A BOLD PEACE

With codirector Dr. Michael Dreiling

1:00 p.m.  Bijou Art Cinemas

Tickets: $6

(USA, 2015) UO Sociology Professor Michael Dreiling is the codirector of this exciting and revelatory new feature documentary, previewing here in its nearly final form as a work-in-progress. More than 60 years ago, Costa Rica became one of the only nations in the world to disband their military and to redirect national resources towards education, health, and the environment. Since then, Costa Rica has earned the number one spot in the Happy Planet Index, a ranking of countries based on measures of environmental protection and the happiness and health of its citizens.

A Bold Peace juxtaposes the national policy of demilitarization (since 1948-49) with their investment in education, health, and the environment. Pointed parallels and contrasts are made with recent U.S. debates over the national debt, healthcare, the environment, and the escalating cost of U.S. militarism. The film features former presidents, officials and scholars from the UN University for Peace, the University of Costa Rica, Costa Rican government officials and ambassadors, leaders of major national co-operatives, and journalists and citizens of Costa Rica. Unfortunately, the Costa Rican example has received very little international attention. This documentary film will bring attention to Costa Rica’s inspirational national project, answering why happiness, health, and human rights occupy a relatively prominent place in this Central American country.

MENDING THE LINE

With Steve Engman and Frank and Jeanne Moore

4:00 p.m. Bijou Art Cinemas

Tickets: $6 students/seniors, $8 general public

In 1944, 20-year-old Frank Moore landed on the beaches of Normandy. Crossing through the occupied French countryside, the young soldier daydreamed about coming back in peacetime to fish the bucolic streams. After the war, he returned to the States, married, had a family, and built a life centered around fly fishing. But he never made it back to those streams in France . . . until 2014. Now 90 years old, but with the energy of a man 20 years younger, Moore completes the dream with his wife and son by his side. This extraordinary story of a dream deferred, and ultimately fulfilled, proves that the scars of the past can be healed.

Over 70 years after Moore fought in World War II, he is one of the few remaining veterans of the war, and one of very few who are healthy enough to embark on such a journey.. We all have a line to mend, no matter what it is, and we all could spend a little more time outdoors taking the time to process. If Frank Moore teaches us one thing, it’s this: Life is a precious thing, meant to be appreciated, and if you put passion and love into everything you do, you will get it all back eventually.

Also on the program will be 52 Años, a new short film on Mexican artist, Maestro Jorge Curiel, by Steve Engman.

 

THE PERFUMED NIGHTMARE

With director Kidlat Tahimik

6:45 p.m.

Bijou Art Cinemas

Tickets: $6 students/seniors, $8 general public

The Perfumed Nightmare tells the story of a Third World villager, Kidlat, with bigger dreams than most. He would like to experience the shimmering wonders of the First World and travel to even more distant worlds, even if he has to start his own space program. Gene Youngblood wrote for Filmex: “This is a bizarre, hallucinatory movie full of dazzling images and outlandish ideas. It’s both real and surreal, poetic and political, naive and wise, primitive and supremely accomplished. Tahimik is a master of metaphor. There’s the metaphor of the bridge that connects his past, present, and future with the great world beyond. And there’s the metaphor of the film itself: produced single-handedly for $10,000, it is a triumph of cottage industry, a dazzling testament to the liberty of the imagination. With his very first film, Kidlat Tahimik has introduced a classic.”

Kidlat Tahimik made his film on a shoestring budget, borrowing the footage and equipment he needed, after being inspired by meeting Werner Herzog in Berlin. Herzog became a champion of the film, which ended up winning the International Critics’ Prize at the Berlin Film Festival in 1977. Addressing issues of globalization, exile, and postcolonial identity with humor and charm, Perfumed Nightmare excited many with the new possibilities of an indigenous, Third World political cinema.

“One of the most original and poetic works of cinema made anywhere in the seventies.” – Werner Herzog

The Perfumed Nightmare, the highly original first feature by Filipino director Kidlat Tahimik, is a kind of comic Third World psychodrama. The filmmaker plays himself as a rustic naïf, the ideal subject of neocolonialism…More underground than most Third World films, it’s far more Third World than most underground ones. As a blueprint for an ‘undeveloped’ cinema, I haven’t seen anything comparable since Ousmane Sembene’s Black Girl or the early films of the Brazilian cinema nove. Tahimik is a man of undeniable wit and he details a certain consciousness so engagingly than, uneven as it is, The Perfumed Nightmare seems likely to become some sort of classic.– J. Hoberman

“The Perfumed Nightmare makes one forget months of dreary moviegoing, for it reminds one that invention, insolence, enchantment – even innocence – are still available on film. – Susan Sontag

CINEMA PACIFIC’S 2015 FRINGE FESTIVAL

7:30-11:00 p.m.

Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art

Tickets: $5 students and seniors and JSMA members, $10 general public

Enjoy interactive installations by media artists Violet Ray, Jonas Mekas, Joanna Priestley, and John Park and UO Digital Arts students; join street artists Amanda Marie and X-O for a tour of their new exhibition; perform martial arts moves in the Wushu Photobooth, dance to the sounds of DJ Sassy Patty in the Roberto Del Rosario Karaoke Bar and Dance Club, enjoy food and drinks, and much more.

Admission includes entry to the following performances:

8:00 p.m. Fringe Festival Video Remix Awards

See the winning video remixes of the wuxia martial arts classic A Touch of Zen and meet the artists.

8:30 p.m. The Animated Worlds of Joanna Priestley Joanna Priestley will present her latest film Bottle Neck and a selection of works from her illustrious career. “One of America’s leading non-narrative animators, Priestley has pushed the walls of the medium.” (Jim Ridley, City Pages).

9:30 p.m. Game App Demo by Mountain Machine Studios (Portland)

Mountain Machine Studios, one of five innovative companies selected to be part of Oregon Story Board’s first accelerator program, will demonstrate their remarkably creative game apps, including Mayday Deep Space and the soon-to-be-released The Second River.

10:15 p.m. Performance by Filipino filmmaker Kidlat Tahimik

Kidlat Tahimik, in between tonight’s Bijou screening of his classic The Perfumed Nightmare and tomorrow night’s premiere of Balikbayan #1, will present a live solo performance.

 

LA ULTIMA PELICULA

9:30 p.m. Bijou Art Cinemas

Tickets: $6 students/seniors, $8 general public

La Ultima Pelicula is an experimental documentary-fiction hybrid by Raya Martin, a rising and adventurous Filipino filmmaker, and Mark Peranson, the editor and publisher of Cinema Scope. A re-imagining of Dennis Hopper’s The Last Movie, the film portrays a disenchanted American filmmaker (Alex Ross Perry) journeying to the Yucatàn with an amused local guide (Rodriguez). Perry’s character, Alex, has bought all of the remaining celluloid film in the world, on the brink of the medium’s apocalypse, and much of the movie consists of him attempting to scout locations where the Mayan civilization flourished and died. Peranson, the codirector, describes the film as “an avant-garde feature, but it is also a comedy.” The film uses a wide array of film and video cameras and formats several formats to create a unique cinematic collage. Andrèa Picard of the Toronto International Film Festival asked: “Is this filmmaking as criticism? Or a feverish and wry cri de Coeur for an art form that has radically altered the way we see the world?”

BAD EXORCISTS

With guest filmmakers TBA!

Midnight, Bijou Art Cinemas

Tickets: $6 students/seniors, $8 general public

See Monday, April 27  for details.