You could argue that three of the things that Portland is best-known for are cinema (independent theaters, Todd Haynes, Gus Van Sant, etc.), animation (Laika, ShadowMachine, Joanna Priestley, etc.), and technology (Intel, Nike, Tektronix, etc.). This makes the Portland Festival of Cinema, Animation, and Technology seem like the most natural idea in the world, but it took a while for the event to put down roots in the Rose City. For a decade, it was a touring event known as the International Festival of Cinema and Technology before it settled on a permanent home. “We’ve always had a long name,” jokes Festival Director Marisa Cohen.

Now in its third year with the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry as its home, the 2025 edition of PFCAT features over 170 films, as well as VR experiences and panel presentations. As befits the festival’s name, Cohen says, “we’re looking for films that have some sort of visionary focus that the filmmaker has in mind. Either they’re using technology in an interesting way to achieve their vision, or, in the case of documentaries, they involve how technology affects people’s lives in some way.” There aren’t any hard and fast rules, though: “Some films just got submitted and were so great, we programmed them anyway.”

OMSI boasts a pair of filmgoing environments that are unique in Portland: its Empirical Theater, whose four-story screen and Dolby Atmos sound system make even nature documentaries riveting, and its Kendall Planetarium, whose laser light show entrancements have kept Pink Floyd fans off the streets for years. The latter of those hosts the festival’s Wednesday, August 6th, opening night headliner, Resolution: A Cinephonic Rhapsody for the Soul, a visual accompaniment to the 2023 album “Salvage Enterprise” by the earnest choral rockers The Polyphonic Spree. “I feel lucky that we get to screen in the planetarium,” says Cohen. “The fact that independent productions are being made for dome screenings is amazing and beautiful. I always thought they were educational, about the solar system, but people are using the dome in such a creative way.” Director Scott Berman will be in attendance for the film’s West Coast Premiere following its premiere at SXSW, where it won the audience award for Best Immersive Experience. (And those folks at SXSW know their way around immersive experiences.)

For the next four days, PFCAT’s screens will be filled with an overwhelming variety of programming, a decent slice of which comes from local filmmakers. Oregon-based director Luke Stone’s Retrieving Roadie, for instance, is an endearing, retro-styled, fact-based animated short about the difficulties of travelling with a pet. But the festival also has a global reach, with films from over 25 countries, including Poland, Qatar, Serbia, and Nigeria. The Singaporean animated short She and Her Good Vibrations is an equally endearing tale about a lonely middle-aged woman whose life gets a jump-start when she unexpectedly receives a sex toy in the mail. (It gets extra points for being both animated and about technology.) There’s no spoken dialogue in either film, a testament to the power of animation to tell universally relatable stories.

The best film I was able to preview was the documentary The Universe in a Grain of Sand. Director Mark Levinson achieved a doctorate in particle physics before moving into filmmaking and directing Particle Fever, a fascinating chronicle of the pursuit of the Higgs boson. Here, he takes a more abstract tack, examining the different worldviews of art and science and probing how those views and the tools they employ can, if considered together, provide a more complete conception of the world around us. The microbudget narrative feature Universal skirts the same territory with its story of a British academic whose romantic weekend away with his girlfriend is upended by the arrival of an eccentric woman who claims to have discovered potentially earth-shaking evidence in his studies of DNA. Fans of Coherence, Primer, or Timecrimes should approve.

Other notable features include A Rare Grand Alignment, the directorial debut of Cinqué Lee, Spike’s younger brother. It takes place almost entirely in a Norwegian cable car suspended over a mountainous ravine where three teenage boys have been stranded after the car’s operator (Kristofer “Tormund Giantsbane” Hivju) suddenly dies. It was shot using “The Volume,” the same LED virtual production stage used in things like The Mandalorian, and Lee will be in attendance at the film’s Opening Night screening. And the dystopian drama Motherland depicts a world where parents have been freed from the responsibility of raising children, only for one member of the ruling bureaucracy to discover a shocking secret.

