When Dusty masturbates for the first time, something bad happens....
Director’s Statement: Matt Kazman
Growing up, it seemed like all my friends knew more about adulthood, sex, and their bodies than I did. Of course, they were wrong about a lot of things, so I thought it would be funny to make a film about that.
Fri 9:30 PM Varsity 5 Sat 9:30 PM Varsity 5 Sun 9:30 PM Varsity 5 Mon 9:30 PM Varsity 5
Synopsis
A young woman, her face illuminated only by match light, tells the story of an Austrian serial killer who murdered 20 immigrant women — one per year.
Director’s Statement: Mark Tapio Kines
20 Matches was sort of an exercise in “minimalist horror.” I wanted to see if I could make a compelling, disturbing film without any blood or on-screen violence, and with just one actor and one source of light: a single wooden match. More than just a creepy campfire story, though, 20 Matches also touches on how the West deals with immigrants, and how we survive the dark legacies left by others.
Fri 9:30 PM Varsity 5 Sat 9:30 PM Varsity 5 Sun 9:30 PM Varsity 5 Mon 9:30 PM Varsity 5
Synopsis
A coming-of-age drama set in the year 2000 about teenage brothers Carly and Mateo and their family of undocumented Colombian immigrants living in the U.S. suburbs. Carly is 17 and passionate about heavy metal, while Mateo, his younger, more sensitive brother is a free spirit with an artistic soul. When they find out their father is about to be deported, everything changes.
Director’s Statement: Esteban Arango
As a millennial American Latino, I grew up in a whirlpool of ideas that have thoroughly influenced my personality and my identity. There are millions like me. Yet, over and over we feel under-represented and misrepresented in the mass media. Blast Beat aims to reflect the kind of real-life hero I would’ve liked to have seen as a confused teenager.
Fri 09:50 AM Varsity 2 Sun 3:20 PM Varsity 2 Mon 3:20 PM Varsity 2
Synopsis
Shot at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility in Wilsonville, Oregon, Mothering
Inside follows participants in the Family Preservation Project (FPP), an innovative program that helps inmate mothers rekindle and maintain bonds with their children. During the yearlong shoot, the Oregon Department of Corrections decided to close the FPP despite a zero recidivism rate. Luckily, the film has helped raise public awareness, and the Oregon legislature has passed a bill guaranteeing FPP’s survival for two more years. After that, who knows?
Director’s Statement: Brian Lindstrom
I think of the camera as a passport, and I’ve used it throughout my career to tell the stories of people who society puts an “X” through: newly recovering addicts, people with mental illness, and, in Mothering Inside, incarcerated mothers. I use cinema vérité because it allows a direct relationship between the viewer and the subject.
Fri 9:30 PM Varsity 5 Sat 9:30 PM Varsity 5 Sun 9:30 PM Varsity 5 Mon 9:30 PM Varsity 5
Synopsis
Work and life partners Kate and Leigh share everything — from their apartment to the bar they co-own. When a slump in their sex life becomes obvious, they must face how entwined their lives have become, and reconsider their relationship, to humorous ends.
Director’s Statement: Joey Ally
Partners is a simple film — a little slice of life about a lesbian couple who get into a fight one morning. Not a fight that will end them — or will it? And it’s definitely not funny...but it is. Y’know...the way most couples fight. It is not enough that we see “nontraditional” protagonists unadorned and un-stylized, as regular, irregular, people. What we really wanted to do here was to make something in which the characters are so specifically themselves that we feel we know them immediately, and that the knowing makes their story universal.
Fri 9:30 PM Varsity 5 Sat 9:30 PM Varsity 5 Sun 9:30 PM Varsity 5 Mon 9:30 PM Varsity 5
Synopsis
In this allegory of a relationship gone awry, a woman and a man meet in an abandoned opera house and embark on a magical pas de deux between time and space. Poetic, surreal pictures create a dichotomy where the physics of the world don’t always apply.
Director’s Statement: Ingo Putze
My goal was to make a film with no easy answers. I wanted to show a universal topic — a relationship between a man and a woman — and leave it open to interpretation. No dialogue; just a combination of music, dance, and visuals. I was aware that such an unconventional story was a risk, but I did not want to tell the audience what to think. It was a tough experiment to combine film, music, and dance to make a narrative where each element is reliant upon the other. We’ll see if the audience thinks it worked!
