Peripheral Produce, the underground film distributor out of Portland, is holding its annual festival at the end of the month in their hometown.

The highlights this year are special screenings and workshops with two top experimental filmmakers: Larry Gottheim and Martha Colburn. Unfortunately, I’m not familiar with Larry’s work, but the PDX website says:

Since the late 1960’s Larry Gottheim has a been deeply involved with cinema, teaching himself 16 mm filmmaking then developing the Department of Cinema in Binghamton, N.Y. This extremely influential department attracted the most talented artists, academics, and filmmakers of the day including Ken Jacobs, Hollis Frampton, Peter Kubelka, and Ernie Gehr among many others.

Gottheim’s retrospective will be on Thursday the 27th. More info on Larry and his films here.

I reviewed Martha Colburn‘s short Spiders In Love: An Arachnogasmic Musical at the 2000 New York Underground Film Festival. It’s a brief review, so here’s what I said:

Animated female spiders dance around and eat male cocks, accompanied by the most most obnoxious soundtrack of all time. I loved it!

PDX is going to be showing 16 collage films by Martha on Friday. Check out Martha’s official website, which is chock full of film descriptions, stills and video excerpts.

Some of the other films showing at the fest are:

1) Old Joy, dir Kelly Reichardt (opening night film)
2) Lay Down Tracks, dir. Danielle Lombardi & Brigid McCaffrey
3) Who Is Bozo Texino?, dir. Bill Daniel
4) Wild Tigers I Have Known, dir. Cam Archer
5) The Tailenders, dir. Adele Horne
6) The Other Side, dir. Bill Brown (closing night film and also will be playing at the Brooklyn Underground Film Festival)

Finally, as is customary, PDX will hold the Peripheral Produce Invitational on Saturday night where filmmakers compete in non-traditional film presentation. Last year’s winner, Vladimir, presented a “communal view master experience” by handing out 400 view masters with little picture wheels she cut and pasted by hand.