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Black History Month
Showdogs is a full service salon. We do
baths, all over hair cuts, tooth brushing,
nail trims, soft claws, lea treatments, mud
baths, and ear cleaning. We also have health
care and grooming products to keep your
pet clean in between visits.
Show Dogs Grooming Salon & Boutique
926 N. Lombard
Portland, OR 97217
503-283-1177
Tuesday-Saturday 9am-7pm
Monday 10am-4pm
Yo dawg is gonna look like a show dawg
and your kitty will be pretty.
February 10, 2016
Peruvian director Salvador del Solar makes his irst feature ilm debut in ‘Magallanes,’ a ilm set in
Lima, Peru about a soldier’s struggles to atone for past sins. The movie screens on Saturday and
Sunday, Feb. 13-14, as part of the month-long Portland International Film Festival.
Films Feast on World Diversity, Languages
Portland
International Film
Festival begins
d arleen O rTega
Every year at this time, I am
reminded of the range of stories I
mostly don’t get to see depicted in
local theaters, because for a brief
month in Portland, I get to broaden
my palate. There really is a whole
world out there beyond what Hol-
lywood gives us -- and there is no
better time to partake of that world
than February in Portland when
o PinionAted
J udge
by J udge
d arleen O rTega
by
the Northwest Film Center gives
us its Portland International Film
Festival.
The festival opens Thursday
night with “The Fencer,” which
is set in the 1950s and tells the
story of a Baltic dissident who
lees the Russian secret police for
a quiet life in a small Estonian vil-
lage. After he inds work teaching
fencing to children, his commit-
ment to that work brings him into
conlict with his old life when his
students are invited to compete in
Leningrad. Based on a true story,
the ilm provides a window into
Soviet and sports history to which
we in the States have little access.
The opening night ilm is al-
ways a packed affair, so if you
miss your chance to buy an ad-
vance ticket, you’ll still have ac-
cess to another 96 feature length
ilms and 62 shorts from 48 coun-
tries. Every year I revel at the op-
portunity to watch ilms with im-
migrants from all over the world
who live here in Portland and are
out for a rare chance to see a ilm
in their native languages on the
big screen.
A handful of the screenings
will also feature visiting artists
to answer questions afterwards,
including two ilms that I saw in
press screenings. First, the Feb.
12 screening of “Sleeping Giant”
from Canada will feature its pro-
ducer, James Vandewater. A com-
ing-of-age story about a reserved
teenage boy, Adam, who falls in
with a couple of rougher boys
during his family’s annual sum-
mer vacation on a lake in Ontario,
the ilm astutely depicts a type of
recklessness common in teenage
boys. Adam comes from relative
privilege while his two friends,
Riley and Nate, come from more
challenging circumstances and
pull Adam into a world of risk-tak-
ing and pushing against the rules.
Their disdain for the little lies that
adults tell leads all three boys into
waters none of them are ready
for, and will remind you to won-
der how anyone survives adoles-
cence -- and to question what kids
unconsciously learn from adults.
The show will run a second time
on Feb. 16.
Both showings of “A Good
American,” a U.S. documenta-
ry, will feature the opportunity to
dialogue with one of its subjects
Diane Roark, formerly a senior
staffer to the House Intelligence
Committee. She and several other
subjects of the ilm explain how
the American of the title, Bill Bin-
ney, a crypto-mathematician and
former NSA analyst (who is also
interviewed on camera), devised a
surveillance and analysis system
that was low-cost, had built-in pri-
vacy protections, was operational
in 2000, and was so effective that
Binney and others are convinced
that it “absolutely would have
prevented 9/11.” What happened
instead is an all-too-familiar sce-
nario of a small team of experts
diligently creating something of
great signiicance, while less tal-
ented but more self-interested su-
periors barely notice -- and when
they do notice, they shut the pro-
gram down because it would make
them look bad. The ilm’s story is
a complex one, and what its deliv-
ery lacks in nuance it makes up for
in clarity and importance. It plays
Feb. 13, Feb. 15 and Feb. 17.
I caught two other ilms in pre-
views that I recommend. “Ma-
gallanes,” set in Lima, Peru, is
named for its main character, a
taxi driver who earns extra cash
C OnTinued On P age 10