Wednesday, Sept. 8 to Tuesday, Sept 14, 2004.
BY David Walker, Willamette Week
The 48 Hour Film Project began three years ago in Washington, D.C., and has spread to more than 20 cities worldwide. Filmmaking teams are assigned a genre and given one weekend to write, shoot, edit and score a film, which is screened the following weekend. Late last month, the 48 Hour Film Project came to Portland, and enthusiastic audiences packed the Hollywood Theatre over consecutive nights to see the results. This week's best-of show is a final opportunity to see what is (along with Orlo's Video Fest) arguably the most kinetic film event of the year in a city that already enjoys a healthy underground scene. What you get is a blend of skilled filmmaking and endearing amateurism. Although the best-of lineup is still being determined, likely films include Guilty Party, which exhibits skilled cinematography and editing with an atmospheric score, and Getting 'Wood, which is riotous fun. Quietness of Copper, a charming fantasy about the Portlandia statue, takes its cue from ancient mythology, and features one of the festival's only familiar local names: director Rebecca Rodriguez. Are there better films playing in Portland this week? Absolutely. But quality isn't the only fitting measurement here. Watch the 48 Hour Film Project to experience the contagious thrill of artistry made on the fly. (Brian Libby)
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Filmmaker's current success isn't a matter of degrees
Margie Boulé, The Oregonian
March 31, 2004
You want to grow up to be a feature-film director? Everybody knows how to go about it. You study hard in high school, go to a good film school for college, move to Hollywood and spend years working your way up.
Rebecca Rodriguez never read the instructions.
At 36, Rebecca's first full-length feature, "Coming up Easy," will premiere Friday night at the Longbaugh II Film Festival in Portland. She wrote it. She directed it.
She lived it.
Most people keep secret the life experiences Rebecca says she has survived. Rebecca not only talks about violence and abuse that she endured as a child, she made a movie about it. "Based on a true story," it says in the opening credits. "I'm pretty open about certain things," Rebecca says, "because when you own the painful parts of your life, it can be really powerful."
Rebecca is 36 today, and lives in Vancouver. It seems like a long time ago when her mother and father used to battle. After their divorce, her mother married a convicted murderer, just six months out of San Quentin. "For most people, that would be a little red flag," Rebecca says, laughing.
In the years before her stepfather died during a robbery, "We were moving, moving all over the place, so my stepfather could elude authorities." When she was 15, Rebecca was told the family was moving again. "I was tired, and my grades had gone down the tubes. . . . I said, 'I'm not going.'"
She dropped out of high school and got three jobs to support herself. "That was when my life became my own. It was difficult." But she stayed away from drugs and out of trouble. "I think I had an absolute army of guardian angels watching over me."
Unlike most future film directors, Rebecca had no clue she'd end up making movies. She knew she was uneducated. She doubted she'd ever do anything important. It was a dark time when friends left for college.
She married a Navy man at 20 and moved to Guam. The marriage didn't last, but Rebecca moved her first mountain on Guam. Distressed by the number of abandoned animals she saw, she founded a humane society that still thrives there. "It was the most empowering experience," she says. Suddenly she felt she could do anything. In the next few years she moved to Portland, created and patented a parenting system, and became an inventor, manufacturing and selling useful household devices. She created the parenting system, which uses tokens for positive reinforcement, when her sister and three nephews moved into her house, seeking refuge from domestic abuse.
"The creative juices were just crazy-flowing," Rebecca says. "While doing this inventing, I started to itch to act in a film."
She'd had success as an actress, landing the first nine roles she auditioned for. Now she set about writing a script for a film she wanted to act in. It was her story and her sister's, about their childhood and her sister's escape from domestic violence as an adult. She called it "Coming up Easy."
"By the time I finished writing, all my passion had shifted from acting to writing and directing." The first script led to a second. More followed. She went to Sundance Film Festival and saw that aspiring directors began with short films. So she came home to Portland and wrote two short films.
A friend agreed to finance them, and the two films were shot during a single weekend. "Talk about a grind," Rebecca says. "I might as well have taken everyone, dumped us all into a meat grinder and shot us out the other side."
The exhausting effort was worth it. "Soul Collectors" premiered at the Seattle International Film Festival. "Talk about ecstatic," she says. "This huge theater was packed, and people laughed when they were supposed to. I almost passed out, sitting there." Both shorts were picked up by Universal Studios and have been shown all over the world.
