Filmmaker artist organizer Matt McCormick is noted for his landscape shorts, music videos and features. The landscape work is quiet, maybe a little like Benning. He is also known for The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal, a short mixing characters who are employed by the city to paint over tags and the landscape in which they labor. He has made a feature drama, Some Days Are Better Than Others, which traces the existential loneliness of an interconnected ensemble of rainy Portland characters. They each ultimately triumph in a small way over their trials. His new project follows his residency at the Center for Land Use Interpretation and a road trip through Northwest ghost towns, captured in Future So Bright.
McCormick found a scrapbook created by a group of women documenting their Western road trip in 1958. It's photos, notes, receipts and postcards of their stops, some which exist today and others which are no longer. He has retraced their 3,200 mile trip himself, and made a movie of it, The Great Northwest, combining his experience with shots from the scrapbook. It's a project combining landscape and characters, current and passed.
Matt will be at both screenings at the NW Film and Video Center in the Whitsell Auditorium of the Portland Art Museum 1219 SW Park. 7PM $8, members, students, seniors; $9 otherwise