An area where PFCAT seems to have upped its game from recent years is in the breadth of visiting talent and panel discussions. Saturday features a daylong lineup of discussions on topics ranging from voice acting to stop-motion to crowdfunding. Friday night features a conversation on storytelling between Portland novelist and screenwriter Jon Raymond and comedian and sitcom creator Mark Roberts, who has three animations in the festival. (It’s one of the few events taking place off-OMSI, specifically at the Literary Arts headquarters at 716 SE Grand Ave.) A panel on alternative distribution strategies will include Ashland’s Barret O’Brien, whose series The Long Long Night has been released through the new Kinema platform, and Portlander Anna Campbell, who went with another new online distributor, Veeps, for her feature Nora. (I spoke with Campbell about the film back in April.)

That panel fits right in with the ethos of PFCAT, which involves providing a platform so that filmmakers and artists working outside the mainstream, attempting to realize ambitious, intelligent visions without unlimited resources, can engage with audiences and their peers. “It’s very rewarding to be able to screen all these films and celebrate them. So many people need a home for their film. I just hope in the future there’s a landscape that supports people not just in making films, but in having them really seen.” (Wednesday, Aug. 6 through Sunday, Aug. 10, visit https://pdxfestofcinema.com/ for full schedule and details.)

Also reviewed

Weapons: Actor-comedian Zach Cregger made an impressive pivot away from comedy with 2022’s unsettling Barbarian, and now he’s followed that up with Weapons, a clever, scary piece that should end up as one of the best horror movies of the year. The setup is brilliantly simple: at 2:17 a.m. one night, sixteen of the seventeen kids in the third-grade class at Maybrook Elementary taught by Justine Gandy (Julia Garner) get out of bed, leave their homes, and run off into the darkness. As the townsfolk, and especially the parents of the missing children (including Josh Brolin), grow increasingly frustrated at the inability of the town cops to solve the mystery, suspicion falls on Justine and Alex (Cary Christopher), the only kid in class who didn’t disappear. She’s a complicated figure, to Cregger and Garner’s credit: Drowning her anxiety and loneliness in vodka bottles, she’s also carrying on a clandestine affair with a local police officer (Alden Ehrenreich), and despite being warned to leave things to the authorities, starts poking around. Her principal (Benedict Wong) reluctantly suspends her, although with only one student, it’s hard to imagine what she would be doing at school all day anyway. Can the collective power of the Silver Surfer, the Sorcerer Supreme, Thanos himself, and Han Solo (as a treat) get to the bottom of this? Well, not without casualties they won’t.

Reportedly inspired by Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia (itself a progeny of Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon), Cregger uses a fractured chronology, each chapter coming from a different character’s perspective. It’s a great device, allowing him to dispense bits of information in a bespoke manner and put details like an injured finger in earlier scenes that pay off later on. Things remain relatively subtle and creepy for most of the movie, until a final showdown with the real Big Bad becomes a cavalcade of bizarre gore and an opportunity for dozens of child-sized stunt performers to cash a check. As the end credits roll, it becomes apparent that this could have all been wrapped up more quickly if the police were better at their jobs, but in the moment it’s all entertaining enough that you don’t really mind. (Wide release)

It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley: If all you know about Jeff Buckley is his haunting, iconic rendition of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” this documentary will be utterly revelatory. If you’ve already gained an appreciation for the ethereal, androgynous singer’s four-octave range and an awareness of his tragic, random death on the very verge of superstardom, it’s probably even more meaningful as an intimate look at one of music’s biggest might-have-beens. Chock full of home movies, (lengthy) outgoing voicemail messages, and performance footage, director Amy Berg’s panegyric also includes interviews with his mother and the two most prominent romantic partners of his short life. (Berg also directed a very good doc about another musical martyr, Janis Joplin.) Son of the folk singer Tim Buckley, who abandoned the family before he was born and died of a heroin overdose at 28, Jeff wore his trauma on his sleeve and in his lyrics. Those words and emotions took flight in a voice that uncannily resembles those of his idols, Nina Simone, Robert Plant, and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. In some ways, it’s a familiar narrative involving an uncanny talent whose relationship with fame was complicated and hesitant, and a career cut unconscionably short. But when you hear him sing, it becomes clear that this his loss was a truly titanic one. (Cinema 21, Kiggins Theatre)