Thu 9:30 PM Varsity 5 Fri 3:30 PM Varsity 5 Sat 6:30 PM Varsity 5 Sun 6:30 PM Varsity 5 Mon 10:00 AM Varsity 5 Mon 3:20 PM Varsity 2
Synopsis
Cuban-born painter Carmen Herrera is approaching her 100th birthday,
but that doesn’t stop her from continuing to work in her modern style of geometric forms and bright colors. A pioneering abstract painter in the 40s and 50s, she only recently found the recognition that eluded her for most of her career.
Director’s Statement: Alison Klayman
For anyone with an artistic career or who is undertaking long-term pursuits that may or may not “pay off” in the conventional sense, the question persists: what makes you keep going? And how do you do it without external validation? Carmen’s life is an example of pursuing passion and art for its own sake, because you simply feel compelled. Coming off of my first documentary feature film, the question of how to make art a lifelong dedication was constantly on my mind. I feel lucky to have spent that critical period of reflection with Carmen.
Fri 9:30 PM Varsity 5 Sat 9:30 PM Varsity 5 Sun 9:30 PM Varsity 5 Mon 9:30 PM Varsity 5
Synopsis
Fates collide when a father, his lover, and his son are left stranded with a stranger after a car accident. Set in the Oregon wilderness, this modern gothic fable presents an occurrence of crime and happenstance seen through the eyes of a child.
Directors’ Statement: Karina Ripper, Marc Ripper
Moving to Oregon from NYC five years ago, we found ourselves called to the outdoors. The American wilderness continues to be a place of deep beauty and spiritual riches, offering respite from modern anxieties and space for personal reflection. The darker side to this landscape is one of natural indifference, human violence and isolation. These thoughts inform our story of a boy’s nightmare and enchantment.
Sat 3:40 PM Ashland Street Cinema Sun 6:40 PM Ashland Street Cinema Mon 3:20 PM Varsity 2
Synopsis
A moving performance by Anthony Heald, long-time Ashland resident and actor with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, highlights The Stairs, as an older man hires a male escort for company on Christmas Eve. Faced with the realities of his own loneliness, he finds a strange kinship with the young man in this late-night exploration of solitude, intimacy, and the basic human need for connection.
Directors’ Statements: Zach Bandler, Kelly Blatz
Zach Bandler: I feel like this story is a way for me to ask people I’ve known about their lives and the choices they’ve made. This film isn’t about what’s right or wrong. It’s about all of us just doing the best we can.
Kelly Blatz: I was compelled to make The Stairs because of my interest in exploring the themes of loneliness, escape, and the complicated relationships between sex, love, and intimacy.
Fri 9:30 PM Varsity 5 Sat 9:30 PM Varsity 5 Sun 9:30 PM Varsity 5 Mon 9:30 PM Varsity 5
Synopsis
This satire, shot in the style of an industrial documentary of the early 1960s, provides a witty glimpse into how the modern computer ultimately replaces the workaday animator. Take a humorous tour of a futuristic science lab where experimental machines designed to write, draw, and animate have displaced real, human artists—a studio free from creative struggle.
Director’s Statement: Teddy Newton
The Studio of Tomorrow really began when director Brad Bird asked me to make a supplement for The Incredibles DVD. Bird expressed how contrived animation documentaries were becoming, and proposed an idea. He wondered if I could make an all out farce about Pixar’s origins. The inspiration hit me quickly and I made the film on my own dime. Though people at Pixar enjoyed it, the film was shelved for many years. This is the first time anyone will see it since it was shot 12 years ago.
Moving to Oregon from NYC five years ago, we found ourselves called to the outdoors. The American wilderness continues to be a place of deep beauty and spiritual riches, offering respite from modern anxieties and space for personal reflection. The darker side to this landscape is one of natural indifference, human violence and isolation. These thoughts inform our story of a boy’s nightmare and enchantment. 
Zach Bandler, Kelly Blatz 
Kelly Blatz: I was compelled to make The Stairs because of my interest in exploring the themes of loneliness, escape, and the complicated relationships between sex, love, and intimacy.
