NORTE, THE END OF HISTORY

11:00 a.m. Bijou Art Cinemas

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

In the northern Philippine province of Luzon, a law-school dropout commits a horrific double murder; a gentle family man takes the fall and receives a life sentence, leaving behind a wife and two kids. At their best, Lav Diaz’s marathon movies reveal just how much other films leave out. In his devastating twelfth feature (at four-plus hours, one of his shortest), the broad canvas accommodates both the irreducible facts of individual experience and the cosmic sweep of time and space. A careful rethinking of Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment shot in blazing color, this tour de force offers a masterful recapitulation of Diaz’s longstanding obsessions: cultural memory, national guilt, and the origin of evil. The wounds and defeats of Filipino history loom large in each of Diaz’s films. Fabian, Norte‘s tortured anti-hero (superbly played by Sid Lucero), may well be his most indelible creation: a haunting embodiment of the dead ends of ideology. James Quandt of Artforum proclaimed, “Lav Diaz’s Dostoyevskian mini-epic—at four hours, a mere sip for this hitherto-oceanic filmmaker—may prove the greatest work of the Philippine New Wave.”

MASTERS OF CHINESE MARTIAL ARTS

12:30 -3:20 p.m. Gerlinger Gym on the University of Oregon campus

Free

Join the UO Confucius Institute and UO Wushu Club as they host a series of performances by extraordinary practitioners of wushu, the Chinese martial arts sport, from the West Coast. The program will be highlighted by special performances by visiting masters Hu Jianqiang, the highest-ranking Wushu master in the West, and Zong Jianmei, special guests from the Shaolin Wushu Center in Los Angeles.

12:30 pm	Refreshments
1:00 pm	Welcome
1: 05 pm	UO Wushu Club
1: 10 pm	Introduction of all participants, performance sections and styles
1: 20 pm	Performance: 5 minutes by Master Hu Jianqiang Performance: 5 minutes by Portland Club
1:35 pm	Performance of Master Liang
1:40 pm	Performance by Master Liang’s disciples
1:50 pm	BREAK—refreshments, outside stands with info
2:00 pm	Screening of clips from Master Hu’s appearances in classic martial arts films
2:10 pm	Performance by Master Hu (following the movements of the film clips)
2:25 pm	Performance Master Zong Jian-mei
2:35 pm	Performance Portland Wushu Club
2:40 pm	Final group performance UO Wushu Club
2:50 pm	Open floor for practice by audience members with Masters

 

A RIVER BETWEEN US

With Jason Atkinson and Jeff Martin

1:00 p.m. 156 Straub Hall, on the University of Oregon campus

Tickets: $6

A River Between Us tells the story of the longest running and most bitterly disputed water war in the western United States today. The film’s primary focus is the environmental disaster on the Klamath River; however, in this case, the most dangerous toxin polluting the water is 30 years of bad blood between the local farmers, ranchers, Native Tribes, members of the Tea Party, state politicians, and federal government.

A River Between Us examines the complicated history of this conflict: how anger, fear, and distrust have undermined the Klamath’s communities for decades. Balancing the sheer beauty of the river’s surface with its underlying ills of injustice and inequality, the film focuses on the personal stories of a group of individuals who finally chose to put the past behind them and came together to create a historic water rights compromise for the good of all.

Ultimately, A River Between Us isn’t about fish or water rights or even a 40-year water war, it’s about the harm people do to each other, and by extension, the damage people have done to one of this country’s greatest wild rivers. Most importantly, this documentary provides a solution and a call to action to end this generations-old conflict: in order to save a river, you must first heal a people.

UO Law’s Appropriate Dispute Resolution (ADR) Center and Environmental and Natural Resources (ENR) Law Center are joining with Cinema Pacific to host a post-screening discussion with former Oregon legislator and current environmental activist Jason Atkinson and his co-director on A River Between Us, Jeff Martin. Joining them will be ADR Center director Jennifer Reynolds and UO Law Associate Professor Adell Amos.

TAI CHI ZERO

With a Skype dialogue with Daniel Wu

4:00 p.m. Straub Hall 156 on the University of Oregon campus

Tickets: $6

Tai Chi Zero tells the origins of the Chen style of martial arts called t’i chi ch’uan and is the debut of lead actor Jayden Yuan, the 2008 Olympic wushu champion. It is a creation of Daniel Wu and Stephen Fung’s production company, Diversion Pictures, and impressive evidence of their ambition to revitalize the wuxia film genre. Here, they surprisingly and effectively inject steampunk elements into the wuxia brew.