It was time to direct a feature film. Rebecca picked her own story, "Coming up Easy." "I agonized over it, because it's a very personal story. I had to sit down with my sister and talk about opening up this can of hurt." Her sister urged her to do the movie. "She feels strongly it's going to help people," especially other victims of domestic violence.
Rebecca and a crew of Portland professionals shot the film in 18 days last year, funded mostly by local investors. They came in on schedule and on budget.
Rebecca is excited about the premiere at 9 p.m. Friday at the Hollywood Theatre in Portland. But she's already working on several potential films, some by other writers. "Whenever money comes for one, that's what I'll do first," she says.
She didn't go to a fancy film school -- she never even finished high school. She doesn't have a big-name mentor or a Southern California address.
But Rebecca Rodriguez absolutely knows her future is in directing films. "In a way, I was really blessed that I didn't have the guidance most people got," she says. "Because for me, there are no boundaries, no limitations. The way I look at it, other people have done it, so I can do it. Let's go do it. It'll be fun."
March 31, 2004
You want to grow up to be a feature-film director? Everybody knows how to go about it. You study hard in high school, go to a good film school for college, move to Hollywood and spend years working your way up.
Rebecca Rodriguez never read the instructions.
At 36, Rebecca's first full-length feature, "Coming up Easy," will premiere Friday night at the Longbaugh II Film Festival in Portland. She wrote it. She directed it.
She lived it.
Most people keep secret the life experiences Rebecca says she has survived. Rebecca not only talks about violence and abuse that she endured as a child, she made a movie about it. "Based on a true story," it says in the opening credits. "I'm pretty open about certain things," Rebecca says, "because when you own the painful parts of your life, it can be really powerful."
Rebecca is 36 today, and lives in Vancouver. It seems like a long time ago when her mother and father used to battle. After their divorce, her mother married a convicted murderer, just six months out of San Quentin. "For most people, that would be a little red flag," Rebecca says, laughing.
In the years before her stepfather died during a robbery, "We were moving, moving all over the place, so my stepfather could elude authorities." When she was 15, Rebecca was told the family was moving again. "I was tired, and my grades had gone down the tubes. . . . I said, 'I'm not going.'"
She dropped out of high school and got three jobs to support herself. "That was when my life became my own. It was difficult." But she stayed away from drugs and out of trouble. "I think I had an absolute army of guardian angels watching over me."
Unlike most future film directors, Rebecca had no clue she'd end up making movies. She knew she was uneducated. She doubted she'd ever do anything important. It was a dark time when friends left for college.
She married a Navy man at 20 and moved to Guam. The marriage didn't last, but Rebecca moved her first mountain on Guam. Distressed by the number of abandoned animals she saw, she founded a humane society that still thrives there. "It was the most empowering experience," she says. Suddenly she felt she could do anything. In the next few years she moved to Portland, created and patented a parenting system, and became an inventor, manufacturing and selling useful household devices. She created the parenting system, which uses tokens for positive reinforcement, when her sister and three nephews moved into her house, seeking refuge from domestic abuse.
"The creative juices were just crazy-flowing," Rebecca says. "While doing this inventing, I started to itch to act in a film."
She'd had success as an actress, landing the first nine roles she auditioned for. Now she set about writing a script for a film she wanted to act in. It was her story and her sister's, about their childhood and her sister's escape from domestic violence as an adult. She called it "Coming up Easy."
"By the time I finished writing, all my passion had shifted from acting to writing and directing." The first script led to a second. More followed. She went to Sundance Film Festival and saw that aspiring directors began with short films. So she came home to Portland and wrote two short films.
A friend agreed to finance them, and the two films were shot during a single weekend. "Talk about a grind," Rebecca says. "I might as well have taken everyone, dumped us all into a meat grinder and shot us out the other side."
The exhausting effort was worth it. "Soul Collectors" premiered at the Seattle International Film Festival. "Talk about ecstatic," she says. "This huge theater was packed, and people laughed when they were supposed to. I almost passed out, sitting there." Both shorts were picked up by Universal Studios and have been shown all over the world.
It was time to direct a feature film. Rebecca picked her own story, "Coming up Easy." "I agonized over it, because it's a very personal story. I had to sit down with my sister and talk about opening up this can of hurt." Her sister urged her to do the movie. "She feels strongly it's going to help people," especially other victims of domestic violence.
