For the 2010 Portland International Film Festival Cinema Project brings a selection of contemporary film and video from Japan, Malaysia, and Taiwan. Focusing on natural and man-made structures and the spaces in-between, each of these works reveals a variety of dynamic relations from frame to space and from history to environment. Daichi Saito’s entirely hand-processed film Trees of Syntax, Leaves of Axisexamines the natural language of a familiar Canadian landscape while Chris Chong Chan Fui’s modernist exchange on public and private space in Block B presents a surprisingly telling view of an apartment block in Kuala Lumpur. From Tomonari Nishikawa is Lumphini 2552, black-and-white images of plants and trees shot using a 35mm still camera at Bangkok’s Lumphini Park. The result is a surprisingly emotional construction of rhythm and movement. And from Shiho Kano's Shinonome Omogo Ishizuchiis a transcendental travelogue inspired by filmmaker Mansaku Itami. Finally, Taiwanese filmmaker Chen Chieh-Jen’s Empire's Borders I examines the process that Taiwanese citizens endure when applying for a United States visa. 

For more information about PIFF, visit www.nwfilm.org.