Techniques of the Observer

Short Films

Co-presented with the Northwest Film Center's PIFF

Feb. 24 - 12:00 am

Whitsell Auditorium
1219 SW Park Avenue

Work Stills:

About This Screening

For our second annual collaboration with the Portland International Film Festival, we are pleased to present Techniques of the Observer, a program of experimental, artistic explorations regarding the nature of observation by seven filmmakers. Robert Todd’s Trauma Victim, shot roadside between visits to maximum-security prisons, serves as a visual remark on the condition of being held captive: a prisoner of this social landscape, both outside both outside and in. Glow in the Dark (January—June) is Chicago filmmaker Rebecca Meyers’ somnambulistic journey through fields of light: window reflections, street lamps, full moons. Formal abstractions of the Manhattan cityscape are viewed through the physical and emotional blurrings of a rainstorm in Jim Jennings’ Elements. Kathryn Ramey’s Endless Present: Biography of an Unknown Filmmaker by Cornelius Thistle is an unconventional and multi-layered approach to autobiography, incorporating hand-processed abstractions, ethnography, and the works of anthropologist Ray Birdwistle and artist On Kawara. Filmed entirely with a pinhole camera in Schaumburg, IL, Thomas Comerford’s Figures in the Landscape comments on the relationship between land use, suburban development, and the human history of the region. Louise Bourque’s hand-manipulated abstraction of flora Jours en Fleurs takes its name from the French-Canadian term for a girl’s coming-of-age. Courtney Hoskins, having studied film and astrophysics, bridges the supposed gap between the two fields in her optically dense studies of two of Jupiter’s moons, Ganymede and Callisto.

Program Details

Tueday February 24

Trauma Victim
by Robert Todd
2002, 16mm, color, sound, 16 min.
Glow in the Dark (January-June)
by Rebecca Meyers
16mm, color, sound, 6 min.
Elements
by Jim Jennings
2003, 16mm, color, silent, 6 min.
Endless Present: Biography of an Unknown Filmmaker by Cornelius Thistle
by Kathryn Ramey
2003, 16mm, color, sound, 30 min.
Figures in the Landscape
by Thomas Comerford
2002, 16mm, color, sound, 12 min.
Jours en Fleurs
by Louise Borque
2003, 35mm, color, sound, 5 min.
Ganymede & Callisto
by Courtney Hoskins
2003, 16mm, color, sound, 7 min.