QUICK FLICKS. The 10 or Less Film Festival, formerly known as the Portland International Short Short Film Festival, will be shown in Portland October 18 through 20. Eiji Shamada’s Silently (left photo) is included in this year’s festival. (Photo courtesy of the 10 or Less Film Festival)

From The Asian Reporter, V17, #41 (October 9, 2007), page 15.

10 or Less Film Festival

(formerly known as the Portland International Short Short Film Festival)

Featuring films, director Q&As, workshops, and celebrations

Presented by Film Action Oregon, Sour Apple Productions, and withoutabox.com

October 18 through 20

By Ronault L.S. Catalani

Ten minutes can seem too short. Ten minutes can feel like forever, like in my dentist’s chair, looking at his sound-proof ceiling squares, listening to his Black & Decker. Ten minutes, pleasure or pain, is all filmmakers got to work their way into a place at Portland’s 10 or Less Film Festival. Less than 10 original minutes of running time — front to finish, documentary or narrative, animated or experimental.

In its previous five years, the three-day event has been titled the Portland International Short Short Film Festival. All years, festival entries have been from around the world. This year, 10 Fest filmmakers are from Australia, Canada, France, Japan, Rwanda, South Korea, Spain, the U.K., and the U.S.A. — including a big bite of locally grown Portlanders.

Several films on the festival’s October 18 through 20 line-up, mainly presented at the historic Hollywood Theatre, are written and directed by Asians or Asian Americans. And these five filmmakers easily reflect the diversity of style and substance film festival co-producers Film Action Oregon and Sour Apple Productions are eager to put before the public during their energetic Thursday through Saturday event.

Portlander Kurt Nishimura directed Echo Helstrum’s indie music video Hungry Ghost; young drummer and filmmaker Shahrom Taghizadegan gets a spot to present his three-minute film Time Perception.

Japanese filmmaker Eiji Shamada (Silently) takes us on a fantastical and fatalistic journey about (what else?) love, in the northern city of Sapporo. We’re told that at night the place is known for exquisite winter lights reflecting softly off drifting snow flakes, but "lovers who view this illumination — part. There are no exceptions." Ouch. Silently is narrated in French, making it all the more lyrical and somehow more probable than Japanese. It’s eight achy minutes, but sure feels a lot longer. Hold tight to your heart. If you come with a date, grab fast onto his or hers.

The opposite of Silently is Korean director Kim Hye-in’s experimental-style documentary Huinalini. Her film immediately immerses viewers into the brutal kidnap then use of young Korean women as sex slaves by Imperial Japan’s military before and during the Second World War. Ms. Kim’s three minutes are delivered in hard-hitting and delicately disciplined visual moments.

"Unless they come and kneel to us," utters a firm survivor, in a humbling tone, from an unimaginable history, "I will not forgive them."

It could easily be so quickly overdone, so overwhelming viewers, but it’s not and it does not. Ten or less is right on point.

Wonderful and weird and smart are Mirai Mizue’s (Japan) five minutes of Lost Utopia, an animated film that fills the screen with lively organic shapes evolving in colorful complexity, from single-cell spermy-things to squirmy sea life, then bugs and birds, then menacing urban creatures. It’s all biblical (with a small B) and biological and jazzy. By Lost Utopia’s end we’ve travelled a zillion years in earth time inside a few minutes of film time, all of it surrendered into timeless fun. That is successful cinema. Suspension of time. Wonderful.

This year, Portland’s 10 or Less Film Festival will also present the Reel Youth Film Festival, showcasing young filmmakers from across America, from their American communities. Reel Youth is a program empowering our youth and celebrating the social issues kids care about in the neighborhoods they engage.

East Portland’s Jupiter Hotel provides the second lively venue for the 10 or Less Film Festival. Among events at the hip East Burnside hangout are: "Shooting on shoe string," a workshop on tight-budget filmmaking hosted by Portlanders C.K. Lichenstein and Andrew Blubaugh, among others; a late Friday night kickoff party; internationally-flavored DJ (E3) after-parties; ongoing looped exhibits of experimental films. All of that buoyed by refreshments courtesy of Full Sail Brewing Company.

The 10 or Less Film Festival premiere sponsors include Milagros Boutique and OurStage.com. Additional support is provided by KNRK 94.7, Rex Post, NW Media, Morrow McKenzie, Baby Wit, and of course Full Sail Brewing and the Jupiter Hotel.

The festival will be held in Portland at the Hollywood Theatre, located at 4122 N.E. Sandy Blvd., and the Jupiter Hotel’s dreamBOX Room, located at 800 East Burnside Street. To view the full event schedule and location information, visit <www.10orlessfest.com> or call the event organizers at (503) 810-9145.