The short lived 43rd annual Portland International Film Festival (PIFF) was an upsetting time. Not for the minimal films that were planned to be screened at the festival or the few films I was personally able to attend before it was cancelled; rather for the unfortunate event of COVID-19 and the derailing of society it caused. This unprecedented event has forced me to reflect on the aspects of the festival I was able to attend instead of the festival as whole if it were to have screened films as scheduled. On reflection, each of the three films I attended represent community in some form, of which the festival itself is focused on creating. This idea of community is more important now as the threat of this pandemic has disrupted day to day society.
As the largest film festival is Portland, PIFF had worked hard to establish itself a community of cinephiles and provide them with the most intriguing films of the year. This year in particular, they were attempting to become a higher profile festival by adding a competition with a jury, multi-media experiences, and more time for panels and workshops. They wanted to become one of the leading film festivals in the Pacific Northwest. In Julian Stringer’s essay Global Cities and the International Film Festival Economy, Stringer writes in reference to a possible way we can view festivals and their affect of the perception of city: “Positively, events that establish festival images that fully engage with global/local dynamics, that fully suggest the international dimensions of local film cultures, may produce a genuine local city identity based around a shared sense of cinephilia and an engagement with dynamic processes of cultural exchange”(140) PIFF wanted to become a larger cultural experience that engaged with the audience and filmmakers; which could have worked but now we may not be sure of its effectiveness due to COVID-19.
PIFF featured several events throughout its briefly enjoyed week. Purple Rain(1983) was the festival’s retrospective that was going to be presented by guest curator Gina Duncan from the Brooklyn Academy of Music. She unfortunately could not make it to the event and instead recorded a short introduction of the film that preceded the film. Screened at the Whitsell Auditorium at the Portland Art Museum, the film did not seem to fit with the location. Prince’s film debut was far too energetic and campy for the stuffy and conservative location of an art museum. The attendance was also, unfortunately, small however the film was nonetheless embraced by the lively crowd. The film brought together a community to laugh and enjoy Prince’s music. The audience interacted with the film through dancing and applause during and after musical numbers; it momentarily felt as if we in the 80s experiencing Prince live.
The article Curating Film written by Siri Peyer pulls from several programmers and curators and their take on the relationship between the film itself and the space it is screening. Peyer’s interview with Ian White expresses his view on this idea: “As a curator, I [Ian White] work mainly in the context of cinema. It is about showing artists’ film and video in the context of cinema, rather than in the context of an art gallery. It shares with performance this frame and emphasis on the event, and even if projecting a film is not immediately understood as a live event, to me sometimes it becomes very close to being a live event.”(2) The potential for spontaneity of the audience and their reactions towards a film is part of the experience of watching film itself. The audience, their reception to the film, and their even energy levels cannot be foreseen by the programmers and can either enhance or disrupt the viewing experience of the film. The experience of a concert film such as Purple Rain would have been better honored in a theater that would have complimented the campiness of the film.
The grandeur and uniformity of OMSI’s Empirical theater complemented the masses in State Funeral (2019) and the overall spectacle of Josef Stalin’s funeral. The Netherlands/Lithuanian archival documentary directed by Sergei Loznitsa was mostly long winded and at times eerie in the documentation of how the USSR responded to the death of their leader. A unique take on archival documentary, Loznitsa pieced together the footage create a full story with multiple angles of the endless masses that attended the funeral to pay their respects. The IMAX screen perfectly accentuated the absurdity of the multi-day event. Reminiscent of Eisensteinian montage, State Funeral focuses on the masses and the coming together of a community. However, it puts Sergei Eisenstein’s dialectic montage on its head, instead of highlighting communist ideology, it reminds us of the atrocities under Stalin’s regime. After the innumerable shots of crying citizens in mourning and politicians speaking to the crowd about their deceased dictator, the film ends with title cards, reminding the viewer of the inhumane acts Stalin did.
On returning to the Whitsell Auditorium for The World is Full of Secrets(2019) the location of the screening felt almost insignificant to the film itself. It neither added nor took away form the film, however the attendance of the film’s director, Graham Swon, accentuated the film by giving the audience some understanding of this film’s experimental storytelling. This film had the best attendance of the three, the micro budget indie horror was successful in attracting a large enough audience. The film was challenging through its use of extremely long takes that consisted of monologues. It was both claustrophobic through its tight close-ups on the girls telling the stories, and distancing through its technique of “tell don’t show” that welcomed the audiences mind to wander. Delicately shot and nostalgic towards an innocent part of one’s youth, The World is Full of Secrets is an experience that can only work in a theater. The film focuses on a group of girls telling each other horror stories that focused on violence against teenage girls. Again, we see a theme of community and both the forming of bonds and the disruption of them. Swon’s film is reminiscent of Cindy Wong’s observation on the type of films and filmmakers that are part of festivals. She writes: “(…) the primary selections of the major festivals, through the years, have favored, a special kind of film: dark, serious, challenging, and linked to classic or emergent auteurs.” (7) Swon’s unconventional take on horror is sure to bring people to the theaters and make them curious on what else he can do.
I enjoyed my brief time attending PIFF and was upset over this unexpected turn of events. This winter has been unusual, stressful, and even bleak. So when an event that is focused on bringing people together for a shared experience of film going is disrupted, it can seem almost hopeless. However, more than ever we must stay calm and positive through this hardship. Society will move on and PIFF return next year to bring the community together again.
Written by Anny Gutierrez
Works Cited
Peyer, Siri. “Curating Film .” On-Curating.org, Dorothee Ritcher, http://www.on-curating.org/files/oc/dateiverwaltung/old Issues/ONCURATING_Issue3.pdf.
Stringer, Julian. “Global Cities and International Film Festival Economy.” Cinema and the City: Film and Urban Societies in a Global Context, Blackwell, 2001, pp. 134-144.
Wong, Hing-Yuk Cindy. “Introduction.”Film Festivals: Culture, People, and Power on the Global Screen, Routledge, 2011, pp. 1-28.
PSU School of Film @ PIFF 