Cinema Pacific film festival announces 2013 program featuring films from Mexico, Singapore and the U.S. West Coast

EUGENE, Ore. – (March 13, 2013) – The fourth annual University of Oregon Cinema Pacific film festival features a wide array of films, exhibitions, receptions and performances opening April 17 and running through April 21, 2013 in both Eugene and Portland.

Cinema Pacific studentsThis year’s featured guest is renowned Mexican screenwriter and director Guillermo Arriaga (“Amores Perros”, “Babel”). He will participate in the festival’s Focus: Mexico section. This is the first time Cinema Pacific has extended its reach to Latin America. A Focus: Singapore program and Chinese film events, meanwhile, will continue the festival’s ongoing exploration of Asian Pacific cinemas.

Also, Cinema Pacific is extending its reach to Portland. The festival will cosponsor two programs at Portland’s Northwest Film Center and an art installation by Singaporean media artist Ming Wong at the White Box Gallery. The festival will bring two Portland features, “Alien Boy” and “Buoy” to Eugene.

As always, West Coast filmmaking will be well represented in the program. San Francisco’s Jeremy Rourke will present animation and a live musical performance and the Adrenaline Film Project, the popular 72-hour competition for regional filmmakers, will return for its fourth edition.

Ticket information

Tickets for all Eugene shows are available online through April 16 at cinemapacific.uoregon.edu/schedule and through the UO Ticket Office, 541-346-4363, located in the Erb Memorial Union on campus. For Portland events at the NW Film Center, tickets are on sale at the door and online at nwfilm.org/screenings.

Matinees (before 6 p.m.), students and seniors: $6
General admission (after 6 p.m.): $8
Adrenaline Film Project and afterparty: students and seniors $7; general $10

Focus: Mexico featuring Guillermo Arriaga

Cinema Pacific is proud to join with the Oak Hill School and the UO Latin American Studies Program to bring the legendary writer Guillermo Arriaga to Oregon. Arriaga is renowned for his nonlinear narratives that connect characters across national borders. He is most noted for his trilogy of screenplays, “Amores Perros”, “21 Grams” and “Babel,” directed by Alejandro Inarritu.

This visit to Oregon marks a return for Arriaga, who directed the “The Burning Plain” in Portland and Coos Bay in 2008. The film featured Academy Award-winner Jennifer Lawrence in her first starring role, alongside Charlize Theron and Kim Basinger.

Arriaga will present two films at the Bijou Art Cinemas: “The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada” (2005), at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, April 17, and “The Burning Plain” at 9 p.m. on Thursday, April 18. While in Oregon, Arriaga will also give the Bartolomé de las Casas Lecture in Latin American studies at the UO, and present a public talk at the Oak Hill School about his writing and directing career.

See http://cinemapacific.uoregon.edu/2013/highlights/mexico for more information about Arriaga’s visit to UO.

In addition to Arriaga, Focus: Mexico will feature two extraordinary documentary filmmakers: Natalia Almada, the Mexican-American filmmaker who won the 2009 Documentary Directing Award at Sundance, and Pedro Gonzalez-Rubio, whose film “Alamar” won a Tiger Award at the 2010 Rotterdam Film Festival.  

Almada’s feature debut, “Al Otro Lado” (2005), will be shown at 4 p.m. on Saturday, April 20 at the Bijou. Following the film, she will participate in a Skype conversation with documentary film scholar Patricia Zimmermann.

Rubio’s film screenings at the Bijou include “Alamar” at 1 p.m. on Sunday, April 21, and his latest film, “Inori,” at 4 p.m, on Sunday, April 21.

See http://cinemapacific.uoregon.edu/2013/highlights/mexico for more details.

Focus: Mexico includes a film version of Teatro Linea de Sombra’s multi-media theater performance, “Amarillo,” a poetic, Mexican perspective on immigration and border issues. A post-screening discussion with Mexico City-based director Jorge Vargas (via Skype) and UO Latin American Studies professor Lynn Stephen will be moderated by Ruth Wikler-Luker of Portland’s Boom Arts. This free event, co-presented with Boom Arts and OntheBoards.tv, will take place at 4 p.m. on Wednesday, April 17, in the UO Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art.

Focus: Singapore and more Asian cinema

Cinema Pacific will also feature a section on the cinema of Singapore this year. Visiting Singaporean filmmakers Colin Goh and Yen Yen Woo, a husband-and-wife team with a remarkably eclectic slate of productions, will present their second feature film, “Singapore Dreaming,” at 4 p.m. on Saturday, April 20 at the Bijou. Goh and Woo’s film freely employs the ‘Singlish’ (Singaporean English) dialect. They will present a lecture on the controversial dialect, “Singlish: An Authentic or Broken Voice?” at 4 p.m. on Friday, April 19, at the UO JSMA and a performance and discussion of episodes of "Dim Sum Warriors," a graphic novel and innovative Chinese language-teaching iPad app, at 1 pm on Saturday, April 20, at Eugene’s Downtown Public Library.

