It’s film festival time in Manzanita, and the light is shining on young filmmakers from around the world. Each of the short films to be screened Friday was honored last year at the Gateway Film Festival, organized and hosted by students and Media Arts Department faculty at Pacific University in Forest Grove. Professor Jennifer Hardacker, who has shown her own films at the Hoffman Center for the Arts, will attend the screening to discuss the films. Showtime is 7:30 p.m. Feb. 28 in the Hoffman Center. Admission is $7. Films to be shown are:
- Let.Go.Before.Trying, by Anna Mendes of Ashland
- Istanbul: Home Away From Home, by Selin Tiryakioglu of Florida
- Double Vida, by Sharlany Gonzalez of the Dominican Republic and Maryland
- 63 Miles Away, by Emma Josephson of Portland
- Writer’s Block Party, by Gabriella Sipe of Olympia
- The Quiet, by Radheya Jegatheva of Australia
- She, by Felix Koble of South Africa
- Beacons of Portland, by David Pascual-Matias of Portland
- Irony, by Radheya Jegatheva of Australia
NEHALEM IS PREPARING for the annual Nehalem Winterfest March 6-8. Performers are: the Marlin James Band, a country/rock group with influences ranging from Eddie Van Halen to George Strait, at 7 p.m. Friday; Eagles tribute band Eagle Eyes at 7 p.m. Saturday; and legendary Portland jazz band the Mel Brown Quartet at 2 p.m. Sunday. Performances are in North Country Recreation District Performing Arts Center. Tickets range from $18 to $29 and are available here.
THERE’S STILL TIME TO CATCH Cinderella, at the Newport Performing Arts Center on Fridays and Saturdays through March 7. The Rodgers and Hammerstein musical originally ran on TV in 1957, with Julie Andrews in the title role. A 1997 remake starred Brandy as Cinderella and Whitney Houston as the Fairy Godmother. This performance is based on the 1997 teleplay. Ticket and showtime information is here.
IN CELEBRATION OF NATIONAL Read Across America Day and Dr. Seuss’ birthday, the Lincoln City Cultural Center presents two performances of Seussical Jr. on March 8. Performed by the young actors of the Lincoln City Playhouse for Youth, Seussical Jr. features Horton the Elephant, the Cat in the Hat and other favorite Dr. Seuss characters in a musical extravaganza by Tony-winners Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty. Tickets are $10 for adults, $5 for ages 6-17, and free for ages 5 and under.
THE PORTHOLE PLAYERS present Ray Bradbury’s Kaleidoscope as a “one-night delight” on March 11 in the Newport Performing Arts Center. The performance is a staged reading paired with a theme dessert.
Directed by Jennifer Hamilton, Kaleidoscope is a contemplative tale about a rocket hit by a meteor, leaving its crew floating in space with a communicator as their only link to fellow crew members. They contemplate their fate and philosophize about life and its purpose.
In 1996, Bradbury reportedly told Playboy magazine, “At one time, I had planned to have my ashes put into a Campbell’s tomato soup can and then have it planted on Mars.” Thus the inspiration for the “delight”: tomato soup spice cake, followed by a discussion with the director, crew, and actors.
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ON MARCH 13, THE OREGON COAST COUNCIL FOR THE ARTS will show #AnneFrank Parallel Stories, “a powerful retelling of Anne Frank’s life through the pages of her extraordinary diary, guided by the Academy-Award winning actress Helen Mirren – and through the lives of five women who, as young girls, were also deported to concentration camps but survived the Holocaust.”
The 2019 documentary commemorates what would have been Frank’s 90th birthday, taking audiences into the secret annex in Amsterdam where her family hid until their arrest in 1944 and through excerpts of her diary. Intertwined with Frank’s story are those of five Holocaust survivors who also suffered persecution and deportation as teens. Frank died in 1945 while imprisoned in the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp.
“This is a story we must never forget,” Mirren says in the film. “We are beginning to lose the generation of people who are living witness of what happened in Europe in those terrible days, and so it’s all the more important to keep the memory alive looking into the future.”
The documentary shows at 7 p.m. in the Newport Performing Arts Center. Tickets are available here.
