The Northwest Film Forum (NWFF), the Film Center’s sister media arts center in Seattle, provides an array of technical and financial support to regional filmmakers, including the Start-to-Finish program. Since 1998, it has also been a film distributor, using its institutional muscle and expertise to shepherd the much-heralded film POLICE BEAT and other selected independent works into the marketplace. Having built this component of NWFF’s offerings from the ground up, Program Director Adam Sekuler knows the behind-the-scenes terrain inside and out. Continue reading... “DEMYSTIFYING DISTRIBUTION: A WORKSHOP”
The 39th Northwest Filmmakers’ Festival continues the Film Center’s tradition of bringing moving image artists of the Northwest together to share ideas, discover resources, inspire, be inspired, and to showcase their finest work to greater audiences. Submit your recent work for consideration!
The entry deadline is Monday, August 1 (postmark) and the Festival runs November 9-17. Entries are judged by a prominent filmmaker, curator, or critic who determines the Festival awards. Past judges have included Gus Van Sant, Matt Groening, and Todd Haynes. Continue reading... “Call for Entries: 39th Northwest Filmmakers’ Festival”
This Sunday, May 27, the Dill Pickle Club hosts the third in its ongoingA Place Called Home lecture series on filmmaking in the City of Portland at the Clinton Street Theater. The program will feature talks and short films by three titans in the Portland film community: JIM BLASHFIELD (maker of videos for Michael Jackson and the Talking Heads — no joke!), BROOKE JACOBSON (Co-Founder of the NW Film Center, Portland State University professor) and MATT McCORMICK (you’d be hard-pressed to find another filmmaker whose films are so distinctly Northwest, or who has done as much to nurture the work of local makers). Continue reading... “2 for 1 tickets to experimental film lecture — this sunday!”
Presented by The School of Film, Cinema Project, & Experimental Film Festival Portland
WEDNESDAY, MAY 23, 6-10 PM
Working almost exclusively on 16mm for his entire career, Chicago filmmaker and animator Jim Trainor’s preferred technique is Sharpie on typing paper. This is the medium he used to create THE ANIMALS AND THEIR LIMITATIONS, a series of pulsing line-drawn animated films featured at this year’s Experimental Film Festival Portland. Exploring the natural/animal world, the series uses a witty balance of scientific exposition and humorous narration often coming from the animal itself (one piece screened in the 2004 Whitney Biennial in New York).
The process that delivers the furniture into our homes is often as grim as the process that delivers the food onto our plates. Aerial vistas of butchered landscapes look like ecological crime scenes, the brown swathes of mowed hillsides replacing the chalk outlines. The murder weapons drip with water instead of blood, freshly bathed for the next sanctioned slaughter. The morbid din of strained cedars slit at their mammoth bases, tipping over, their broad tops exploding on impact could just as easily have been confused with an animal’s death throes. Continue reading... “Essential NW Film: That Blade Just Don’t Stop”
Bring your characters to life with guidance from the Claymation pioneer in this 13 session course. Registration is open now, class begins January 26th, no prior experience is necessary.
That’s what you keep telling yourself. Well, why wait another year or another day?
The Northwest Film Center School of Film is offering an array of weeknight and weekend hands-on classes, starting throughout January. Write that romance you’re always thinking about, launch that documentary, meet other aspiring makers and creatives, get a leg up on entry level opportunities within the film scene, animate with an Oscar-winning director, or geek out with Super 8mm film (they still do that? YES!) and other technical workshops. Continue reading... “Stop Talking about your Film and Make It.”
Bring two-dimensional graphic artwork to life using Adobe Flash software on Apple digital workstations. Learn how animators create motion using techniques such as keyframes, squash and stretch, and metamorphosis. Animate video stills and/or scan in and manipulate your own artwork. Record the action frame by frame as you create your own animated sequences with your own recorded audio. The week will culminate in a screening for family and friends, complete with popcorn. Continue reading... “Winter Break Animation for Grades 7-12”
Make it sad. Make it funny. Make it terrifying. Make it in 40 seconds.
To celebrate the Film Center’s 40th anniversary, we invite Northwest filmmakers to enter the MAKE IT SHORT film contest. No matter what genre or format—narrative, documentary, experimental, animation, 16mm, camera phone, DSLR—we want to see it, but keep it short: 40 seconds or less.
This week the 34th Portland International Film Festival (PIFF) puts a spotlight on the tremendous accomplishments of Oregon filmmakers, with screenings of Peter D. Richardsonʼs Sundance-acclaimed documentary “How to Die in Oregon“; Aaron Katzʼs Portland valentine “Cold Weather“; the Portland premiere of Matt McCormickʼs first feature film, “Some Days are Better Than Others” starring Portlandia’s Carrie Brownstein; and a program of “Made in Portland” short films featuring the works of Jim Blashfield, Joanna Priestley, Vince Malone, and more.
This Sunday, May 27, the Dill Pickle Club hosts the third in its ongoing 
Working almost exclusively on 16mm for his entire career, Chicago filmmaker and animator Jim Trainor’s preferred technique is Sharpie on typing paper. This is the medium he used to create THE ANIMALS AND THEIR LIMITATIONS, a series of pulsing line-drawn animated films featured at this year’s Experimental Film Festival Portland. Exploring the natural/animal world, the series uses a witty balance of scientific exposition and humorous narration often coming from the animal itself (one piece screened in the 2004 Whitney Biennial in New York).
The process that delivers the furniture into our homes is often as grim as the process that delivers the food onto our plates. Aerial vistas of butchered landscapes look like ecological crime scenes, the brown swathes of mowed hillsides replacing the chalk outlines. The murder weapons drip with water instead of blood, freshly bathed for the next sanctioned slaughter. The morbid din of strained cedars slit at their mammoth bases, tipping over, their broad tops exploding on impact could just as easily have been confused with an animal’s death throes. 
