The seventh annual Portland Documentary and eXperimental Film Festival (PDX Fest, for short!) is just two short weeks away! This year the festival will be taking place at the historic Hollywood Theatre from April 30 – May 4, 2008. We will also be hosting an exciting sidebar program of video installation work and multi-media performances at galleryHomeland. This year's festival is easily our biggest yet featuring five jam-packed days of provocative, artistic and firmly uncompromising films and videos from around the globe. The full schedule is now up for your eager eyes at www.peripheralproduce.com. Check it out!
Festival Highlights include:
OPENING NIGHT! Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell
PDX Fest is excited to present the Northwest premiere of Wild Combination, Matt Wolf's visually absorbing portrait of the seminal avant-garde composer, singer-songwriter, cellist, and disco producer Arthur Russell. Before his untimely death from AIDS in 1992, Arthur prolifically created music that spanned both pop and the transcendent possibilities of abstract art. Now, over fifteen years since his passing, Arthur's work is finally finding its audience. Wolf incorporates rare archival footage and commentary from Arthur's family, friends, and closest collaborators—including Philip Glass and Allen Ginsberg—to tell this poignant and important story.
Featured Artists: Travis Wilkerson & Shana Moulton
We are incredibly excited to welcome documentarian Travis Wilkerson and video performance artist Shana Moulton as our featured artists this year! Travis Wilkerson is an internationally recognized documentary filmmaker, whose work is firmly based in the tradition of Third Cinema, or activist filmmaking. Wilkerson's work consistently tackles the challenges of presenting the tangled threads of contested social history and making them relevant to today's world, marrying a sophisticated interrogation of history with a provocative approach to the documentary film form. Travis will be presenting a special May Day presentation of his multi-media performance, Proving Ground (which premiered at last year's Sundance Film Festival) as well as a special screening of his award-winning 2002 documentary, An Injury to One.
Video and performance artist Shana Moulton is rapidly gaining international renown through her witty yet strange video and performance series, Whispering Pines. Following in the footsteps of such innovative multi-media performers as Miranda July and Cindy Sherman, Moulton's work utilizes a variety of mediums with an undeniably playful approach to explore the isolation and confusion of consumer living in the New Age. Shana will be presenting a very special Whispering Pines program featuring many of the videos from the series as well as a live performance that will bring this strange world to life right before our eyes!!
The 2008 Peripheral Produce Invitational
The Peripheral Produce Invitational (dubbed the 'World Championship of Experimental Cinema') will once again pit filmmakers from Portland and beyond against each other in a rock-em-sock-em, trash talkin' competitive film showdown. At last year's Invitational, history was made as 91-year old filmmaker George Andrus walked away with the trophy and our audiences' hearts. This year George returns to defend his title against a brand new batch of rabid filmmakers who hope to make the trophy their own. Will George cast his adorable spell over the audience again or will a new superstar usurp his throne? With all the filmmakers in attendance and the audience deciding who wins, you never know what will happen in this battle-royale of experimental film.
The Universal Language: A PowerPoint Presentation
San Francisco filmmakers Sam Green and Carrie Lozano (The Weather Underground) bring us a very special multi-media performance as they use the much-maligned PowerPoint™ application to present something between a rough-cut and a lecture on their new film project, The Universal Language. The final film will be a feature-length experimental documentary exploring the battered state of the utopian impulse at the dawn of the 21st century, asking the question what has happened to our ability to imagine a future based on humankind's noblest impulses? Featuring a live soundtrack by Dave Cerf.
CLOSING NIGHT! Mock Up On Mu by Craig Baldwin
This year's PDX Fest will close with the Northwest premiere of Mock Up On Mu, the latest feature film from collage filmmaker Craig Baldwin (Sonic Outlaws, Tribulation '99). A radical hybrid of spy, sci-fi, Western, and even horror genres, Mock Up On Mu musters the creative audacity to take up within its absurdly impossible 'collage-narrative' agency the profoundly serious issue of the militarization of space. Based (mostly) on historical fact, Mu explores the occult rituals of 3 seminal figures in post-War California - Jet Propulsion Laboratory founder Jack Parsons, his partner artist Marjorie Cameron, and Church of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.
The First-Ever Experimental Filmmaker Karaoke Throwdown! at galleryHomeland
An all-new interactive event joins the PDX Fest roster with this one night only, one of a kind Karaoke Night! We have invited a handful of experimental filmmakers to tackle the great unexplored territory of the Karaoke Video to bring us a kustom-made katalog of your favorite karaoke hits! Come join us as we try to take Karaoke to the next level!!
Surreal Systems: The PDX Fest Video Installation Exhibit at galleryHomeland
For the third consecutive year, Portland artists Stephen Slappe and Mack McFarland have put together an exhibition of video art for the PDX Fest. Surreal Systems glimpses at artists working within the wide field of video installation, featuring work from fourteen artists and artist teams from the USA and Europe. What creates a system? Who dictates the rules? And what occurs when the rules fail? These are a few of the questions posed by the work in Surreal Systems. This show promises Portland's heaviest annual dose of installation-based moving images under one roof!
PLUS new films and videos from a ton of amazing filmmakers (many of whom will be in attendance!) including Stephanie Barber, Ben Russell, Linas Phillips, Jeanne Liotta, Cartune Xprez, and Michael Robinson! PLUS PLUS workshops, parties, surprise performances AND MUCH MUCH MORE!!
For the full festival schedule, ticketing info, and last minute updates head to:
www.peripheralproduce.com
the Portland Documentary and eXperimental Film Festival
April 30-May 4, 2008 at the Hollywood Theatre
www.peripheralproduce.com
Chatelin Bruno 