Rebecca and a crew of Portland professionals shot the film in 18 days last year, funded mostly by local investors. They came in on schedule and on budget.
Rebecca is excited about the premiere at 9 p.m. Friday at the Hollywood Theatre in Portland. But she's already working on several potential films, some by other writers. "Whenever money comes for one, that's what I'll do first," she says.
She didn't go to a fancy film school -- she never even finished high school. She doesn't have a big-name mentor or a Southern California address.
But Rebecca Rodriguez absolutely knows her future is in directing films. "In a way, I was really blessed that I didn't have the guidance most people got," she says. "Because for me, there are no boundaries, no limitations. The way I look at it, other people have done it, so I can do it. Let's go do it. It'll be fun."
Postcard from Singapore: American Short Shorts On the Road
Postcard from Singapore: American Short Shorts On the Road
Tim LaTorre, indieWIRE / 08.03.01
Ah...beautiful Singapore...rickshaws, chicken rice, and...short films? As yet another sign that the world arts community has a growing interest in the art of the short film, American Short Shorts successfully invaded the small city/state with its July 11-14 festival.
Founded two years ago by Los Angeles-based Producer Douglas Williams and Tokyo-based Executive Director Tetsuya Bessho, the 2001 installment marks the first time the festival has crossed its Japanese borders and pulled into Singapore's port -- the Southeast Asian city/country best known these days for outlawing gum and dishing out corporal punishment to an American teenager guilty of vandalism.
Organized in association with The Substation, the local 'multi-disciplinary, multi-media, multi-cultural and multi-lingual arts center,' the festival sold out each of its 4 screenings, which underscores the success of the festival with the American-savvy Singaporean audience. According to Festival Executive Wahyuni Hadi, "because American culture is so predominate in Singapore people are not in a big hurry to see American films like Japan. So we had to think of how we were going to sell it and we sold it through artistic merit, which I think the films we are showing deserve."
Shortened from the Japanese program in order to appease the local government censors and fit the allotted time frame, Singapore highlights included Jason Reitman's "In God We Trust," Michael Horowitz and Gareth Smith's "This Guy is Falling," Sam Hoffman's "The Ride Home," Rebecca Rodriguez's "Soul Collectors," Marc-Andreas Bochert's "Kleingeld" and David Greenspan's "Ohagi (Bean Cake)." To give some perspective on the use of short filmmaking in an artist's development, the program also included Tim Burton's animated student film "Vincent." Despite some of the technical limitations -- all films were transferred and projected on video, the program succeeded in its mission: to expose the diverse art of short filmmaking to a new Asian audience.
This focus on short film comes at an important time in the reconstitution of Singaporean cinema. While the country has many theaters that are technologically up to par with or exceed American standards, local production has been limited to about 2 to 3 features a year. Go to any theater and you'll find that they are filled with American or Hong Kong imports.
The last decade has seen a few homegrown hits, which include Eric Khoo's "12 Storeys" (1997), T.L. Tay's "Money No Enough" (1998), and Chee Kong Cheah's "Chicken Rice War" (2000). Director Glenn Goei's debut dance movie "Forever Fever" (1998) was the first feature from Singapore to find a U.S. release. It was picked up by Miramax and subsequently retitled "That's the Way I Like It."
As nervous business interests flee from a post-English Hong Kong looking for a safe business harbor, Singaporeans are beginning to realize that they have the opportunity to develop their own artistic voice. In response to this growing interest in Singaporean cinema, the Singapore Film Commission was established in 1999 to "nurture, support and promote Singapore talent in filmmaking, the production of Singapore films and a film industry in Singapore."
Singapore has discovered that short films are the perfect foundation for this new voice and the Singapore Film commission is handing out funding accordingly. Thus far, 34 short films have received up to S$5,000 each, 2 features have received up to S$250,000, and 5 Singaporeans or permanent residents have been awarded up to S$100,000 each for undergraduate or post-graduate film studies overseas. Not a bad start for a 646 square kilometer country with a population of 3.1 million.
According to Wong Wai Leng, Assistant Director of the Singapore Film Commission, "We believe that if [Singaporeans] really want to make [filmmaking] a career, it's really best to start making short films."
Using American Short Shorts as a testing ground, according to Festival Executive Wahyuni Hadi, The Substation is planning on starting its own short film festival in December that will focus on Asian short films. This coincides with an important change within the American Short Shorts Film Festival. Starting next year, the festival is dropping the "American" and transforming into the Short Shorts Film Festival. No doubt, Singaporeans will have more to contribute in future installments.
