"If you don't take the effort to look beyond the multiplex, it is increasingly rare to find new ideas," the Northwest Film Center's Andrew Blubaugh and Bill Foster write in their welcoming notes for the 32nd Northwest Film & Video Festival. "Original thought isn't gone forever, but when it makes a brief appearance, you owe it to yourself not to miss it."

Those are true words, if a bit overly judgmental and self-congratulatory. More accurately: You owe it to yourself not to miss some of the examples of original thought showcased at this year's fest, which offers its usual mixed bag of events.

Kicking things off on Friday with a shorts program and a hoity-toity party at the Portland Art Museum, the fest continues on Saturday with Telephone Pole Numbering System and "Community Filmmaking," a panel featuring Telephone's filmmakers. On Saturday: More shorts and the crime film Police Beat, which will have Mercury contributor/screenwriter Charles Mudede in attendance. Sunday has a panel with this fest's judge, Michael Almereyda (followed by Almereyda's sci-fi film Happy Here and Now), another shorts program, and Century Plaza, a film about transient residents in a decaying Portland hotel.

Things ease off a bit on the weekdays: Monday has a live reading of the upcoming apocalypse comedy Rapture-Palooza; On Tuesday there's a cheery-sounding examination of Alzheimer's, Quick Brown Fox. Wednesday boasts more (!) short films and Made in Secret, a film about an "anarcho-feminist porn collective," and Thursday has the examination of Oregon's Death with Dignity Act, Robert's Story (which sounds like it'll be nearly as much fun as that Alzheimer's flick).

The Mercury's take on the above films (well, the ones we screened, anyway) is decidedly varied; check out our Film Shorts on page 50 for our specific reviews. And if you like what you see this week at the fest, make sure to hit next week's Mercury for info about the last few days of the fest, which ends on November 12.