Oregon Movies, A to Z

“This film is a ‘slow collage.’ Collage has migrated from the arts and crafts we associate with folk culture into digital culture, speeding up and fragmenting along the way. This film speaks not in syllables or phonemes like the work of other, faster-paced filmmakers, but in paragraphs. It treats the life history of energy by breaking it up into epochs and presenting a kind of narrative built around the changing relationship of humans to energy.” Rick Prelinger

You think you’re into film?

Rick Prelinger has so many films, he gave 60,000 of them to the Library of Congress. He still had enough left over to open a film archive in San Francisco. You can go visit the 3,606 films Rick set aside for himself at the Prelinger Archives -because, first of all, he wants you to see them. Second of all, he want you to use them.

He wants you to repurpose them.

Besides archiving ephemeral film ( a term he coined) , Rick Prelinger periodically dives into his pool of stored celluloid and emerges with his own original work. He brings two found footage films to Northwest Film Center on May 21 & 22. The Lives of Energy at 7:00 PM on May 21, and Eating, Energy and Environment: How We Got It Wrong The First Time at 4:00 on May 22.

Strange but true: Fellow archivist Dennis Nyback always remarked to me that Rick Prelinger had the most beautiful manners of anyone he had ever met. Dennis and Rick have both met alot of people, so that is saying something!