Local filmmaker Matt McCormick has built a steady career on film curation, distribution, making a festival, art shorts, installation, landscape film, advertising work, music videos, photography and music. You could say he's the artist-filmmaker's filmmaker-artist. He has created his first feature Some Days Are Better Than Others. It's not Reichert, or Van Sant, or Haynes or Miranda July even, it's its own thing. The film priemered at SXSW last year, shows in Portland tonight and proceeds on to MOMA in NYC and other major cities in the coming months. Part of the Portland International Film Festival. www.nwfilm.org In the Art Museum Whitsell Auditorium, www.nwfilm.org 1219 SW Park 7:30PM $8-10
Music continually evolves. Where there is an historical record of who composed a piece, there is also an historical record of the work being loved by new music lovers and hated by old music lovers. And of course today's new music lovers are sometimes tomorrow's new music haters. An example is the composer Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971), early modernist. He wrote his first symphony at 25. A very famous piece, Rite of Spring, begun when the composer was 29, was first performed when he was 31. It elicited the following review: "The most essential characteristic of [The Rite of Spring] is that it is the most dissonant and the most discordant composition yet written. Never was the system and the cult of the wrong note practiced with so much industry, zeal and fury." The premiere of the dance performance in collaboration with greats Nijinsky and Diaghilev, actually erupted into fistfights in the audience and the police were called. The Oregon Ballet Theater is reprising classic Stravinsky modern ballet and commissioning local performers to make new work to Stravinsky. The collaborators speak on the project which performs February 26 - March 5. Describing the process of creating work include Rachel Tess, Rumpus Room Dance; Anne Mueller, Oregon Ballet Theatre; Jamey Hampton and Ashley Roland, BodyVox; costume designer Morgan Walker, PNCA; and composer Heather Perkins. More info at OBT Stravinsky Program www.obt.org/season_program3.html. PNCA talk today at PNCA 13th and NW Johnson. 2PM-4 Free
The Research Club continues its intimate and informative brunch series, today returning to the intimate and informative False Front Studio, near Alberta. This brunch includes presentations by Jamie Marie Waelchli, the artist showing Thought Maps this month at the gallery, speaking on her work; Alison Jean Cole, on her peer to peer open source university project and institution-free degree granting; Michael Cook from the City Repair Project, Portland champion mud hut activists, and an idea that has spread to other cities; and Abraham Ingle, from Portland Skill Share and also famous for artist projects such at the Neighborhood Diaries podcasts. Bring vegan or vegetarian friendly food to share. In an important DIY action to cut down on the many pounds of garbage the event could generate, bring your own cup, plate and utensils, hey maybe a cloth napkin! A project of research-club.org At False Front Studio www.falsefrontstudio.com 4518 NE 32nd Map noon-3 Free