Our hero, Yang, stumbles upon a small mountainous village in which Chen-style kung fu is practiced. However, it is forbidden for the villagers to share these secrets with an outsider. After a particularly tough battle against Yuniang, the beautiful daughter of Master Chen, Yang is more determined than ever to master the art of Tai Chi . . . but he needs the Master’s permission first. Meanwhile, a frightening steam-powered machine arrives at Chen Village, powered by Fang Zijing. Fang has bribed government officials to permit him to build a railway right through the center of the village. Yang decides to join forces with Yuniang to defeat Fang and destroy the monstrous machine—a brave and dangerous act that might just win the hearts of the villagers . . . and the girl.

Noel Murray writes for The A.V. Club that “stylewise is where the movie makes its mark. Director Stephen Fung is making a martial arts movie for the Internet age; the fight sequences have additional videogame-style graphics showing angles of attack, and rather than putting the cast’s names in the opening credits, Fung introduces them whenever they show up in the movie, and adds each actor’s best-known credit next to his or her name.”

BALIKBAYAN #1 (aka MEMORIES OF OVERDEVELOPMENT)

With director Kidlat Tahimik and tasty Filipino refreshments!

6:45 p.m. Bijou Art Cinemas

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

The latest piece by acclaimed Filipino filmmaker Kidlat Tahimik (The Perfumed Nightmare) was 35 years in the making. Winner of the Caligari Prize at the 2015 Berlin International Film Festival, Balikbayan #1 tells the story of Enrique of Malacca, Magellan’s slave and arguably the first person to ever circumnavigate the globe. “In the film, Enrique (played by the director himself) does not appear as the object of European exploitation, but rather as a kind of shrewd cosmopolitan from the Global South. Kidlat Tahimik began working on his film about Enrique in 1979, but for personal reasons never completed it. Not until more than three decades later has he now been able to finish it, almost without a budget—partly thanks to new developments in media technology (some of the new footage was shot with an iPhone)” (Tilman Baumgartel). Giovanni Marchini Camia stated in Filmmaker: “A sui generis historical epic, the film freely mixes genres, integrates a variety of formats, and features a carousel of actors spanning three generations—it may very well be Tahimik’s magnum opus.” Adam Cook raved in Mubi’s Notebook: “such inexplicable and whimsical beauty! Karaoke history lessons, digressions on Filipino art, and the overwhelmingly lovely and warm personality of the film’s director, which is present in every line of narration, every edit, every shot choice!”

Kidlat Tahimik’s visit is supported by a gift by Mark and Joy Gall.

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.

CINEMA PACIFIC GLOBAL INDUSTRIES FORUM with ERIC LIN

12:30 p.m.  141 Allen Hall

Free

The Chinese film industry has become a vital center for global film and media activity. As Hollywood aims to co-produce with Chinese companies to gain access to its lucrative market, China continues to grow its robust domestic movie industry. Sharing his insight into this phenomenon, Eric Lin (alumnus of UO’s School of Journalism and Communication, 1997) will participate in the Cinema Pacific Global Producers Forum.

As Senior Manager of Film Production at Bona Film Group, the largest privately owned film distributor in China, Lin brings years of film experience working in Hong Kong and Beijing. Lin’s work involves working on China and Hong Kong legal agreements, coordinating day-to-day operations including various film projects’ production and payment schedules, and  reviewing shooting scripts and English production notes and subtitling.He recently helped shepherd Taking of Tiger Mountain, the latest blockbuster film by director Tsui Hark, who revolutionized the “wuxia” film in the Nineties (Hark’s Once Upon a Time in China screens in Cinema Pacific on April 29). Join us for talk and conversation with Lin, which will be moderated by Daniel Steinhart, Assistant Professor of Cinema and Media.

 

WUXIA CINEMA AFTER CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON

A talk by Dr. Kin-Yan Szeto

3:00 p.m.  Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art

Free

The wuxia genre had attracted great interest and investment in China when Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) became an international box-office hit and won an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. This presentation will look at how wuxia films made after 2000 navigate the demands of commercial entertainment and the promotion of Chinese culture and nationalism. Dr. Kin-yan Szeto, associate professor in the Department of Theater and Dance at Appalachian State University, is the author of Martial Arts Cinema of the Chinese Diaspora, a study of the international films of Ang Lee, John Woo, and Jackie Chan.

