Arts & Culture
This year’s Portland International Film Festival boasts an amazing 93 feature-length films from a total of 44 countries. While the festival offers selections from places like Iran, Senegal, Belgium and even North Korea, the power of Joe and Harry Gantz’s documentary American Winter is that it may hit closer to home than any of the other films.
While the Pacific Northwest’s not particularly known for its vibrant punk community, a couple of area punk bands are looking to revitalize the scene. Big Eyes and Mean Jeans, both bands with burgeoning reputations in this leg of the country, recently released a split seven-inch together on local record label Dirtnap Records, whose storefront location, Green Noise Records, is in Southeast Portland.
This V-Day, take your Valentine to see a comedic murder-mystery romance complete with espionage, war and love at the Northwest premiere of Michael Hollinger’s Red Herring, hitting the stage at Artists Repertory Theatre this month. “Companies arm-wrestle [for] the rights to plays, and we fought to get this one,” said the theater’s marketing director, Nicole Lane.
After the runaway success of last year’s The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises, affection for superheroes was rekindled throughout the country. Without fail, a successful superhero film means that dormant and brand-new readers will step back into comic shops, or at least check them out online. But many have found that it’s not as easy as just picking up a book.
Would you be willing to have your deepest, darkest secret acted out on stage? What if the secret played out anonymously? Would you be able to watch? Portland State alumnus Devin Harkness is hoping that you can—and will.
They leap in the air, feet moving in fast motion as they follow the rhythm of the legs before landing softly on the hard surface. They twirl, swan-like arm movements filling the air, fingers interlocked in one continuous movement until signaled to break. They dance.
After 35 years, the Portland International Film Festival is still going strong and shows no signs of stopping. Hosted by the Northwest Film Center, last year’s event attracted more than 35,000 moviegoers to theaters around Portland, showcasing a vast array of films from dozens of countries
Consuming faith, discharging it and absorbing it: All of these play an integral thematic role in Britiish director Steve McQueen’s 2008 film, Hunger, which is now showing at Portland State’s 5th Avenue Cinema.
When 76-year-old Robert Redford took the stage at the Egyptian Theatre on Jan. 17 to give his opening remarks for the Sundance Film Festival, he had some interesting things to say. Redford touched on gun control, diversity and the conservative Utah groups that continue to protest the festival’s presence in their state because of Hollywood’s “moral bankruptcy.” (The same moral bankruptcy that brings the state $100 million in revenue in just 10 days.) He also credited the economic recession with “saving” Sundance.
Eggs and avocados were meant to be together; if they had evolved properly, every pit would be a yolk and it would save us a step of prep-work.
A significant breath signals the opening of Ghost of Providence, the debut EP from local folk outfit Bike Thief. By the second listen, it sounds like a breath of fresh air.