The Northwest Film Center invites you to join us for a night of films and celebration to open the 43rd Portland International Film Festival!
This ticket purchase page is for the films screening at The Whitsell Auditorium (1219 SW Park Ave). At 5:00pm, the short films America and The Giverny Document will play and then at 7:15pm, Clementine will screen.
Directly afterwards, at 9pm, we will move to the Fred & Suzanne Fields (Sunken) Ballroom for the Opening Night Party. Your ticket to either feature will grant you access to both the 5pm screenings and the party.
If you would prefer to attend the other opening night screenings of the short films America andThe Giverny Document (at 5:00pm) and The Climb at 7:00pm Cinema 21 (616 NW 21st Ave), please click here to go to that ticket link, instead.
SSC Friend and New Wave members must sign in by clicking the "sign in" link in the upper right hand corner of this page, and select the "NWFC Friend & New Wave" ticket type to receive their discount - discount will be applied at checkout.
AMERICA
Garrett Bradley
US
29 mins.
This exquisite short film imagines an alternate history of Black cinema from the silents to now—and is one of the year’s most stunningly gorgeous, poetic works.
THE GIVERNY DOCUMENT
Ja'Tovia Gary
US
45 mins.
Ja’Tovia Gary’s latest incredible work—following renowned short films like Cakes da Killa No Homo and An Ecstatic Experience—is a hybrid poem-film meditation on the bodily autonomy of Black women. Oscillating between direct animation, street interviews with women in Harlem, a thrilling Nina Simone live performance, and quasi-idyllic scenes in Monet’s Giverny, France gardens, The Giverny Document asks crucial questions about the physical safety of Black women today.
THE CLIMB
Michael Angelo Covino
US
94 mins.
This buddy comedy starts with a simple premise—two life-long pals struggle to bike up a French mountaintop—but what comes next is anyone’s guess. With incredible cinematic reinvention, ambitious long-takes, dramatic time-leaps, and a cappella interludes, the audience is invited along for the ride, no matter where it leads. Each featured vignette drives us dramatically into the chaos of Mike (director Michael Angelo Covino) and Kyle’s (writer Kyle Marvin) tumultuous friendship, introducing us along the way to family, friends, and the foul-mouthed, fierce Marissa—all of whom might just undo Mike and Kyle’s relationship...and unravel the whole elliptical story itself. Feeling wholly ensconced in both the experimentation of the American indie movement and European cinema’s formalism, The Climb is 100% original, unbound storytelling that honors what came before, and yet, like its characters, forges its own path forward. A Sony Pictures Classics release.