 

FRINGE FESTIVAL PREVIEW

5:30–8:00 p.m.  Broadway Commerce Center, 44 West Broadway in Eugene

Free

Catch a preview of video works by artists who will unveil installations and performances at Saturday night’s Fringe Festival. Media artist Violet Ray, animator Joanna Priestley, and street artists Hyland Mather and Amanda Marie will project works interspersed with video remixes of martial arts classic A Touch of Zen submitted to the Fringe Festival competition. Also on display will be an exhibit of new prints by UO art students. Meet the artists, preview their work, grab food and drinks at the adjoining Barn Light, then join us at the JSMA on Saturday night for the Fringe Festival extravaganza!

 

TRANSIT

6:45 p.m. Bijou Art Cinemas

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

This powerful debut feature from Filipino director Hannah Espia explores the intersecting stories of Filipinos in Tel Aviv when the threat of a law deporting the children of migrant workers looms over their precarious lives. Janet (Adlawan), a domestic worker on an expired visa, struggles to hide her half-Israeli daughter, Yael (Curtis-Smith)—a rebellious teenager caught up in a juvenile romance. Most endangered in the situation is Janet’s four-year old nephew, Joshua (Alvarez), whom Janet and Yael watch over because the boy’s father, Moises (Medina), must work out of town during the week as a caregiver.

Transit is told through multiple characters’ perspectives, producing a multilinear effect in which certain scenes are repeated to reveal different facets of their situations. Oggs Cruz of Twitchfilm describes the film as “a document of fractured identities, an essay that declares the very familiar concepts of citizenship and nationality as shallow facades that are maintained by laws and enforced by borders.” Transit won a slew of Filipino film accolades, among them the Gawad Urian Award and the Golden Screen Award. It was also selected by the Philippines as the official submission for the 2014 Oscar best foreign language film category.

 

BALIKBAYAN #1 (aka MEMORIES OF OVERDEVELOPMENT)

With director Kidlat Tahimik

7:00 p.m., Whitsell Auditorium in the Portland Art Museum, Portland

See here for details. Presented with the Northwest Film Center.

 

CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON

With an introduction by Dr. Kin-yan Szeto

9:15 p.m.  Bijou Metro, 43 West Broadway in Eugene

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

 

 

‘Taiwanese filmmaker Ang Lee took a break from making Western period dramas to fashion this wild and woolly martial arts spectacular featuring special effects and action sequences courtesy of the choreographer of The Matrix (1999), Yuen Woo Ping. In the early nineteenth century, martial arts master Li Mu Bai (Chow Yun-Fat) is about to retire and enter a life of meditation, though he quietly longs to avenge the death of his master, who was killed by Jade Fox (Cheng Pei-pei). He gives his sword, a fabled 400-year-old weapon known as Green Destiny, to his friend, fellow martial arts wizard and secret love Yu Shu Lien (Michelle Yeoh), so that she may deliver it to Sir Te (Sihung Lung). Upon arrival in Peking, Yu happens upon Jen (Zhang Ziyi), a vivacious, willful politician’s daughter. That night, a mysterious masked thief swipes Green Destiny, with Yu in hot pursuit—resulting in the first of several martial arts action set pieces during the film. Li arrives in Beijing and eventually discovers that Jen is not only the masked thief but is also in cahoots with the evil Jade. In spite of this, Li sees great talent in Jen as a fighter and offers to school her in the finer points of martial arts and selflessness, an offer that Jen promptly rebukes. This film was first screened to much acclaim at the 2000 Cannes, Toronto, and New York film festivals and became a favorite when Academy Awards nominations were announced in 2001: Tiger snagged ten nods and later secured four wins for Best Cinematography, Score, Art Direction, and Foreign Language Film” (Jonathan Crow, Rovi). Presented in 35mm!

AVANT-GARDENS: LANDSCAPE IN EXPERIMENTAL FILM

TALL AS THE BAOBAB TREE

With Jeremy Teicher, Alexi Pappas, and Jay Smith

6:45 p.m. Bijou Art Cinemas

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

This first feature of filmmakers Jeremy Teicher and Alexi Pappas deviates from stereotypical depictions of Africa to create a beautiful piece of work that has been acclaimed at festivals around the world. Teicher, Pappas, and assistant director Jay Smith will follow the screening with a brief illustrated presentation on their upcoming production, Tracktown, currently in production in Eugene.

Coumba and her little sister Debo are the first to leave their family’s remote African village, where meals are prepared over open fires and water is drawn from wells, to attend school in the bustling city. But when an accident suddenly threatens their family’s survival, their father decides to sell 11-year-old Debo into an arranged marriage. Torn between loyalty to her elders and her dreams for the future, Coumba hatches a secret plan to rescue her young sister from a fate she did not choose.

