Oregon Movies, A to Z

Where did Joanna Priestley get her title “Queen of Independent Animation”? From Bill Plympton, King of the same. At the suspenseful and highly competitive Art vs Commerce Animation Smackdown which took place at the Platform Festival in 2007, Bill and Joanna went mano a mano.

Bill’s account:

…Joanna Priestley, famed Portland animator, came on stage wearing a robe and boxing gloves, and smacked me around on stage. She showed three abstract films, alternating between my three favorite funny films, including Signe Baumane’s “Teat Beat of Sex”, which even made Joanna laugh. Joanna’s husband was the score-keeper (he had an applause meter) and she stacked the crowd with her friends, so naturally she won – just barely, though, with a score of 6.5 to 6. But it was such a raucous success, we believe that we’ll return for Round 2 next year.

If you missed the smack down in 2007, you can catch Joanna at the Whitsell Auditorium on January 28, 2012 at 7:00 PM. This evening of films, which includes FIVE premieres, is part of Northwest Film Center’s Northwest Tracking series.

The program includes EYE LINER (2011), a meditation on facial recognition; SPLIT ENDS (2012), which probes perception and cognition through the use of multi-layered patterns inspired by wrapping and wallpaper designs; CHOKING HAZARD (2012), a whirlwind tour of best intentions gone awry in the recycling of plastic; DEAR PLUTO SLIDESHOW (2011), an amusing behind-the-scenes look at the making of DEAR PLUTO (2012), a tribute to everyone’s favorite planetoid from the poem “Pizza” by Taylor Mali; and MISSED ACHES (2009), a witty commentary about proofreading and the indiscriminate use of spellcheck, written and narrated by poet Taylor Mali.

Joanna Priestley will be there, of course.