Architecton: The Russian filmmaker Victor Kossakovsky has crafted cinematic meditations on water and animals, and in this latest effort he turns his attention to stone and its relative, concrete, and the way humans have built, destroyed, and built again using these materials since time immemorial. Kossakovsky works in the Koyaanisqatsi tradition, i.e. plenty of magnificent visuals overlaid by a stirring score, but with very little exposition or narrative. This makes it a challenge to assess his thesis, other than that huge rocks make a huge noise when they topple over. There’s a sense of loss in the (few) words spoken by an Italian architect toward the film’s finale: “Why do we build ugly buildings when we could build beautiful ones?” It’s a rebuke of brutalism and soulless corporate structures, but one that’s content to lament that reality without probing possible alternatives. (Salem Cinema)

Ebony and Ivory: [reprinting because the screening was pushed back a week] In 1982, musical legends Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder collaborated on the hit single “Ebony and Ivory,” which used a piano keyboard as a metaphor for racial harmony and drew fervent jeers from the commentariat for its facile vapidity. Director Jim Hosking (The Greasy Strangler) hated the song so much that he made an entire film depicting a farcical version of its creation, one that transcends the bounds of propriety to deliver a jaw-droppingly irreverent take. As in our reality, Stevie (Gil Gex) visits Paul (Sky Elobar) at Paul’s remote “Scottish cottage,” a phrase that is repeated with greater and greater brio over the course of the film. Unlike in our reality (probably), the two indulge in vegetarian snacks, smoke copious amounts of what Paul calls “doobie woobie,” and prance about for long stretches in the altogether, aided by hilarious prosthetic penises. They never really get down to songwriting, and the whole enterprise is held together by the two actors’ willingness to start over the top and go from there. It’s a surreal enough two-hander that one doesn’t feel like either McCartney or Wonder are being specifically targeted. Hosking’s goal, it seems, is to puncture the self-importance of the song while indulging in repetitive, often puerile antics that are probably best enjoyed after a meal of veggie nuggets and a bit of the old doobie-woobie. Hilarious stuff. (8/8, Hollywood Theatre)

Also this week

Moving: When her parents announce they are separating, a Japanese sixth grader negotiates the process by trying to maintain some control, with the help of peers at school and, eventually, her own younger self. Shinji Sōmai (1948-2001) often centered his films on juvenile protagonists, and this is one his most acclaimed, recently given a 4K restoration. (Friday 8/8 through Sunday 8/10, 5th Avenue Cinema)

Compensation: Another rediscovered and restored piece of vibrant independent film, Zeinabu irene Davis’s 1999, black-and-white feature weaves together the stories of two Black couples in Chicago separated by decades of time, with the same actors playing both. Davis’s film is notable for featuring a Deaf actor, Michelle A. Banks, in one of the leads, allowing the film to present the experience of the Black Deaf community in a way no film has before or since. (Sunday 8/10, Tomorrow Theater)

We Are Everywhere: This documentary about the lives of five different sex workers in Portland during the COVID-19 pandemic is part of a mini-festival that includes a pole dancing competition at KitKat on Tuesday 8/12 and a gallery show. It will be followed by a selection of short films. (Monday 8/11, Clinton Street Theater)

Yeast: Before Barbie, as you may be aware, Greta Gerwig got her start as a participant in several films from the 1990s-era “mumblecore” movement. These low-budget, dialogue-driven films included work by Joe Swanberg, Andrew Bujalski, and others. As usual, the output from female filmmakers in this vein has often been overlooked, and that’s the case with this 2008 feature directed by and starring (alongside Gerwig) Mary Bronstein. It’s not available digitally and even Movie Madness doesn’t have a copy of the long out-of-print DVD. Now’s a great chance to catch up with it and Bronstein: her second feature, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, premiered at Sundance this year and should be hitting theaters in October. (Monday 8/11, Hollywood Theatre)