Tim LaTorre, indieWIRE / 08.03.01
Ah...beautiful Singapore...rickshaws, chicken rice, and...short films? As yet another sign that the world arts community has a growing interest in the art of the short film, American Short Shorts successfully invaded the small city/state with its July 11-14 festival.
Founded two years ago by Los Angeles-based Producer Douglas Williams and Tokyo-based Executive Director Tetsuya Bessho, the 2001 installment marks the first time the festival has crossed its Japanese borders and pulled into Singapore's port -- the Southeast Asian city/country best known these days for outlawing gum and dishing out corporal punishment to an American teenager guilty of vandalism.
Organized in association with The Substation, the local 'multi-disciplinary, multi-media, multi-cultural and multi-lingual arts center,' the festival sold out each of its 4 screenings, which underscores the success of the festival with the American-savvy Singaporean audience. According to Festival Executive Wahyuni Hadi, "because American culture is so predominate in Singapore people are not in a big hurry to see American films like Japan. So we had to think of how we were going to sell it and we sold it through artistic merit, which I think the films we are showing deserve."
Shortened from the Japanese program in order to appease the local government censors and fit the allotted time frame, Singapore highlights included Jason Reitman's "In God We Trust," Michael Horowitz and Gareth Smith's "This Guy is Falling," Sam Hoffman's "The Ride Home," Rebecca Rodriguez's "Soul Collectors," Marc-Andreas Bochert's "Kleingeld" and David Greenspan's "Ohagi (Bean Cake)." To give some perspective on the use of short filmmaking in an artist's development, the program also included Tim Burton's animated student film "Vincent." Despite some of the technical limitations -- all films were transferred and projected on video, the program succeeded in its mission: to expose the diverse art of short filmmaking to a new Asian audience.
This focus on short film comes at an important time in the reconstitution of Singaporean cinema. While the country has many theaters that are technologically up to par with or exceed American standards, local production has been limited to about 2 to 3 features a year. Go to any theater and you'll find that they are filled with American or Hong Kong imports.
The last decade has seen a few homegrown hits, which include Eric Khoo's "12 Storeys" (1997), T.L. Tay's "Money No Enough" (1998), and Chee Kong Cheah's "Chicken Rice War" (2000). Director Glenn Goei's debut dance movie "Forever Fever" (1998) was the first feature from Singapore to find a U.S. release. It was picked up by Miramax and subsequently retitled "That's the Way I Like It."
As nervous business interests flee from a post-English Hong Kong looking for a safe business harbor, Singaporeans are beginning to realize that they have the opportunity to develop their own artistic voice. In response to this growing interest in Singaporean cinema, the Singapore Film Commission was established in 1999 to "nurture, support and promote Singapore talent in filmmaking, the production of Singapore films and a film industry in Singapore."
Singapore has discovered that short films are the perfect foundation for this new voice and the Singapore Film commission is handing out funding accordingly. Thus far, 34 short films have received up to S$5,000 each, 2 features have received up to S$250,000, and 5 Singaporeans or permanent residents have been awarded up to S$100,000 each for undergraduate or post-graduate film studies overseas. Not a bad start for a 646 square kilometer country with a population of 3.1 million.
According to Wong Wai Leng, Assistant Director of the Singapore Film Commission, "We believe that if [Singaporeans] really want to make [filmmaking] a career, it's really best to start making short films."
Using American Short Shorts as a testing ground, according to Festival Executive Wahyuni Hadi, The Substation is planning on starting its own short film festival in December that will focus on Asian short films. This coincides with an important change within the American Short Shorts Film Festival. Starting next year, the festival is dropping the "American" and transforming into the Short Shorts Film Festival. No doubt, Singaporeans will have more to contribute in future installments.
BACK WITH MORE
BACK WITH MORE - The Longbaugh Film Festival returns.
David Walker, The Willamette Week
March 31, 2004
It was Saturday night, April 2, 2003, and a group of the most disheveled, shell-shocked-looking people imaginable stumbled into the Hollywood Theatre for a screening at the first-ever Longbaugh Film Festival. This group looked terrible--like survivors of some 1970s Irwin Allen disaster film. The truth was, they had just survived something even more harrowing than The Poseidon Adventure. This was the cast and crew of Rebecca Rodriguez's debut feature film, and they had just finished shooting.
