PIFF Final Roundup

By Cornelia Laakso

          This year’s 43^rd annual Portland International Film Festival was marked by the introduction of significant structural changes. Perhaps the most significant change was the instatement of a Cannes-style competition format, whereby a jury was set to deliberate on eight films, as well as a main slate of forty-four features and seven blocks of shorts. Additionally, this year’s festival included more panels and workshops than in previous years. The final verdict on the strengths and/or weaknesses of these structural changes has yet to be revealed; in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak, the Portland International Film Festival—following suit with other film festivals around the world, including the Seattle International Film Festival—suspended programming on day seven of the ten-day festival. Nonetheless, an examination of PIFF’s adoption of a new festival model, as well as this year’s programming strategies and events, reflects a move toward a more singular film festival experience. While PIFF exists outside of the industry festival sphere, its shift toward a model that is similar to that of more prominent global film festivals evokes Julian Stringer’s notion of festival ambition; “…to aspire to the status of a global event, both through the implementation of their programming strategies and through the establishment of an international reach and reputation. Their ambition is to use the existing big festivals as models…” (139).

          Beyond straightforward film screenings, this year’s festival included a number of immersive multi-media experiences. The Mobile Projection Unit, a group of Portland video artists, contributed visual spectacle to opening night with large-scale projections in the Portland Art Museum. John Cameron Mitchell’s podcast, Anthem Homunculus, was showcased in an eight-hour marathon live listening party. The audio-visual experiences “Off-Center Stage at the Armory” and “Berio’s Sinfonia by Rose Bond” offered opportunities to view live music and musically oriented animation. This year saw a diversification of “special screening” films to include a classic and a mainstream blockbuster with Prince’s Purple Rain (1984) and the Disney/Pixar animated feature Onward (2020). The inclusion of these live events, as well as the implementation of the “future/future” competition, signal PIFF’s move toward a more singular festival experience—one that both fits a reproduceable structure and aims to distinguish itself as specific and irreproducible event. This notion is aligned with Janet Harbord’s delineation of the film festival’s unique temporal distinctions; “…in the current era, the film festival ameliorates the effects of deregulated time by making time matter in two seemingly opposing ways. On the one hand, the time of the film program is a structured temporality; the running time of films is stated on the program and the schedule for the whole event set out in advance, providing a temporal rhythm that deregulation has eliminated from other areas of everyday life. Yet on the other hand, the festival harnesses the time of contingency through live events that bookend screenings, introducing into the offering the singularity of an experience that cannot be reproduced at a later date or location” (75-76). This year’s breadth of workshops, panels and special events contribute to a bolstered sense of PIFF’s singularity as an event.

          In considering PIFF’s relationship to the notion of film festivals as sites for cultural legitimization, it is useful to look to the three-person jury selected for the future/future competition, by which work from emerging filmmakers is highlighted. The jury includes Brandon Harris, a Development Executive at Amazon Original Movies, Susan Lewis, Senior Vice President of Original Programming for Starz, and Emily Woodburne, who oversees theatrical sales and distribution for Janus Films. It is notable that all three jury members work in  large production and distribution companies; if PIFF’s adoption of the competition format suggests a move toward an adherence to valuation models which inform symbolic capital, then the corporate associations of this year’s jury underscore economic possibilities. In “Fostering art, adding value, cultivating taste: Film festivals as sites of cultural legitimization,” Marije de Valck applies sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s concept different types of capital—and conversion from one to another—to the film festival model. Of the possibility for film festivals to provide opportunities beyond symbolic capital, de Valck writes, “First, some festivals maintain strong relations with the commercial film industries. Sundance is a quintessential example; it is Hollywood’s presence, and the lure of independent, indie and corporate exchange that has become Sundance’s main forte. Second, there is the possibility of festival exhibition as a stepping-stone to theatrical release…In other words, symbolic capital can be converted into economic capital” (107). It has yet to be seen whether the inclusion of PIFF’s future/future competition—and its high-ranking jury—will boost any distribution success afforded winners or nominees, but the prospect is intriguing.

          This year’s festival programming reveals a higher volume of work from Northwest filmmakers than in previous years, which is presumably due to the melding of two previously separate festivals. In an interview with The Portland Mercury, Northwest Film Center director Amy Dotson explains the consolidation; “We’re taking the best of PIFF, which is incredible international cinema, and we’re taking the best of Northwest Filmmakers Festival, which is amazing voices in Northwest cinema, and we’re combining those.” While this year’s changes have expanded the selection of Northwest filmmakers’ work, representation of international filmmakers’ work has not grown to match previous ratios. The overall selection at this year’s PIFF has shrunken notably; while that may be considered an undue limitation of possibilities for festival goers, a smaller program also offers the benefit of accessibility. This year’s comparatively small program is doable in scope; that’s to say that it is accessible to the average viewer who might otherwise be overwhelmed by a vast program full of obscure titles. Accessibility and inclusivity are referred to in Amy Dotson’s introduction/mission statement in this year’s festival program; Dotson says, “Our mission over these next ten days—and year-round—is to open the doors wider, to be more inclusive, and to work together to redefine by whom, for whom, and what cinematic storytelling can be.” It remains unclear whether a smaller program will translate into a more concise festival, or whether viewership will broaden and diversify with a broadening and diversifying multi-media approach. It will be interesting to see how PIFF’s shifting structure plays out in coming years.

Work Cited

Stringer, Julian. “Global Cities and International Film Festival Economy.” Cinema and the city: film and urban societies in a global context, edited by Mark Shiel and Tony Fitzmaurice, Blackwell, 2001, pp. 134-144.

de Valck, Marijke. “Fostering art, adding value, cultivating taste: film festivals as sites of cultural legitimization.” Film Festivals: History, Theory, Method, Practice, edited by Marijke de Valck, Brendan Kredell and Skadi Loist, Routledge, 2016, pp. 110-116.

Harbord, Janet. “Contingency, time and event: an archaeological approach to the film festival.” Film Festivals: History, Theory, Method, Practice, edited by Marijke de Valck, Brendan Kredell and Skadi Loist, Routledge, 2016, pp. 69-82.

Lannamann, Ned. “An ‘Unbound’ Portland International Film Festival Features More Northwest Filmmakers Than Ever Before.” Portland Mercury, 27 February 2020.