Wet Hot American Fall

THE “SUMMER CAMP” THEME of the 36th annual Northwest Film
& Video Festival may not be much more than a marketing aesthetic,
but it does accurately capture the festival’s reason for being: to
scout the region’s filmmakers and prepare them for survival in the
hairy film industry. Sifting through the talent of the Northwest
(which, according to the Film & Video Festival’s organizers, the
Northwest Film Center, is a vast region that includes Oregon,
Washington, Idaho, Montana, Alaska, and British Columbia) is this
year’s judge, Kenneth Turan, the film critic for the Los Angeles
Times and NPR’s Morning Edition.

Accepted entries come from a rainbow of entrants, from Portlander
Irene Taylor Brodsky (whose film The Final Inch, about
eradicating polio, was nominated for the Best Short Documentary at the
2009 Oscars), to Northwest Film Center intern Amanda Thomson,
presenting her narrative short Dear John Lee. Hometown director
and former festival judge Gus Van Sant also antes up with his short,
Mansion on the Hill.

The fest, spanning nine days, consists of three unique sets of short
films (over 40 shorts in all), each screening twice, as well as about a
dozen longer features. While most of the shorts are a mixed bag, the
animated shorts largely maximize the wavelength of a few minutes of
tape—notably Su-An Ng’s visually stunning Nature on its
Course, and Salise Hughes’ Somewhere, a mash-up love story
of a Western cowboy and West Side Story’s Maria.

A number of Portlanders-on-Portland films also help to bring the
fest home, such as Brian Lindstrom’s To Pay My Way with
Stories, about Write Around Portland (WRAP), the nonprofit
that offers creative writing courses to poor and ill individuals, and
Sue Arbuthnot and Richard Wilhem’s Imagining Home, which
chronicles the redevelopment of the Columbia Villa public housing
project and is angled but captivating.

For more info, see Film Shorts and nwfilm.org.