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“If you filmed it on VHS, it was just a little bit more intriguing to us,” says Nini Liedman of the 250 movies she and her husband, co-founder Bryan Liedman watched while curating the North Portland Unknown Festival. The Liedmans have a love for experimental, lo-fi, and just plain weird films—and the festival is their brain child. A one-day event at Disjecta, the North Portland Unknown Film Festival already promises things like an entire program that consists of two-minute-long films, aptly named the “Two-Minute Film Fest.”

The concept was inspired by a similar festival the Liedmans worked on in Fargo, North Dakota, at the movie theater where they met. “That was a big, rowdy portion of the Fargo Film Festival we brought with us,” Bryan explains.

Suzette Smith is the arts & culture editor of the Portland Mercury. Go ahead and tell her about all your food, art, and culture gripes: suzette@portlandmercury.com. Follow her on Twitter, Bluesky,...