nwFilmCenter

April/May 2008

Tue, Apr 1, 2008 - Sat, May 31, 2008

Continuing the retrospective that started in March, we are pleased to present seven more films from Robert Altman's remarkable body of work. In a career that spanned five decades, Altman (1925 – 2006) left no genre untouched. Scorning the emotional dishonesty of typical Hollywood formula pictures, he aggressively sought to subvert, innovate and reinvent the very boundaries of filmmaking. Ever the cinema's malcontent, Altman employed unorthodox methods such as overlapping dialogue, semi-improvisatory techniques, and documentary style camera work to realize his now-trademark vision of cinematic verisimilitude.

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Jewish Film Festival

Welcome to the 16th annual Portland Jewish Film Festival, presented by The Northwest Film Center and the Institute for Judaic Studies. We hope you find that this year's films, while they express specific Jewish experiences, resonate beyond their cultural inspiration and speak to ideas, experiences and issues that confront our common humanity. This year's Festival is co-sponsored by the JEWISH REVIEW with individual program support from Jewish Family & Child Service, The Florence Melton Adult Mini-School, Neveh Shalom, Cedar Sinai Park, Portland Jewish Academy, the Mittleman Jewish Community Center, Madeline Nelson, Steve Rosenberg, Diane Solomon, Jordan Schnitzer, Jim Winkler and Harold and Arlene Schnitzer. All shows are single admission.

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Northwest Tracking

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Special Screenings

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Werner Herzog

Werner Herzog rose to prominence in the 1970s as a central figure in the New German Cinema movement along with Rainer Fassbinder, Volker Schlöndorf, Margarethe von Trotta, Wim Wenders and others looking for a more personal cinema. Beginning with such heralded films as AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD and WOYZECK, Herzog's career in the decades since has been distinguished by a continuing fascination with characters possessed by a unique vision, their escapades set against hauntingly powerful landscapes—from the Amazon jungle to the Sahara Desert to the Antarctic tundra. Herzog has said, "It is the human soul that is visible through the landscapes presented in my films." He has also characteristically disregarded the distinction between narrative film and documentary in pursuit of a more profound truth: "Through invention, through imagination, through fabrication, I become more truthful than the little bureaucrats." Herzog has transcended the New German Cinema movement to become—as Milos Forman, Francois Truffaut and many other fellow filmmakers have asserted—one of the great cinema artists of our era.

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