I thought one could only make film in Hollywood. Then, I made a short in Portland and it changed my life.
Our stars Mindy Machen and Leonard Roberts in the cockpit of the Blackstar built by production designer Jubal Nance and art director Rob Taylor.
Los Angeles was the place I flew down to for meetings between long walks on beaches that felt hotter than the surface of the sun. Everything about L.A. felt like the polar opposite of Portland, the place where I had lived and worked as a comic book artist for years, first for Dark Horse and then for Marvel & DC, all the while coming up with ideas for film and television, ideas that made me feel excited not just as a creator but as a viewer. Continue reading... “From Oregon to L.A. and back again | BLACKSTAR WARRIOR”
Help BendFilm fund the production of a women-helmed, short film to be shot in Central Oregon. We only need $2,500 from this Seed&Spark campaign to match a $2,500 grant from the Roundhouse Foundation. The gender disparity in our industry is embarrassingly low and we need to be the spark that creates change!
#OregonMade “Leave No Trace” – is out this week! Oregon looks fantastic and the film has collected some very positive reviews. Manohla Dargis of the @NewYorkTimes raves it’s “a deeply affecting story about a veteran and his teenage daughter – movingly played by Ben Foster and Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie.” See it in select theaters June 29! You won’t want to miss this movie, it is getting great reviews, including “100% fresh” on Rotten Tomotoes!
“The OA” is written and produced by Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij. Marling stars as Prairie Johnson, a young blind woman who “returns to her hometown after an unexplained seven-year absence with her eyesight restored and now calling herself “The OA.””
Kristi Turnquist (Oregonian/Oregon Live) is looking back at our shared film history here in Oregon and will be writing about and “taking note of memorable – and notorious – moments” in coming weeks. Firstly, Turnquist took a look at 50 actors, all of whom have worked here in the state, and who have “helped turn their Oregon-filmed projects into fan favorites.”
June 24th at the Clinton St. Theater 6-9pm will be the first “Portland Film Community” event. We will be showing off the best of the Portland Film Community “Pick of the Month” which we have been posting every month for the last three years.
After that we will be showing a local feature independant film, that is packed full fabulous local talent.
“Little Sister”
Animation studio HouseSpecial has signed Mike Orsini’s No Relation for representation on the East Coast. A sales rep with Uncle Lefty since 2012, Mike created the No Relation imprint under Uncle Lefty’s banner in 2017 to expand his roster of directors, artists, designers, food specialists, digital creators and technologists.
Lourri Hammack, HouseSpecial Partner.EP: “My first conversation with Mike spanned filmmaking, sports, advertising, life-altering animated moments, the prophet Tupac, personal UFO sightings, global financial markets, potbelly-pig-channeling psychics, the underbelly of Lost in Translation’s nightlife via the clubs of Hong Kong and the imperiled state of the body politic. Continue reading... “HouseSpecial Signs Mike Orsini For East Coast Representation”
The Oregonion/Oregon Live’s, Kale Williams, won a Reporting Emmy over the week end for his documentary film, “Thin Ice: A Polar Bear’s Plight” and Dave Killen received the Regional Emmy for direction of the film. The doc was part of the bigger, Project Nora, that the Oregonian and Oregon Live have been reporting on since Nora was abandoned by her mother.
A local auto dealer and his filmmaker wife have launched a documentary series on the international stage of Amazon Prime available for streaming now.
Derek DeBoer, an Oregon auto dealer, and his wife Brooke, a Southern Oregon Filmmaker teamed up in 2014 to create Fastlife, a show about a family striving to live their dreams amidst all the realities of every day life.
