Oregon Lens is back for its tenth season and features an exciting collection of stories by some of the Northwest's most talented producers.
Tune in to the stations of OPB TV Monday, August 11-Thursday, August 14 at 10pm to see a diversity of work guaranteed to surprise and challenge you.
- Monday, August 11, 10-11pm
Nuclear Acrobat — This documentary profiles a Portland woman who gave up a career as a rocket scientist to join the circus.
Filmmakers: Wen Lee, Rebecca Purice & Steven Wilsey
Web site: http://flux.uoregon.edu/2008/the-well/the-science-of-suspension/
7,500 Miles to Redemption — The producers spent four years following inmate members of the Oregon State Penitentiary's Asian Pacific Family Club as they helped guitarist Tinh Mahoney realize his dream of building a school in his native Vietnam. It's a powerful story about regained purpose, self-worth and humanity.
Filmmakers: Emiko Omori and Tinh Mahoney
Web site: www.7500miles.com/Bow — Portland's own world-class bow maker Michael Yeats is one of those rare artists who works intimately with the nature of wood to create one-of-a-kind bows.
Filmmaker: Peter GoldPsychic Numbing: When Our Intuition Fails — This film explores psychologist Paul Slovic's lifelong research revealing the flawed nature of human judgment and how these faults have contributed to perhaps the most disturbing trend in human history — a legacy of genocide.
Filmmakers: Desiree Aflleje and Emese Foss
Web site: http://flux.uoregon.edu/2008/the-well/phychic-numbing- Tuesday, August 12, 10-11pm
Reinventing Ed's Coed — Take a fun look at a film about student life made by University of Oregon students 80 years ago with a camera borrowed from Cecil B. DeMille. This project tells the story of the film — how it was made, why it was forgotten and how it was reinvented.
Filmmakers: John Rosman and Eric Rutledge
Web site: http://flux.uoregon.edu/2008/the-well/reinventing-eds-coed/Watch Ed's Coed, the first full-length student production in U.S. history, created 80 years ago
Bass Driven — Known internationally, Gaia Tribe is a party promotion company founded by brothers Andrew and Neko Mataus. House music, a genre of electronic music, powers the gatherings. The events take place once a month in various venues across Eugene. Andrew focuses on the bass-driven music while Neko focuses on the ambience, or what he calls "Spaceshaping." Together, the brothers have transformed the electronic music scene in Eugene, Oregon.
Filmmakers: Sloane Cameron and Catie Ciciretto
Web site: http://flux.uoregon.edu/2008/the-well/bass-drivenHighlights from Cinema Syndicate — Enjoy samples from this group of rogue filmmakers who are sworn to uphold the sword of comedy and good, clever writing despite their lack of budget and professional key grips. Films include:
Love & Sappiness — A woman brings her boyfriend home to meet her family for the holidays. The holiday? Arbor Day. The boyfriend? Not exactly a tree hugger...
Red Letter Day — An amusing look at "Hatuchama," a secret society, blah blah blah. See what it has to do with an infomercial from 1986. Maybe.
Pick Up — Audrey, a somewhat pathetic lovelorn Internet dater, pursues her last-ditch effort at romance via the prison pen-pal system.
Web site: http://www.cinemasyndicate.com/-
Meet the Freegans — Steve is an educated man. A school teacher. A homeowner. He also enjoys eating food from dumpsters.
Filmmaker: Travis Shields
Web site: http://www.shieldsfilms.com -
Feeling Cingular: iPhone | iCan't — A first-person case study on whether someone could create a consumer-activist online video that could influence corporate ethics when companies fail to provide proper redress to legitimate problems.
Filmmakers: Justin Callaway and Luis Aguirre (animation director) - Wednesday, August 13, 10-11pm
Finding Thea — Thea Foss was a 19th-century Norwegian immigrant to the Pacific Northwest who became the inspiration for the fictional heroine Tugboat Annie and creator of one of the Pacific's largest tugboat companies. A classic American immigrant success story!
Filmmakers: Nancy Bourne Haley & Lucy Ostrander
Web site: http://www.findingthea.com/Sharks: Stewards of the Reef — Go on a voyage of underwater discovery to explore tropical reefs and dive with sharks. This documentary describes these top predators' relationship to the oceans and coral reef ecosystems while examining escalating threats that are causing Pacific reef shark populations to plummet, including habitat destruction of reef ecosystems and overfishing.
Filmmakers: Holiday Johnson, Christopher Johnson, David McGuire, Christopher L. Jenkins
Web site: http://www.sharkstewards.com/- Thursday, August 14, 10-11pm
Finding Normal — This gritty sojourn into a world of addiction and recovery is also a story of hope. Learn about an Oregon mentor-run program that has about a 70 percent success rate, often with people who have failed multiple times in recovery. Documentary producer Brian Lindstrom follows a group of Portland drug addicts and their rehab counselors as they try day-by-day to keep themselves clean, sober and together.
Filmmaker: Brian Lindstrom
Web site: http://brianlindstrom.wordpress.com/
