Portland Documentary and Experimental Film Festival

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The Portland Documentary and eXperimental Film Festival, or PDX Fest, is a five-day event that showcases non-narrative film and video from Portland, Oregon, United States and around the world. The film festival was started in 2001 by filmmaker Matt McCormick and has since been credited with helping turn Portland into a hotbed of experimental film and new media production.

Non-narrative film is an aesthetic of cinematic film that does not narrate, or relate "an event, whether real or imaginary". The aesthetic is non-representational.

Portland, Oregon City in Oregon, United States

Portland is the largest and most populous city in the U.S. state of Oregon and the seat of Multnomah County. It is a major port in the Willamette Valley region of the Pacific Northwest, at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers. As of 2017, Portland had an estimated population of 647,805, making it the 26th most populated city in the United States, and the second-most populous in the Pacific Northwest. Approximately 2.4 million people live in the Portland metropolitan statistical area (MSA), making it the 25th most populous MSA in the United States. Its Combined Statistical Area (CSA) ranks 18th-largest with a population of around 3.2 million. Approximately 60% of Oregon's population resides within the Portland metropolitan area.

United States Federal republic in North America

The United States of America (USA), commonly known as the United States or America, is a country comprising 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, and various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is slightly smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U.S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D.C., and the largest city by population is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital's federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico. The State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U.S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The extremely diverse geography, climate, and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries.

The Portland Documentary and eXperimental Film Festival is also home of the Peripheral Produce Invitational which every year crowns the world champion of experimental film.

Experimental film, experimental cinema or avant-garde cinema is a mode of filmmaking that rigorously re-evaluates cinematic conventions and explores non-narrative forms and alternatives to traditional narratives or methods of working. Many experimental films, particularly early ones, relate to arts in other disciplines: painting, dance, literature and poetry, or arise from research and development of new technical resources.


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Matt McCormick is a Portland, Oregon based video installation artist and filmmaker. His work extends documentary and experimental filmmaking, focusing on the sublime decay of contemporary culture and the landscape both urban and rural.

Dawn Breakers International Film Festival (DBIFF) is an international travelling film festival held in various cities throughout the world. The festival originated in 2007 and debuted in Phoenix, Arizona and has since been held in San Diego, Houston and Zurich. DBIFF was recognized as an important festival and nominated at the 2014 annual list of MovieMaker's "Top 25 Film Festivals of the World" in the Social Cause category. Selected films from this festival has received theatrical distribution, television broadcast and four Academy Award nominations.

The Brooklyn Film Festival (BFF), prior to 2011 called the Brooklyn International Film Festival (BiFF) is an independent film festival held every June in Brooklyn, New York. Started by Marco Ursino, Susan Mackell, Abe Schrager, and Mario Pegoraro in 1998, its mission is to “discover, expose, and promote independent filmmakers while drawing worldwide attention to Brooklyn as a center for cinema." Its base is South 4th Street, Williamsburg.

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Vanessa Renwick is an American artist and filmmaker living in Portland, Oregon. Since 1981, she has been working in experimental and documentary forms—writing, producing films, videos, photography, sculpture and installations. In 1996, she started her own production company, called The Oregon Department of Kick Ass. Renwick's art reflects an interest in place, landscape use and transformation, as well as relationships between bodies and landscapes.

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