Rebecca and I talked briefly that evening. At the time, I wasn't sure if she understood a word I was saying, as she had the look of someone who had just escaped the basement of a serial killer and then wandered through the woods for days, eating nothing but tree bark and bugs. But clearly Rebecca did understand what I said when I told her, "It would be great if we could premiere the film you just finished at next year's festival."
I never promised Rebecca I would show her film at Longbaugh, and she never promised it would be done in time to be shown. But when she showed me a rough cut last summer, my reason for putting together this festival became clear--I had to give Coming Up Easy (9 pm Friday, noon Saturday) an opportunity to be seen.
David Walker, The Willamette Week
March 31, 2004
It was Saturday night, April 2, 2003, and a group of the most disheveled, shell-shocked-looking people imaginable stumbled into the Hollywood Theatre for a screening at the first-ever Longbaugh Film Festival. This group looked terrible--like survivors of some 1970s Irwin Allen disaster film. The truth was, they had just survived something even more harrowing than The Poseidon Adventure. This was the cast and crew of Rebecca Rodriguez's debut feature film, and they had just finished shooting.
Rebecca and I talked briefly that evening. At the time, I wasn't sure if she understood a word I was saying, as she had the look of someone who had just escaped the basement of a serial killer and then wandered through the woods for days, eating nothing but tree bark and bugs. But clearly Rebecca did understand what I said when I told her, "It would be great if we could premiere the film you just finished at next year's festival."
I never promised Rebecca I would show her film at Longbaugh, and she never promised it would be done in time to be shown. But when she showed me a rough cut last summer, my reason for putting together this festival became clear--I had to give Coming Up Easy (9 pm Friday, noon Saturday) an opportunity to be seen.
Vancouver Director Makes Feature-Length Debut
Tiffini Mueller, KOIN 6 News
VANCOUVER, Wash. -- A Vancouver woman may be the next big thing in Hollywood.
Rebecca Rodriguez is a writer-director, and is being tracked by the major studios. KOIN caught up with her during the making of her first feature film.
Rebecca is doing it -- so far, with short films. "I think short films are often used to showcase, 'Here I am, I'm in the game, I'm a filmmaker and I can tell a story,'" Rebecca said. The studios love them. They also love a feature-length screenplay that she's written. It's about a Portland heavyweight contender from the 1960s. But before she gets the studio green light, Rebecca has to pay her dues. "They have to put all the pieces under a microscope and that last minute, 'Oh, she hasn't done a feature.' So I was like, 'Give me a minute, I'll be right back,'" she explained.
In that "minute," she's been directing what will be her first feature, called "Coming Up Easy" in Vancouver. "Every opportunity I get to bring a film here, I will do that," she said. "There are times I said if I were in L.A. this would have moved a lot faster. But I've made my choices. I write well here. So for me to be here, it serves me."
She's finally working full time on her career here, but there were hard times. That's because the film industry in Portland is unstable. Sometimes it's hopping, and sometimes it's not. "It kills me. It makes me want to work harder, faster so I can get a project here -- a bigger one where I can really employ a lot of people and pay them well."
As soon as the film is done, there will be a small screening in Los Angeles for the people who have been tracking Rebecca. She hopes that will help some of her other projects.
Koin 6 News 2003
VANCOUVER, Wash. -- A Vancouver woman may be the next big thing in Hollywood.
Rebecca Rodriguez is a writer-director, and is being tracked by the major studios. KOIN caught up with her during the making of her first feature film.
Rebecca is doing it -- so far, with short films. "I think short films are often used to showcase, 'Here I am, I'm in the game, I'm a filmmaker and I can tell a story,'" Rebecca said. The studios love them. They also love a feature-length screenplay that she's written. It's about a Portland heavyweight contender from the 1960s. But before she gets the studio green light, Rebecca has to pay her dues. "They have to put all the pieces under a microscope and that last minute, 'Oh, she hasn't done a feature.' So I was like, 'Give me a minute, I'll be right back,'" she explained.
In that "minute," she's been directing what will be her first feature, called "Coming Up Easy" in Vancouver. "Every opportunity I get to bring a film here, I will do that," she said. "There are times I said if I were in L.A. this would have moved a lot faster. But I've made my choices. I write well here. So for me to be here, it serves me."
