Join us at the Hollywood Theatre for our annual celebration of American documentarian LES BLANK. This year we’ll be screening two rarely seen features and one previously unseen short film that revel in the music, history, and culture of Hawaii, Serbia, and Thailand. Curated and hosted by Greg Hamilton.
THAILAND MOMENTS (1967 - 11 minutes) - Portland Premiere of this recently discovered collection of footage taken by Les Blank during a visit to Thailand.
PUAMANA (1991 - 37 minutes) - This gentle portrait of Auntie Irmgard Farden Aluli, one of Hawaii’s best loved composers, focuses on Hawaiian women’s contributions to family structure, art, music and dance. An intimate glimpse into the real culture of the islands.
ZIVELI: MEDICINE FOR THE HEART (1987 - 51 minutes) - This little known Les Blank gem is a portrait of the Serbian-American communities of California and Chicago. At the time of the California Gold Rush, the first Serbian immigrants arrived from the rugged Balkan Peninsula to settle in the New World. Against great obstacles, Serbian religion and identity had survived five centuries of Moslem domination under the Turks, and a deep sense of loyalty to ancestral tradition lives on in America today among the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the earliest settlers. Zivelli is a film which brings to the screen all of the vitality of Serbian traditions in a mosaic of folk music, and arts, conviviality, Serbian Orthodox pageantry, and immigrant lore.