Behind the Ironic Column

M&M days are fun and hectic and inspiring.  You might think I’m referring to M&M’s because it’s February and Valentine’s Day has just passed.  I admit to knowing in a vague way that there *was* a Valentine’s Day but only because somebody mentioned it to me while I was standing in line waiting for a movie.  M&M for me in February means Movie Marathon or Movies & Madness – it’s the time of year for the Portland International Film Festival, known to its devotees as PIFF.  This event is held in February (an excellent time for movie-going in the damp and dreary Pacific Northwest winter) and usually lasts between two and three weeks.  This year’s event started on the 9th and runs through the 24th, with a few extra repeat screenings held on the 25th.   Then we’ll all go into withdrawal and try to remember what we were doing before the movies became our obsession.  This is the first year I’ve been able to devote myself solely to movies during those weeks.  I’ve been watching the group of obsessives who schedule vacations, rearrange client schedules or otherwise alter their lives to get to as many films as possible.  This year I’ve officially become obsessive and it’s  definitely the way to go.  Don’t even pretend you’re going to do anything else. 

Some people have been going to this festival since its beginning (this year is PIFF30 so they’ve been at it a while).  Others of us only found out about it after we moved to Portland and happened to get caught up in one of the crowd scenes that used to form outside the Guild Theater as people waited in carefully orchestrated lines to enter for a movie from Italy or Spain or China or Argentina or almost anyplace you could name.  There are lines for people with passes, lines for people with advance tickets, and lines for people who only hope to be able to buy tickets.  Once you know the system it makes sense, but when you first stumble across it the concept is a little hard to follow.  Luckily, the people who are veterans of this festival, and the generally excellent volunteer crew, will cheerfully direct you to the proper place to stand.  

People wait in lines, clutching the printed schedules or their handmade grids showing times and theaters or even the color-coded book maintained by one devotee.  We solicit opinions from other line-standers – is the Mexican film a better choice than the Bosnian one?  which will be likely to be shown in regular theaters (so I don’t have to spend festival time in order to see it)?   It’s a logistical problem – trying to squeeze in some short films and still see the longer ones, calculating how much time you need to get from one venue to another (and perhaps stop at a restroom as well).  That’s when the real M&M’s come into play.  They’re an ideal candy for carrying and stowing away.  Combined with whatever kind of nuts and dried fruit you prefer, they make an excellent form of energy-producing gorp.  Just the thing to keep your brain functioning during the film. Most of the films require either using foreign language skills that may be a little rusty or reading subtitles while still paying attention to the action onscreen.  Some films are lightweight but most require and reward attention.  And the best, the ones we come to these festivals to find, are the ones that lead us to think about the world  and our place in it.  

If you haven’t been to anything at this year’s festival, there’s still time.  Go to http://www.nwfilm.org/and look for PIFF30 schedules.  If you can’t make it this year, mark your calendar to save some time next year and check out the list – usually published in January.   And if you’re interested in film all year, become part of the regular M&M crowd.  The Northwest Film Center offers films year round – although without the excitement of jogging through the Park blocks to get to one more movie when you’ve already seen three that day. 

Trackback URI | Comments RSS