Film Series Screens The Real Dirt on Farmer John on March 23rd

real dirtOur March 23rd Film Series movie will be “The Real Dirt on Farmer John” (Documentary, 2005), which is an epic tale of a maverick Mid-western farmer.
Castigated as a pariah in his community, Farmer John bravely transforms his farm amidst a failing economy, vicious rumors, and arson. He succeeds in creating a bastion of free expression and a revolutionary form of agriculture in rural America.
Directed by Taggart Siegel. Stars John Peterson, Anna Nielsen and John Edwards
Running Time: 82 minutes
Admission: $7. Refreshments available for purchase.

Film Series to Screen Rivers and Tides

rivers and tidesThe Manzanita Film Series will present “Rivers and Tides: Andy Goldsworthy Working with Time” Feb. 23 at 7:30 p.m. at the Hoffman Center in Manzanita.

Directed by Thomas Riedelsheimer, the 2001 documentary film follows British artist Andy Goldsworthy as he creates art in natural settings using natural materials such as driftwood, ice, mud, leaves, and stones. Goldsworthy’s creations are intentionally mutable works; several of them fall apart, melt, or drift away due to exposure to the elements.

The music was composed and performed by Fred Frith and was released on a soundtrack “Rivers and Tides” in 2003.
The film received a number of awards, including the ‘Best Documentary’ awards of the San Diego Film Critics Society and the San Francisco Film Critics Circle.

Running time: 90 minutes. Admission is $7, refreshments will be available and a discussion follows the film.

Hoffman Center Presents Festival of Short Films

NWFest38 GraphicThe Hoffman Center’s Manzanita Film Series will host a showing of “The Best of the 38th Northwest Film & Video Festival” at 7:30 p.m., Saturday, Jan. 26. Admission is $7 and snack concessions will be available for purchase.

The collection of short films was selected by the Northwest Film Center of Portland from its annual juried film festival. The total running time is about one hour. Center regional services manager Thomas Phillipson and filmmaker Rob Tyler will attend the screening to discuss the features and the Film Center itself.

The films to be screened are:

“Basin” by David Geiss, Victoria. (Images of the once pristine landscape of northern Alberta scarred by industrial development compel us to take environmental action.)

“Old-Time Film” by Barbara Tetenbaum and Marilyn Zornado, Portland. (A fiddle and some antique engravings make for good times in this short toe-tapper.)

“Woman Waiting” by Antoine Bourges, Vancouver. (This powerful narrative uses minimal dialogue and long takes to depict a middle-aged woman on the edge of homelessness and invisibility.)

“Laszlo Lassu” by Ben Popp, Portland. (This masterful cut-paper animation has an Eastern European folk art flare to its lines and narrative.)

“Treeverse” by John Waller, Portland. (Two men take an unprecedented one-kilometer canopy trek — i.e. they never touch the ground — through an old growth Oregon white oak forest.)

“The Big Sayonara” by Don Hamilton, Spokane. (A former Wall Street employee hits rock bottom in rural Rosalia, Washington. Some of the funniest understated dialogue ever heard in a short independent film.)

The Manzanita Film Series is a program of the Hoffman Center in Manzanita. Films are screened monthly throughout the year.

 

Book and Film Presentation on November 24

The Hoffman Center in Manzanita will host coastal writer Matt Love Saturday, Nov. 24 at 7:30 for a special presentation on his book “Sometimes A Great Movie: Paul Newman, Ken Kesey And The Filming Of The Great Oregon Novel.” A screening of the film itself will follow.

Admission is $7 and refreshments will be available.

In June 1970, the biggest movie star in the world traveled to the Oregon Coast to film an epic novel about a defiant family of loggers written by a homegrown counterculture hero. The star was Paul Newman. The author was Ken Kesey. The story was “Sometimes a Great Notion” and it has a fanatical following in the Pacific Northwest.

What ensued was a wild working vacation between Hollywood and Oregonians involving beer, sex, scotch, loggers, beaches, and perhaps, a spectacularly vandalized pool table. In his book, author Matt Love documents the legend of that magical summer and presents over a 125 never-before-seen photographs, including many in color.

“I first became interested in the story after Ken Kesey died in 2001, when I heard a remarkable tale from an eyewitness who claimed that during the movie shoot, Paul Newman cut the legs off a pool table with a chain saw in a Toledo bar,” said Love. “I wanted to discover if the story was true. In the course of four years, I interviewed close to a hundred people connected to the filming and collected hundreds of incredibly candid photographs. I think I’ve ended up with a truly fun and poignant narrative about a unprecedented earthy collaboration between Hollywood and a place where they went on location to make a movie.”

