PDX FEST Update + WORKSHOPS!

PDX Fest is just one short week away!!  The full festival schedule is currently online and advanced tickets are now available.  Head to www.peripheralproduce.com for all the details!   Also, check out the article about Peripheral Produce and PDX Fest in this month's PAPER Magazine!

PDX FEST 2008 WORKSHOPS AT THE NORTHWEST FILM CENTER!
We are very excited to join forces with the Northwest Film Center again this year to present three super FUN, super AFFORDABLE, filmmaker workshops during the festival taught by three of our dear visiting artists - Travis Wilkerson, Shana Moulton, and Craig Baldwin. These workshops are an excellent opportunity to get to know our featured guests a little better while gaining hands-on experience with a new technique or two straight from their secret bag of cinematic tricks!

All workshops will be offered at the Northwest Film Center's School of Film, located at 934 SW Salmon. Pre-registration is definitely encouraged as these classes could fill up! To register or if you need more information about any of the workshops, please contact the Northwest Film Center at 503-221-1156 (x25) or www.nwfilm.org.

REVIVING THE LOST ART OF AGITATION with TRAVIS WILKERSON
SATURDAY, MAY 3, 10 AM-1 PM, $35
Join in a lively exchange about the documentary filmmaker as provocateur. Is the independent documentary community fully realizing its potential to instill social change?  If not, how can media artists most effectively narrate the complex and often elusive threads of contested social history and make them relevant to the present?  This workshop will screen clips from and discuss the instructor's practice of "third cinema."  Adopted by the filmmaker after a chance meeting with legendary film propagandist Santiago Alvarez, the third cinema approach weds politics to the non-fiction film form, suggesting that there is a utopian sphere where art and science collide, and where the imaginative capacities of the cinema can be put to meaningful use.  Open to all with an interest in media activism, with or without actual production experience.

DO-IT-YOURSELF GREEN SCREEN with SHANA MOULTON
SUNDAY, MAY 4, 10 AM-1 PM, $35
How can you make yourself look like you're climbing up a ladder when it's really a plant?  Through green screen of course! This workshop will explore the creative opportunities presented by chroma key, or green screen, which allows filmmakers to superimpose images by using blue or green fields as an electronic palette.  The instructor will share her insights into the possibilities of this expressive tool, screening examples from Desiree Holman, Mike Smith, and her own work, explaining the mechanics of keying in layperson's terms.  Participants will then have the opportunity to shoot footage with a simple chroma key setup and manipulate it with Final Cut Pro and After Effects software. Backyard approaches involving fabric and paint will also be discussed. Students are encouraged to bring in image files to play with.  Open to all with an interest in digital effects.

FLIX REMIX: A FOUND FOOTAGE WORKSHOP with CRAIG BALDWIN
MONDAY, MAY 5, 6-9:30 PM, $45
Put your hands on celluloid and experience found footage filmmaking, the ultimate form of "green" production!  Drawing on his own vast experience as a found footage guru, the instructor will discuss this genre's influence on alternative cinema, screening clips from his found footage classics, TRIBULATION 99 and SONIC OUTLAWS, and other works. Then, the creative and critical methods of working with archival film prints will be demonstrated through hands-on activities.  Using projectors, rewinds, viewers, splicers and an optical-sound reader, participants will compose 're-purposed' cine-poems, with either the extant soundtrack(s), or set against some other audio source (bring your own CD).  Uncanny, even anomalous 16mm industrial film stock provided.  No experience required, just a willingness to experiment.