Welcome to our 31st edition of Reel Music. We’ve been on the lookout all year for new works—and timely classics—for this annual celebration of sound and image, music and culture, and the origins of sounds infused in our experience. Whether your passion is jazz, blues, rock, soul, folk, funk, or punk, we hope you find this mixture of old and new, familiar and strange, to be full of inspiration and discovery.
Overlapping, and part of, Reel Music is “The Hitchcock 9,” recent restorations of all of Alfred Hitchcock’s surviving early silent films, accompanied by live performance by some of Portland’s finest musical talents. As always, our special thanks go to Music Millennium, Willamette Week, Oregon Music News, KINK.fm, MusicFestNW, All Classical Portland, KIND Healthy Snacks, KZME, Walker, KMHD, PDX Pipeline Yelp!, Portland Radio Project and PosterChild McMenamins for helping make it all happen. Enjoy.
PLEASE NOTE: All films at The Mission Theater are 21 and over only. The box office opens one hour prior to showtime.
Approximately Nels Cline
Directed by Steven Okazaki
Best known as the lead guitarist of Wilco and one of the most adventurous musicians on earth, Nels Cline is …
Bayou Maharajah
Directed by Lily Keber
The Ivory Emperor, the Black Liberace, Lil Booker, Little Chopin in Living Color...James Carroll Booker III. BAYOU MAHARAJAH explores the …
Blackmail
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Hitchcock’s last silent film, generally hailed as the finest British film of the decade, was quickly refashioned into his first …
Born in Chicago
Directed by John Anderson
BORN IN CHICAGO chronicles a uniquely musical passing of the torch as it tells two interlocking stories. First, how white, …
Brothers Hypnotic
Directed by Reuben Atlas
For the eight young men in the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, “brotherhood” is literal: they’re all sons of anti-establishment jazz legend …
Champagne
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
CHAMPAGNE stars the bubbly Betty Balfour as a frivolous flapper whose millionaire father looks to teach her a lesson in …
Charles Lloyd: Arrows Into Infinity
Directed by Dorothy Darr, Jefferey Morse
Charles Lloyd became one of the most popular and influential jazz musicians of the 1960s when his album “Forest Flower” …
Charlie “Bird” Parker, 1920-1955
Directed by Jan Horne
Produced by the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, Jan Horne’s four-part film on the life of jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker is the …
Downhill
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
“DOWNHILL mixes cynical humor with sexual horror as it tracks star rugby player Roddy’s descent from upstanding British schoolboy to …
Easy Virtue
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
The tyrannies of polite British society come under scrutiny in this adaptation of Noël Coward’s stage hit of the same …
Finding the Funk
Directed by Nelson George
FINDING THE FUNK is a road trip in search of the past, present, and future of funk music. Starting with …
Lisztomania
Directed by Ken Russell
In his flamboyant, anachronistic style, Russell transposes the excesses of 1970s superstardom onto Franz Liszt (played by Roger Daltrey), while …
Made in Portland: Selections from the Portland Music Video Festival
Directed by Various
Music videos are the ultimate marriage of art and commerce; a breeding ground for up-and-coming filmmakers experimenting with their craft; …
Magical Mystery Tour
Directed by Francis Hanly
Buoyed by the earlier success of A HARD DAY’S NIGHT and the triumphant success of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club …
Mean Streets
Directed by Martin Scorsese
Based in part on his own experiences in the darker corners of New York’s Little Italy, Scorsese provides a parable …
Mistaken for Strangers
Directed by Tom Berninger
About to take off on their “High Violet” world tour, The National front man Matt Berninger decides to hire his …
Muscle Shoals
Directed by Greg 'Freddy' Camalier
In a small Alabama town called Muscle Shoals—on the banks of the Tennessee River—legendary musicians including Aretha Franklin and Wilson …
Sing Me the Songs That Say I Love You: A Concert for Kate McGarrigle
Directed by Lian Lunson
In this hybrid documentary and concert film tribute to the great Canadian folk singer (1946-2010), candid interviews with McGarrigle’s family …
The Farmer’s Wife
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
“Alfred Hitchcock was worried that the stage roots of THE FARMER’S WIFE…might show through in his film adaptation. It was …
The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle
Directed by Julien Temple
“To be bad is good. To be good is simply boring.”—Malcolm McLaren. The urge to self-mythologize is written into rock’s DNA. …
The Lodger
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Hitchcock called his third feature “the first true Hitchcock movie.” His first foray into the thriller genre, THE LODGER introduced …
The Manxman
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
In a remote fishing village on the Isle of Man, two boyhood friends—one a lawyer, the other a fisherman—are torn …
The Pleasure Garden
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Hitchcock’s first film, shot in Germany and on location in Italy at Lake Como, is set in the world of …
The Punk Singer
Directed by Sini Anderson
Kathleen Hanna, lead singer of punk band Bikini Kill and dance-punk trio Le Tigre, was a pivotal figure in the …
The Ring
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
“THE RING fascinates because it is not a suspense film and yet experiments with the tropes through which Hitchcock created …
The Savoy King: Chick Webb and the Music That Changed America
Directed by Jeffrey Kaufman
Born poor in Baltimore, Chick Webb broke his back as a boy and faced life as a hunchback dwarf afflicted …
This Ain’t No Mouse Music!
Directed by Chris Simon, Maureen Gosling
VISITING ARTISTS—As a teenager in 1947, Chris Strachwitz migrated from Germany to the United States, where he saw a film …
Video Musics III: Floating Oceans
Directed by Alexis Gideon
Portland musician, animator, and filmmaker Alexis Gideon combines all these interests in his stop-motion animated video operas. FLOATING OCEANS explores …