movies
BY RICK LEVIN
Short and sweet
and everything
in-between
Figaro! Living in the Moment of Character screens at Open Lens
Cinematic Cornucopia
Local settings fill the screen at Open Lens
T
here’s a certain special something
we experience — New Wave
critics called it frisson — in
recognizing locations projected onto the
big screen, an undeniable thrill that comes
from seeing, say, the Eugene Masonic
Cemetery on the UO campus used as a
set piece in a modern retelling of the Jack
the Ripper story. When this happens, the
familiar is viewed anew, bathed in the
celluloid aura of heightened awareness.
And so the familiar becomes strange,
becomes a piece of artistry torn from the
everyday.
DIVA’s Open Lens Festival, now in its
seventh year, provides countless moments
of such odd displacement as local
filmmakers, often shooting on Eugene’s
home turf, add to the burgeoning Northwest
movie industry. Hosted by storyboard
artist and illustrator Dan Schaefer, the
Winter Short Film Festival pours out a
cinematic cornucopia of drama, comedy,
gothic horror, political ads, animation —
just about anything you can do on film,
sometimes with nothing more than a hand-
held digital camera.
This year’s offerings include two longer
films — Mania, a documentary about
the history of the Portland Trailblazers,
and Figaro! Living in the Moment of
Character, a behind-the-scenes peek into
an international collaboration centering
on Mozart’s great work — as well as a
series of juried short films and a teen video
challenge spotlighting short works by local
high school auteurs.
Schaefer will host a seminar on
storyboarding where he will give
demonstrations of the art and talk about
his experiences in the film industry since
starting out in 1989. All films will screen
at UO’s Baker Downtown Center, with an
opening night meet-and-greet Saturday,
Jan. 29, at Davis’ Restaurant.
Blazing the hardwood
One of the most pleasant surprises of
the festival is Mania, which tracks the birth
of Portland’s NBA expansion team in 1970
through the Blazers’ topsy-turvy history of
unlikely triumphs and epic struggles, right
up to their present incarnation under coach
Nate McMillan. Directed by festival host
Schaefer, the documentary focuses less on
the sport itself — altogether there is about
a minute of actual game footage — than
the cultural revolution and community
bonding sparked by the arrival of a
professional franchise in a city that was
practically unknown east of the Mississippi
(when the late, great Maurice Lucas was
selected by the Blazers in the 1976 ABA
Dispersal Draft, he said he didn’t even
know where Portland was). Mania is as
much a story of time and place as it is of
steals and slam-dunks.
From the founding of the team by
Harry Glickman to the arrival of flower-
child center Bill Walton and the Blazers’
miracle upset of the 76ers in the 1977
NBA finals, on through the injury-riddled
collapse of that team, the notorious advent
of the “Jailblazers” and the rebirth of
a competitive team in the ’80s, on up to
the present (where, notably, history seems
to be repeating with a team devastated
by injuries) — Mania is a riveting,
enlightening movie that harkens to what
seems a more innocent, team-oriented
era of pro hoops. Non-basketball fans,
and even those who proclaim a loathing
for all sports, will be hard-pressed to not
find uplift in the story of the loyal, spirited
bond between a team and its city.
The short film is an odd beast, a cannon
shot that darts across the screen leaving
you baffled or burned or blown away, and
sometimes all of the above. It’s an easily
acquired taste, seeing as there’s always
this truth: Short films don’t have all that
much time to truly suck, and when they’re
done well they have all the compressed
emotional impact of a great short story.
Consider them an art form analogous to
weather in the Northwest: If you don’t like
it, wait five minutes.
This year’s offering of short films
provides a few real gems. Near Mint,
produced by Vancouver Film School, is a
little burst of Twilight Zone fantasia about
a snooty retro-dude (he only listens to
obscure ’80s punk on vinyl) who orders a
1980 Telsamatic microwave only to find
he’s opened a portal into the past, which
leads to some very surreal communications.
Director Eric Dion’s Sons La Pluie is a
hilarious piece of poetic mock-Truffaut
about a woman pining over a lost love,
containing one of the most hilarious
subtitles ever: “I think in English.”
Perhaps the finest entry of the series, The
Tell, puts a new twist on the dramatic device
of the high-stakes poker game. Directed
by Devon Lyon, this nearly perfect short
film is creepy, bloody, hilarious and, in the
end, completely shocking — like a musical
conceived by Scorsese, scored by Sondheim
and directed by Guillermo del Toro.
The kids are all right
The Teen Video Challenge is an
absolute delight. Conceived and created
by local high school students including
Springfield’s A3 program, what these
films lack in polish and professionalism
they more than make up for through
ingenuity, inspiration and the sheer,
unbound excitement of smart kids getting
their hands on a camera and having at. The
pieces run the gamut from comic sketches,
nightmare scenarios and slapstick comedy
to movie spoofs, political ads and public
service announcements. All this energy
and inventiveness shouldn’t surprise you,
unless you are in the unfortunate habit
of underestimating the intelligence and
freedom of young people making art. ew
DIVA’s Open Lens Winter Short Film Festival runs Jan. 28-30 at Baker Downtown
Center, 325 E 10th St.: Mania screens 8pm Friday & Figaro! screens 1pm Saturday,
admission is $7; the OpenLens Juried Short Films and Awards start at 8pm Saturday,
with an encore presentation 4pm Sunday, admission is $8; Youth Visions Juried Teen
Films & Awards start 1pm Sunday, admission by donation; for further information,
visit www.openlens.proscenia.net or call 344-DIVA.
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22 JANUARY 27, 2011
EUGENE WEEKLY
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