The Portland Art Museum NW Film Center is an amazingly diverse and active organization with an impressive website (link) that displays everything they have to offer. They have screenings, festivals and exhibitions. They even have services for artists as well as equipment rentals and offer a special summer program for young filmmakers - we’re talking very young, as in grade school.
Established in 1971, the Northwest Film Center is a regional media arts resource and service organization founded to encourage the study, appreciation, and utilization of the moving image arts, foster their artistic and professional excellence, and to help create a climate in which they may flourish (yup, I got this info from their site). The Film Center is the kind of place every cinephile wish they had access to when they young, or even in their own neighborhood.
The good news is you don’t have to live in Portland to take advantage of the facility. The Center provides a variety of film and video exhibition, education, and information programs primarily directed to the residents of Oregon, and four other nearby states including Washington, Idaho, Montana, and Alaska. That’s a whole lot of territory if you know anything about US geography. Depending on their success and resources they may even expand further, but then of course, they’d have to change their name.
The Film Center's School of Film curriculum in filmmaking, video production, animation, and screenwriting serves to develop an individual’s vision as a film artist, offering classes and workshops, which emphasize media aesthetics in a hands-on context - which is the best way to learn. And the Film Center's statewide Young Filmmakers Program places professional media makers in school and community group settings throughout Oregon for even more hands-on learning experiences in film/video and animation production.
So take a few minutes now to see for you what the NW Film Center has going on (link). And share the news. You may be surprised how many people you know in the NW who could use this information to make the most of their filmmaking activities. You may even want to visit and be a part of it. I know I’m going to go out my way to check it out the next time I visit my mom on the Oregon coast. I may even take her with me. After all, it’s never to late to nurture your inner artist.