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About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (March 18, 2015)
Page 14 March 18, 2015 C lassifieds /B ids A Vampire to Capture You REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS METRO OXBOW STREAM RESTORATION PROJECT RFP 2945 Due: April 7, 2015 at 2:00 p.m. The Natural Areas program of Metro, a metropolitan service dis- trict organized under the laws of the State of Oregon and the Metro Charter, located at 600 NE Grand Avenue, Portland, OR 97232-2736, is hereby requesting sealed proposals for the Ox- bow Stream Restoration project. Sealed proposals are due no later than 2:00 p.m. April 7, 2015, in Metro’s business offices at 600 NE Grand Avenue, Portland, OR 97232-2736, Attention: Sharon Stiffler, RFP 2945. A voluntary pre-proposal conference will be held Wednesday March 25th, 2015 at 1:00 p.m. at 600 N.E. Grand Avenue, Port- land, OR 97232. Metro is seeking proposals from qualified water resource engi- neering and design firms or teams. The Sandy River Basin Partners (www.sandyriverpartners.org) are working to restore habitat for native salmon and steelhead in the Sandy River Watershed. Metro wishes to hire water resource engineering and design firm whose staff includes a multidisci- plinary design team of scientists, geo-morphologists, fish biolo- gist to plan and design a stream restoration project at Oxbow Regional Park (Project) on the lower Sandy River near Troutdale, Oregon. Solicitation documents can be viewed and downloaded from the Oregon Procurement Information Network (ORPIN) at http://or- pin.oregon.gov/open.dll/ Metro may accept or reject any or all bids, in whole or in part, or waive irregularities not affecting substantial rights if such action is deemed in the public interest. Metro extends equal opportunity to all persons and specifically encourages minority, women-owned and emerging small busi- nesses to access and participate in this and all Metro projects, programs and services. Metro and its contractors will not discriminate against any per- son(s), employee or applicant for employment based on race, col- or, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, religion, disability, political affiliation or marital status. Metro fully complies with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and related statutes and regulations in all programs and activities. For more information, or to obtain a Title VI Complaint Form, see www.oregonmetro.gov. The City of Portland is seeking applicants for Crime Prevention Coordinators in the Office of Neighborhood Involvement to design, implement and manage specialized crime prevention and commu- nity education programs located in City neighborhoods. SALARY: $22.82 to $30.61 Hourly Deadline: 3/30/15 For more job information or to apply, go to www.portlandoregon.gov/jobs C ontinued from P age 11 and visually arresting of them all. Shot in gorgeous black-and- white and drawing from Iranian and American/European pop cultures and from several dif- ferent eras of cinema and mu- sic, Amirpour has assembled a compelling depiction of femi- nist agency and longing. The mythical Bad City, where the film is set, feels straight out of a graphic novel. A bleak California-esque town, its hills seem crowded with a subdivision of oil wells, and a ravine on the edge of town is littered with corpses that ap- pear to have been simply dis- carded. We don’t know how they got there, or why. It quickly appears that we are not in California--but it can’t quite be Iran either. Though it takes awhile to ori- ent, the spare dialogue is ut- tered in Farsi, and there are plenty of little clues that wom- en are not in charge. The cam- era floats through this nether world, lighting on a handsome young man, a sort of Persian James Dean, wearing jeans and a white T-shirt and driving a 1950s Thunderbird. He is has- sled by a ruthless, drug-dealing pimp, to whom James Dean’s addict father owes money. A prostitute past her prime walks the streets for the pimp, and absorbs his abuse with an air of melancholy. A rich girl toys with James Dean, who tends the garden on her family’s es- tate. A tattered boy wanders about, watching and begging for money. The film takes its time be- fore introducing the girl who walks home alone at night. Ear- ly clues suggest that the town trades in danger and depravi- ty--it is the kind of place where Training at 2205 N. Lombard Mon 6:45PM / Thurs 10AM one could go missing and no one would look for you. The slight girl lurks in the shadows at night, wandering about in a chador, the dark, floor-length head covering that Muslim women sometimes wear. Why does she seem threatening, this slight girl in her dark cape, which we in the West read as a signal of women’s oppression? In Muslim culture, at least as popularly depicted, women are treated as though both danger- ous and powerless. They must be covered because they are dangerous, yet they may be or- dered about and controlled. The girl who lurks in the streets of this bad city later calls herself bad--but is she? She is a vam- pire, and is no doubt the most dangerous in a cast of danger- ous characters--but does she also embody a kind of virtue? Director Amirpour is less interested in plot than in what the girl’s various encounters convey about her and her sub- jects. With the pimp the girl indulges a love of dark eye- liner and lipstick, and he mis- takes her as an easy object of conquest. I noticed I felt most anxious watching the girl lurk around the tattered boy, but her encounter with him ends up being particularly satisfying. Is he a good boy? She persists in asking him this question, and we shiver at its urgency and wonder at his response. What does she mean to do with the information? By the time she encounters the drug addict fa- ther and the prostitute, she has taken to wandering the streets on the tattered boy’s aban- doned skateboard. By then we know the girl to be fearsome, but not to everyone. The girl encounters the Per- sian James Dean in between other encounters, and final- Attend “Free” Team Training Session ly takes him home one night when she finds him wander- ing, lost, after he has drunk too much at a costume party. He is dressed as Dracula, and he wonders if she is scared of him. She isn’t--but should he be scared of her? He doesn’t appear to be, and one begins to notice his relative innocence and its effect on the girl. In these scenes, the girl appears wounded, and full of longing. She says little, leaving you to wonder what intrigues her about the young man, whether she is lonely, whether she finds her vampire life confining. Among other things, “A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night” is about women’s power. Lim- ited though their options might be by social convention and by the fears and expectations thrust upon them, all three women here seem more awake than any of the men, and to varying degrees--the vampire most of all--they act with a degree of intention, even as- sorting a sort of power. There is even a transgender woman lurking about, not really part of the film’s thin plot and per- haps even invisible to others, but also conveying an appear- ance full of intention. I think Amirpour is playing with ideas about women’s power in a con- text of oppression. You can dwell on these ques- tions, as you watch--or you can simply enjoy the beauty of her subjects, in their melancholy dark world, and savor the film’s sly humor and its plundering of Middle Eastern fusion and underground Iranian rock mu- sic. Amirpour has assembled treasures from everything from Madonna to spaghetti westerns to David Lynch; these allusions may be simply playful, or she may be saying something sly about themes running through art in all its forms. No matter how you choose to watch, if you surrender to a mood of appreciation and lan- guor (a bit like that of the Per- sian James Dean), Amirpour’s film, and the girl of its title, will capture you. Darleen Ortega is a judge on the Oregon Court of Appeals and the first woman of color to serve in that capacity. Her movie review column Opinion- ated Judge appears regularly in The Portland Observer. Find her movie blog at opinionated- judge.blogspot.com.