In conjunction with Cinema Pacific’s Focus: Singapore, the JSMA and the White Box Gallery at the UO in Portland will present two media installations by Singaporean artist Ming Wong.  Wong will give a live performance and artist talk via Skype to audiences in both the JSMA and White Stag Buildings at 2 p.m. on Sunday, April 21.

This year’s Cinema Pacific Festival Fellow is Bérénice Reynaud, noted writer, scholar and programmer of Chinese and independent cinemas, and author of “Nouvelles Chines, nouveaux cinemas” (Paris, 1999). Reynaud will deliver an illustrated lecture at 2 p.m. on Thursday, April 18, in the JSMA about how independent Chinese cinema is addressing the destruction caused by urban renewal. At 6:30 p.m. that night at the Bijou, she will also introduce an exciting new narrative feature from China titled “The Love Songs of Tiedan.

See http://cinemapacific.uoregon.edu/2013/highlights/singapore for more details.

Oregon on Screen

The Best of the Northwest Filmmakers Festival will include the audience prize-winner for best feature, Steve Doughton’s “Buoy,” plus three short films at 6:30 p.m. on Friday, April 19  Doughton will attend the screening. Portland director Brian Lindstrom will also attend the screening of his film, “Alien Boy: The Life and Death of James Chasse.” “Alien Boy” was the sensation of the recent Portland International Film Festival.

Cinema Pacific Filmmaking Workshops and Contests

The Adrenaline Film Project is the 72-hour filmmaking workshop that culminates in a public screening at 9:30 p.m. on April 20 in PLC 180. Between April 17 and April 20, 12  local-area student teams, mentored by professional filmmakers Leigh Kilton-Smith, Omar Naim and Rom Alejandro will write, cast, shoot, edit and premiere their short films. The Adrenaline Film Project assigns genres, provides a prop and one line of dialogue for teams as a starting point. Following the screening on April 20, ticketed guests can attend the Adrenaline Afterparty, featuring music and refreshments in the JSMA.

The Fringe Festival competition includes the work of local artists who are producing video remixes of a classic film from Mexico, “Macario” (1960). The remixes will be on display at the Fringe Festival Fiesta from 9:30 p.m. to 12:30 a.m. on Friday, April 19, in the Marché Museum Café at JSMA. They will be supplemented by “digital piñatas” and other projections coordinated by UO Digital Arts professor John Park, salsa music and delicious Mexican food.

Live Music and Animations by Jeremy Rourke

Cinema Pacific is proud to host a special “live cinema” event featuring Jeremy Rourke, a self-taught animator and musician from San Francisco. Rourke uses a variety of media to create his animations and accompanies his films live with guitar and vocals. Rourke has also released two CDs of his music, “Rain in the Woods Out Back” and “It’s Strange the Things That Happen to Your Friends.” In 2011, he was named “Best new animator/musician” by SF Weekly. Rourke will perform and present his animations at the Bijou at 9:15 p.m. on Friday, April 19.

West of Center: Chip Lord and Ant Farm

In collaboration with the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art’s “West of Center: Art and the Counterculture Experiment in America, 1965-77,” Cinema Pacific will bring video artist Chip Lord to the JSMA’s Schnitzer Cinema on Wednesday, April 17, at 7 p.m.  As a co-founder of Ant Farm, Chip Lord produced the video art classics “Media Burn” and “The Eternal Frame” as well as the Cadillac Ranch sculpture in Amarillo, Tex. On April 17, Lord will present and discuss three of his independent video artworks. On April 18 at 6 p.m. in UO’s Willamette Hall, Room 100, Lord will present an illustrated talk titled “Ant Farm Then and Now,” tracing the history of this influential architectural and media collective. Chip Lord’s visit is co-sponsored with UO Departments of Art and the History of Art and Architecture.

Emerging Media Platforms

Speakers Patricia Zimmermann and Helen De Michiel will demonstrate and discuss Open Space Documentary. Using newly available tools and apps, filmmakers are testing how media can communicate stories, imagine social change, and function as a dynamically evolving interactive “open space.” The speakers’ examples will include EngageMedia, a new media portal dedicated to publishing and curating independently made media looking at environmental and social justice issues in the Asia Pacific region. Zimmermann is professor of screen studies in the Roy H. Park School of Communications at Ithaca College. De Michiel is a director, writer and producer of film and television whose open space documentary “Lunch Love Community” is a pioneering transmedia work.

Cinema Pacific is sponsored by the UO Arts and Administration Program and UO Academic Extension, with support from Academic Affairs, University Relations, Cinema Studies, and the School of Journalism and Communication. Cinema Pacific also receives major support from the Oregon Arts Commission and the Chambers Family Foundation.

MEDIA CONTACT: Aria Seligmann, UO Communications, 541-543-1482, arias@uoregon.edu
SOURCE: Richard Herskowitz, Cinema Pacific Film Festival, 541-729-4516, rhersk@uoregon.edu
LINK: For photos and more details, http://cinemapacific.uoregon.edu/press

###