Seventeen: This landmark 1983 documentary about working-class teenagers in Muncie, Indiana, has been hailed as one of the most intimate and revealing examinations of adolescence in America, not to mention America in general. This screening, which will be introduced by director Kelly Reichardt (Old Joy and much more), is in tribute to the film’s co-director, Joel DeMott, who died in June. (Wednesday 8/13, Hollywood Theatre)

Backseat Driver: A comedy about a grown man with an imaginary friend who learns he has a half-sister after their father dies. Turns out she has an imaginary friend, too. It looks like there’s some business involving an inherited sword, as well. Filmed in Portland and Klamath Falls, Rollyn Stafford’s comedic second feature gets it Portland premiere. (Thursday 8/14, Tomorrow Theater)

Also opening

Freakier Friday: “Twenty-two years after Tess (Jamie Lee Curtis) and Anna (Lindsay Lohan) endured an identity crisis, Anna now has a daughter and a soon-to-be stepdaughter. As they navigate the challenges that come when two families merge, Tess and Anna discover that lightning might strike twice.” (wide release)

My Mother’s Wedding: “Three sisters (Scarlett Johansson, Sienna Miller, Emily Beecham) return to their home for the third wedding of their twice-widowed mother (Kristin Scott-Thomas, who also directed). But the mother and daughters are forced to revisit the past and confront the future, with help from a colorful group of unexpected wedding guests.” (Regal Fox Tower, Cedar Hills, Bridgeport Village)

Sketch: “When a young girl’s sketchbook falls into a strange pond, her drawings come to life—chaotic, real and on the loose. As the towns [sic] descends into chaos, her family must reunite and stop the monsters they never meant to unleash.” Tony Hale and D’Arcy Carden star. (Eastport, Lloyd Center, Clackamas Town Center)

Strange Harvest: “Detectives are thrust into a chilling hunt for “Mr. Shiny”—a sadistic serial killer from the past whose return marks the beginning of a new wave of grotesque, otherworldly crimes tied to a dark cosmic force.” (Regal Fox Tower, Clackamas Town Center, Bridgeport Village)

Repertory

Friday 8/8

• Curse of Frankenstein [1957] (Hollywood Theatre)
• Friday the 13th [1980] (Academy Theatre, through 8/14)
• Jumanji [1995] (Academy Theatre, through 8/14)
• Lawrence of Arabia [1962] (Academy Theatre, through 8/14)
• The Matrix [1999] (Cinema 21, also Saturday)
• Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure [1985] (Tomorrow Theater)
• Show Boat [1951] (Kiggins Theatre, also Saturday)

Saturday 8/9

• Alien [1979] (Tomorrow Theater)
• Aliens [1986] (Tomorrow Theater)
• Chinatown [1974] (Cinema 21)
• Excalibur [1981] (Hollywood Theatre)
• The Matrix [1999] (Hollywood Theatre)
• Wolf Moon Rising / Zombie Bloodbath (Hollywood Theatre)

Sunday 8/10

• Easy Rider [1969] (Hollywood Theatre, on 35mm)
• Monty Python and the Holy Grail [1975] (Clinton Street Theater)
• The Muppets [2011] (Salem Cinema)
• Sky High [2005] (Hollywood Theatre)
• The Wild Bunch [1979] (Tomorrow Theater)

Monday 8/11

• Best in Show [2000] (Hollywood Theatre, on 35mm)
• Force of Evil [1948] (Kiggins Theatre)

Tuesday 8/12

• Crippled Avengers [1978] (Hollywood Theatre, on 35mm)
• The Goonies [1985] (Clinton Street Theater)

Wednesday 8/13

• The Grateful Dead Movie [1977] (various theaters & dates through 8/17)
• The Road Warrior [1982] (Hollywood Theatre, on 35mm, also 8/14)

Thursday 8/14

• Mother, I Am Suffocating. This Is My Last Film About You [2019] (Clinton Street Theater)
• Serial Mom [1994] (Kiggins Theatre)