Matt Love is the author/editor of eight books about Oregon, including, the best selling “Far Out Story of Vortex I”, “Citadel of the Spirit: Oregon’s Sesquicentennial Anthology”, and “Gimme Refuge: The Education of a Caretaker”.

In 2009, Love won the Oregon Literary Arts’ Stewart H. Holbrook Literary Legacy Award for his contributions to Oregon history and literature. He lives in South Beach and teaches English and journalism at Newport High School. He’s currently working on a novel about teaching in a public high school.

 

Film Series Screens Young Frankenstein

The Manzanita Film Series will present the Mel Brooks’ “Young Frankenstein” Saturday, October 27 at 7:30 p.m. at the Hoffman Center in Manzanita.

The 1974 comedy stars Gene Wilder, Madeline Kahn, Peter Boyle, Marty Feldman and many more.

Storyline: Dr. Frankenstein’s grandson, after years of living down the family reputation, inherits granddad’s castle and repeats the experiments.

Running time: 106 minutes. Admission is $7, refreshments will be available and a discussion follows the film.

Film Series to Screen His Girl Friday on September 22

The Manzanita Film Series will present the comedy “His Girl Friday” Saturday, September 22 at 7:30 p.m. at the Hoffman Center in Manzanita.

The 1940 comedy stars Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell and Ralph Bellamy, and was directed by Howard Hawks. Based on the hit Broadway play “The Front Page” written by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur.

Storyline: A newspaper editor uses every trick in the book to keep his ace reporter ex-wife from remarrying.

Running time: 92 minutes. Admission is $7, refreshments will be available and a discussion follows the film.

Film Series Offers “The Stranger”

The Manzanita Film Series will present Orson Welles’ classic “The Stranger” Saturday night, July 28 at 7:30 p.m. at the Hoffman Center.

The 1946 feature stars Edward G. Robinson, Loretta Young, Welles himself.

Storyline: Charles Rankin is a professor in a respectable Connecticut town about to marry the daughter of a U.S. Supreme Court justice. But his name is fake and his past is filthy. An earnest convert to Christianity, who once ran a Nazi concentration camp, is capable of exposing him. So “Rankin” kills this little old man and buries his body in the forest. But he isn’t safe because an investigator from the War Crimes Commission is on his tail. Rankin will need his own wife to help him elude capture. But his fascination with the local clock tower may prove his undoing.

The film runs 95 minutes. Admission is $7, and refreshments will be available.

Film Series Screens ‘Howl’ on Sunday, May 27th

We’ll be having our Film Series presentation this month on a Sunday night, since it’s Memorial Day Weekend. Showing will be “Howl”. This movie is about Allen Ginsberg’s life and art, and the famous obscenity trial his most famous poem provoked. Starring James Franco, Todd Rotondi, and Jon Prescott. Movie starts at 7:30, and admission is $7.

Film Series to Screen Freakonomics on April 28th

Join us for the next Film Series event on Saturday, April 28th at 7:30 pm. We will be screening Freakonomics (2010).

Freakonomics is a collection of documentaries that explores the hidden side of human nature through the use of the science of economics. From the directors of Super Size Me, Jesus Camp, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Why We Fight, and The King of Kong. Running time is 93 minutes.

Admission is $7, refreshments will be available and a discussion follows the film.

Hoffman Center Presents Festival of Short Films Friday, 1/27

Northwest Film & Video Festival screens on January 27, 7:30

The Hoffman Center’s Manzanita Film Series will host a showing of “The Best of the 37th Northwest Film & Video Festival” at 7:30 p.m., Friday, Jan. 27. Admission is $7 and snack concessions will be available for purchase.

The collection of short films was selected by the Northwest Film Center of Portland from its annual juried film festival. The total running time is 82 minutes.

The films to be screened are “Savage” by Lisa Jackson, Vancouver; “Into Darkness” by John Waller, Portland; “Mumbles” by Rick Raxien, Victoria; “Robier Talks About Life, Part 28” by Jim Lowry, Portland; “Shut Up and Ride” by Michael Ward, Portland; “The Thomas Beale Cipher” by Andrew S. Allen, Seattle; “My Voyage to Egypt” by Ian Berry, Portland; “Crossings” by Brian Libby, Portland; “Dear Peter” by Orland Nutt of Portland; and “The True Believers” by Nathaniel Bennett, Medford.

The Manzanita Film Series is a program of the Hoffman Center in Manzanita. Films are screened monthly throughout the year. The Center is located at 594 Laneda Ave.