. ( 95 min ) Double feature with The Hellstrom Chronicle. Double feature tickets are an additional $2 above the regular ticket price. Click here to buy tickets for the double feature. ^ Top
Sun, Oct 14, 2007 at 7 PM	RED DESERT DIRECTOR: MICHELANGELO ANTONIONI ITALY As L'ECLISSE anticipates Godard's ALPHAVILLE in its use of a "found" Flash Gordon landscape, Antonioni's first color film, RED DESERT, is almost pure science fiction. Nature has been supplanted, and everything exudes a chemical glow (Antonioni painted the grass to make it even more voluptuously tainted). A factory worthy of METROPOLIS spews out toxic clouds of yellow vapor, driving the movie's agitated heroine (Monica Vitti), who is married to its manager, well past distraction into lucid madness. She realizes, "There's something terrible about reality, and I don't know what." Positing a protagonist who is allergic to the world, this gorgeous movie is the prototype for Todd Haynes' SAFE. ( 118 min ) ^ Top
Tue, Oct 16, 2007 at 7 PM	MOBY DICK DIRECTOR: JOHN HUSTON US "Tis the thing behind the mask I chiefly hate; the malignant thing that has plagued mankind since time began; the thing that maws and mutilates our race, not killing us outright but letting us live on, with half a heart and half a lung." So sayeth the greatest hater/anti-environmentalist in literature, Captain Ahab. If the White Whale isn't a Mother of Nature, what is? Ahab's jihad on Moby D. drives Melville's allegory of Man against Everything. Misconstrued as shameless camp in 1956, Huston's adaptation can today be praised as the shiveringly cool, deadly and brave work that it is. Jointed at each turn by Gregory Peck's perfectly black rule as Ahab, and made visually fervid by an eerily de-saturated comic book look, MOBY DICK dares to conjure an eco-system in which the existential aggression of man fattens the beast in the belly of his maker. ( 116 min ) ^ Top
Wed, Oct 17, 2007 at 7 PM	THE GRAPES OF WRATH DIRECTOR: JOHN FORD US John Ford is in the upper echelon men who deal in human spirit. With the compassion to gather the feelings that literally grow wild in his movies, Ford tracks the edible part of the soul. Anyone in doubt needs only to revisit his adaptation of Steinbeck's novel. Ostensibly a 1930s period drama about Depression drought, Okie forced migration, and wincing poverty, WRATH projects more like a cri de coeur today, depicting dead-on the money-madness, land developer scroundelism, and tribal bashing that consumes California. MATRIX/ TERMINATOR-esque images of death-machines, post-apoc oil slaves dying in the sun, and Gregg Toland's eidetically crisp night lighting put a seal on this masterpiece of very-near-to-us otherworldliness. ( 129 min ) ^ Top
Fri, Oct 19, 2007 at 7 PM	GODZILLA VS. THE SMOG MONSTER DIRECTOR: YOSHIMITSU BANNO JAPAN Working on so many levels—from prehistoric fantasy to enviro-activism stuffed with pure kick-ass wrestling mania—Banno's beloved film may be one of cinema's most exquisite entertainments. Story-wise, the creature, Hedora, eats pollution and defecates cancer upon the community. A true example of "ugly power," Hedora resembles a hydrocephalic, thalidomide baby draped in polyps with eyes of bad red. Godzilla, himself (herself?) a fine reminder of atomic radiation, after much effort, whups Hedora. In cautionary terms, SMOG's canvas of oily shores, sludge clouds and black fields supremely support the title song, "Save The Earth." ( 87 min ) ^ Top
Fri, Oct 19, 2007 at 7 PM	Alien Invaders DIRECTOR: CLEVELAND HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS US Made by biology students at Portland's Cleveland High School in a Northwest Film Center Filmmaker-In-Schools residency program, multi-award-winning ALIEN INVADERS is an imaginative futuristic meditation on the impact of invasive species on our environment. ( 30 min ) ^ Top
Wed, Oct 24, 2007 at 7 PM	CARRIE DIRECTOR: BRIAN DE PALMA US Even scarier than CARRIE's content is how good the movie is. Sourced from Stephen King's first novel, both the book and the film act as a timeless emetic upon fatuous Americana, phony awards, and denial of the Other. King's theme of nerd vengeance is turned to agile narrative by the sick skills of De Palma who lovingly molds an archetype: Carrie White the Mutant, Teenager-Destroyer . . .what SCARFACE's Tony Montana is to "gangster" Carrie is to "femme fatale": simply an unprecedented power of upheaval, capable of big-banging entire worlds. In this sense, Carrie is the environment, a Raggedy-Ann uroboros, personally devouring us (and all our problems) in a telekinetic scourge. Piper Laurie as Carrie's mother draws a majestic, God-gifted monster. ( 97 min ) ^ Top
Sat, Oct 27, 2007 at 7 PM	PHASE IV DIRECTOR: SAUL BASS US Destined to chip away at minds for a long time, celebrated designer Bass' only directorial feature books a deep voyage not unlike 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. Involving star-programmed monoliths that advance ants on Earth to defeat humans, PHASE IV boasts mod art direction from John Barry (whose credits include A CLOCKWORK ORANGE and STAR WARS) and glorious insect sequences by Ken Middleham. The scenario places two scientists and a traumatized hottie inside a shielded fort from which they battle the super-ants: so defenseless in the individual, so powerful in the mass! Nigel Davenport plays a diehard human chauvinist to Michael Murphy's moody code breaker, and Lynne Frederick (the last Mrs. Peter Sellers) sexualizes the trio, who become the first to undergo PHASE IV's chasmic creation of a new species. Script by Mayo Simon. ( 86 min ) ^ Top
Sun, Oct 28, 2007 at 7 PM	ROAD WARRIOR DIRECTOR: GEORGE MILLER AUSTRALIA Saying it all about the oil wars "Without fuel, they were nothing," Miller's camp epic about gasoline fixation and S&M couture is one post-modern, post-apocalyptic flick worth re-indulgence. Paced with Byronic poetry, gallows humor, and an Aussie knack for metal carnage, THE ROAD WARRIOR tones its vehicular gore with a birthing myth, as Mad Max (Mel Gibson) spreads humanity by helping a tribe escape their slough of despond. In the role of Lord Humungus, alpha-besieger of the wasteland, Kjell Nilsson bellows baroque lines like, "Smegma crazies to the left! The gate! Gayboy berserkers, to the gate!" Indeed, THE ROAD WARRIOR trumps the agony of world's end with freak show chutzpah. ( 94 min ) ^ Top