She's finally working full time on her career here, but there were hard times. That's because the film industry in Portland is unstable. Sometimes it's hopping, and sometimes it's not. "It kills me. It makes me want to work harder, faster so I can get a project here -- a bigger one where I can really employ a lot of people and pay them well."
As soon as the film is done, there will be a small screening in Los Angeles for the people who have been tracking Rebecca. She hopes that will help some of her other projects.
Koin 6 News 2003
Web Slingers
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Web Slingers -
Rebecca Rodriguez and other short-film makers find a new home on the Internet.
Brian Libby, Willamette Week
It's a lazy, showery Portland afternoon, but Rebecca Rodriguez is beaming. Less than a year ago, Rodriguez was a struggling actress scarcely known outside Portland's insular film community. But today she's a filmmaker whose name is bouncing around Hollywood like a volleyball. Rodriguez's fast lane to prominence illustrates an exciting new marriage between short film and the Internet. Although shorts can be as tantalizing and brilliant as any multi-hour opus, until recently most have gone unseen outside of film festivals and occasional screenings at places like the Northwest Film Center. But the medium has found a new home on the Internet, where its brevity makes for an easy download and can hold a fickle web surfer's attention from start to finish. Not only do the Internet and technology like iMac's desktop editing software help do-it-yourselfers make and exhibit short films cheaply, but it's also helped filmmakers like Rodriguez find the kind of attention in a few months that would normally take years. "I go from periods of extreme anxiety to extreme elation," says Rodriguez of her experience. "I'm trying to just enjoy this, but I have a really clear sense that at any moment it could turn into nothing."
Log onto reelshort.com, a popular site operated by Universal Studios, and you'll find a free download for Rodriguez's Soul Collectors. Clocking in at seven minutes and set on a damp, rocky swatch of Oregon coastline, the film chronicles an alternate version of the afterlife where one's soul is gathered up by what appear to be celestial garbage men clad in coveralls. Like Rodriguez's other short, Floater--the story of foreplay interrupted when one lover needs to take a shit and the toilet won't flush away the evidence--Soul Collectors emerges beyond its bare-bones plot with an unbridled sense of perversity. Like an impish schoolgirl, Rodriguez loves to stare down solemn taboos and laugh them off.
Although Soul Collectors and Floater were not do-it-yourself projects (Rodriguez employed an experienced crew), she completed filming of both in a single weekend and promptly sent them to the Seattle Film Festival, where they caught the attention of reelshort.com and Atom Films. Soon Soul Collectors was a fan favorite on reelshort.com, and Cinemax began asking about Floater. That led to meetings with Universal's senior vice-president of production about directing a feature.
But while Rodriguez's rise has been meteoric, it's not completely unplanned. "There are two really important aspects to the process: Creativity and business," she says. "These people aren't looking to discover the next filmmaker. They've got a business to run. I thought about that before I made those films. I wanted things to work to my advantage."
While there's no doubt the Internet has created exciting new opportunities for filmmakers and film fans, many of the well-known sites are, like Hollywood studios, geared toward more commercial fare. Take 405, a fan favorite on ifilms.com that chronicles a jumbo jet's crash landing on a Los Angeles freeway. Made by special-effects technicians Bruce Branit and Jeremy Hunt, 405 is dazzling, hilarious and very smart. But it's also a calculated move to ascend the ladder of feature filmmaking. You won't see these guys on the small screen again anytime soon. "If you want to just be a filmmaker and express [yourself] using film, then go out and shoot a red dot for two hours," says Rodriguez. "But if you want to get a meeting with Universal or Amblin or whoever, if you want to get the big agent and get the big movie deal, you have to position yourself. You have to ask yourself what kind of film is going to attract attention."
Like anything else on the Internet, finding more challenging fare outside the mainstream takes a lot of searching. But for those willing to look, there are more opportunities than ever for people to see the kind of experimental and avant-garde film and video that in the past would never have reached Portland. And it's not just for your computer. There's a growing movement called "microcinema" that uses web-streaming technology to view noncommercial film and video in a communal, theater-like atmosphere. Here in Portland, for example, Stumptown Coffee offers "Internet Film Night," where you watch webcast movies over cappuccino with friends. Whether you're an aspiring Hollywood player, lover of film, Internet junkie or underground dweller, the Web provides an opportunity that can't be ignored. But the tension between artistic integrity and commercial feasibility remains. The Internet is just another arena for the ongoing struggle.
Willamette Weekly 2000
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