Tall as the Baobab Tree is a collaboration of local students from the village of Sinthiou Mbadane, Senegal, and is the first international feature film in the colloquial Pulaar language, spoken across West Africa. All of the actors are local villagers, and the story of the film was inspired by their experiences. The sisters in the film are biological sisters, adding to the emotional impact and truthfulness. The traditional outlook of the elders contradicts the more modern perception of the young teenagers in the film, but this dichotomy is conveyed without a delineation of who is right: every family member wants what is right for the family.

At the start of the screening, Richard Blue will present Jeremy Teicher with the 2015 James Blue Award.

Jeremy and Alexi will follow the screening with a brief illustrated presentation on their upcoming production, Tracktown.

A TOUCH OF SIN

9:15 p.m. Bijou Art Cinemas

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

With its clever title alluding to the classic wuxia masterpiece, A Touch of Zen, A Touch of Sin is the latest creation of acclaimed Chinese director Jia Zhangke (Still Life, The World). Winner of the Best Screenplay award at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival, the film tells four simultaneous stories each centered on a different character.

Jia Zhangke’s critique of materialism and violence sets this film apart from other Chinese films. Zhangke feels strongly about the decay of values in contemporary China: “There was potential to find spiritual fulfillment through Buddhism, or a place and support through the family. These traditional sources of personal meaning are gone, and they have been replaced by money—and violence.” Chris Cabin of Slant Magazine reports, “In the filmmaker’s China, one can find work and money but only through rootlessness and ruthlessness, and the violence that erupts throughout A Touch of Sin works as a return of the repressed. Indeed, though indebted to wuxia and opera, Jia’s latest is as much horror film as it is an exciting actioner.”

FILMS OF JAMES BLUE: UO AND BEYOND

4:00 p.m.

Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art

Free

In celebration of the deposit of the James Blue Archive at UO Special Collections, we are pleased to premiere a rare find in the archive. James Blue directed a 40-minute parody of Hamlet with a cast and crew of UO Drama students and friends in 1951-52. Blue’s Hamlet was a huge sensation when it screened on campus to more than 2,000 people in the UO Student Union ballroom. Word of this sensational student production even attracted national attention through an article in the March 1953 issue of the amateur film magazine, Movie Makers. The film was recently in the Blue Archive and will be presented for the first time on campus since 1955. It demonstrates Blue’s precocious talent. He would go on to win the Critics’ Prize at the Cannes Film Festival and an Academy Award nomination for later films.

Also on the program today will be the following film inspired by James Blue and produced by Journalism Professor Daniel Miller:

The March Continues: 50 years of Civil Rights Struggle Past, Present and Future (21m.)

This film celebrates the legacy and ongoing strength of the civil rights movement. It focuses on two marches, The March on Washington in August 1963 and The March on Washington in August 2013, juxtaposing then and now. It pays tribute to James Blue’s film of the 1963 March, entitled The March (1963), and, like that film, features both the foot soldiers and leaders of the movement. John Lewis, Julian Bond, Joaquin Castro, Al Sharpton, Bernice King, and many others appear in the film. Their message: The March continues.

Cosponsored with the James and Richard Blue Foundation.

 

JONAS MEKAS’S WALDEN

7:00 p.m. Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art

Free

With guest speaker Dr. Scott MacDonald

Jonas Mekas is considered by many to be the “godfather of American avant-garde film.” His photo and video exhibition Frozen Film Frames is on view at the Schnitzer Museum through June 7. Walden was Jonas Mekas’s first diary film, and it was edited as a collection of images gathered between the years 1964 and 1969. Mekas writes: “To keep a film (camera) diary, is to react (with your camera) immediately, now, this instant: either you get it now, or you don’t get it at all . . . it has to register the reality to which I react and also it has to register my state of feeling (and all the memories) as I react. Which also means that I had to do all the structuring (editing) right there, during the shooting, in the camera.” Critic Yann Beauvais writes: “Jonas Mekas’s films celebrate life. They rise up against the world’s overwhelming commercialism, attempting instead to revive the pleasures of friendship, a first snowfall or the return of spring. Mekas’s genius stems from his generously including the viewer in his vision of the world, allowing us to (re)discover, in a simple image, the incredible force and necessity of poetry.”

Scott MacDonald, the leading chronicler of avant-garde filmmakers, is the author of five volumes of the Critical Cinema series (UC Press) and of several other books on avant-garde film. He will introduce Jonas Mekas’s magisterial Walden today, returning tomorrow to present a program of experimental landscape films.

ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA

8:00 p.m. Bijou Art Cinemas

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

Once Upon a Time in China is set in the late 1800s, with China in turmoil. Western influence is threatening the pride and sovereignty of the Chinese people, who are being enslaved for foreign labor, or becoming addicted to opium. It falls upon Wong Fei Hung, a renowned doctor, healer, patriot, and kung-fu artist, to stand up and fight. Charged with protecting the region with his militia, Fei Hung becomes embroiled in political intrigue and martial arts rivalries as corrupt foreigners and corrupt Chinese attempt to gain control of the region. When a rival martial arts master joins the foreigners, Fei Hung faces his greatest challenge yet. Can he save his true love Yee (Rosamund Kwan), as well as right the wrongs against his beloved land of China?

Sporting truly epic fight choreography, Tsui Hark’s Once Upon a Time in China revitalized the wuxia genre and became one of the defining martial arts movies of the twentieth century. Combining kung-fu action, political allegory, and historical drama, Once Upon a Time in China became an international hit and won the Hong Kong Film Award for Best Picture. Martial arts superstar Jet Li took on the role of Wong Fei Hung, a familiar subject of scores of previous films, and audiences could not get enough; he would reprise the role in four sequels.

A TOUCH OF ZEN

7:00 p.m. Bijou Art Cinemas

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

A globally acclaimed classic of the wuxia genre, A Touch of Zen is an epic masterpiece that centers on a somewhat clumsy intellectual named Ku (Hsu) who becomes embroiled in a plot to save a female fugitive, Yang (Shih), from execution. Yang is endangered by the corrupt Eunuch Wei’s (Bai) plan to eradicate all traces of her family due to Yang’s father’s threat to expose his corruption. Both protagonists must fight off the East Chamber guards and Yang, at least, has the necessary skills. The situation calls for some of the most brilliantly choreographed fight scenes in the history of cinema.

A Touch of Zen has a prominent theme of haunted settings, from the ghostly energy of Ku’s house to the forest in which Ku and Yang ward off the East Chamber guards. The mystical forest is an ally to our heroes and enemy to the guards. This trail-blazing film became the first Chinese language action film ever to win a prize at Cannes, winning the Technical Grand Prize award. King Hu’s film was a major influence on directors such as Tsui Hark and Ang Lee, whose Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon owes much to Hu. David Parkinson writes in RadioTimes: “A Touch of Zen is at the same time a study of rural life, a ghost story, a discussion of philosophical ideas, and a thrilling fight film, with each element being handled with rare skill by Hu.” According to David Bordwell, “Hu brought the energy and finesse of classical Chinese theater and painting to the new swordplay movie. His films lingered on breathtaking landscapes, treated swordfights as airborne ballets, and created a gallery of reserved, preternaturally calm warriors who fought not for prestige or vengeance but to preserve humane values.”

BAD EXORCISTS

With director Kyle Steinbach, Zach Shivers, Collin Davis, and more special guests

6:30 p.m. 145 Straub Hall on the University of Oregon campus

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

Kyle Steinbach, UO’11, pulled together a crew that included many talented alumni of Cinema Pacific Adrenaline Film Project productions, and directed this impressive debut feature. Bad Exorcists, a horror-comedy, premiered at the Cinequest Film Festival in San Diego in February. The film follows three very uncool high school friends: Charlie, Matt, and Dana. In a last-ditch effort to earn their classmates’ respect, the trio aims to win the local horror film festival. Things might finally be going their way—until their attempt to film an exorcism scene results in the demonic possession of their lead actress. The boys are in for a raucous and hilarious weekend as they try to save the girl and somehow finish their film, all while navigating the treacherous world of high school.

ADRENALINE FILM PROJECT SCREENING AND AFTERPARTY

Hosted by Jeff Wadlow, Leigh Kilton-Smith, and Omar Naim

9:15 p.m.  156 Straub Hall on the University of Oregon campus

Tickets: $7 students and seniors; $10 general public

Come see the results of Eugene’s sixth Adrenaline Film Project. On Friday, April 24, several teams of filmmakers will be assigned a genre, given a line of dialogue and a prop to be incorporated into their productions. For the next 72-hours, they will pitch, write, shoot, and edit their films, turning them in at 5:00 p.m. on Monday, April 27. The mentors who guide them through the 72-hour process (Jeff Wadlow, Leigh Kilton-Smith, and Omar Naim,) will host the films’ premieres, and the assembled crowd will vote for an Audience Award. A jury of film professionals will also give one film its top prize, the Kalb Award, and the mentors will select a third-prize winner. Following the screening, your ticket will get you into the celebratory Adrenaline Afterparty, featuring music and refreshments in the Erb Memorial Union (EMU) Ballroom!