In conjunction with our book club discussion of Olivia Laing's The Silver Room, we will be screening Pier Paolo Pasolini's notoriously difficult last film. 

Quoth Criterion:

 Salò, or The 120 Days of Sodom has been called nauseating, shocking, depraved, pornographic . . . It’s also a masterpiece. The controversial poet, novelist, and filmmaker’s transposition of the Marquis de Sade’s eighteenth-century opus of torture and degradation to Fascist Italy in 1944 remains one of the most passionately debated films of all time, a thought-provoking inquiry into the political, social, and sexual dynamics that define the world we live in. 

We meet to discuss Part I of Volume II of Proust's In Search of Lost Time.  You are welcome to read any language or translation of the text.

The films of the American surrealist poet, magazine editor, photographer, and collage artist. 

Poem Posters  Probably filmed in 1966, with motif of an exhibition of Ford’s large-scale text-image collages, it is an invaluable historical document that shows Factory stars Edie Sedgwick and Gerard Malanga cavorting with Beat legend William Burroughs, musician Ned Rorem, film critic Parker Tyler, literary enfant terribles Frank O’Hara and Ted Berrigan, pop artists Jim Rosenquist and Andy Warhol, and many fabulous unknowns. The soundtrack mixes free jazz (by John Handy), ambient sound, the voices of gallery visitors, Charles Ford reading his own poetry, and a wry commentary by Al Hansen.

Johnny Minotaur (1971)  A lyrical explosion of taboos: incest, intergenerational desire, pansexuality and autoeroticism through mythopoeic, sensual imagery, recitations of his diaries and a philosophical debate featuring an impressive narration by such artists as Salvador Dali, Allen Ginsberg, Warren Sonbert and Lynne Tillman.

Performances by:

Purpureal Daystar (on tour from Switzerland)
Ceremonial Abyss ("west coast" tape music)
Varied Terrain (Dylan Howe & Emmet Martin) new record out on Moon Villan

Films by Hali Autumn (digitized super 8)

We will discuss Olivia Laing's new novel that revolves around the world of Cinecittà, specifically on the sets of Fellini's Casanova and Pasolini's Salò, during the rise of Italy's Years of Lead.

From the Publisher:

[The novel] is at once a queer love story and a noirish thriller set in the dream factory of cinema.  It is a fictional account of real things, and an investigation into the difficult relationship between artifice and truth, illusion and reality, love and power.

Christopher Adams will read from his new booklet Reality Emoji, with other performances by Lily O’Donnell, Quinn Gancedo, Asher Geldman, and Peri Heath.

A Czech black comedy that tells the story of a life in reverse, from death (birth) to birth (death).

From Orbit: 

The reverse chronology, with events playing out completely backwards, upends the narrative flow to become a playful, surreal, Dadaist experience unlike anything else in contemporary cinema. 

A free zine with readings related to the film will be provided.

It is encouraged to show up early to save a good seat.

Tape Painting Artist Lot’s Used Apostrophe

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March 5- April 28

Opening March 5, 5-8PM

Painting, collage, music, and sculpture.

We will read three books by Alice Notley
HOW SPRING COMES
OPERA (from The Speak Angel Series)
INCIDENTALS IN THE DAY WORLD (included in Early Works)

Come and go. Snacks and drinks. Free and easy.
This is an installment of Spare Room's annual marathon reading series.

An evening of short films and writings, revolving around the printed word, by Rankin Renwick

Rankin Renwick's art making life is highly influenced by the printed word. After reading In The Spirit of Crazy Horse by Peter Mathieson, they took off hitchhiking to Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota to see what it was about with their own eyes. And, having read The Beats since 15 years old, they took off on another hitchhiking trip to San Francisco to check out what that was all about. Both of these trips originated in Chicago and were accompanied by their wolf dog, their friend’s Super 8 camera, and their journals, which later informed the voiceover of the completed films years later. They were a bookseller for ten years at various shops around the USA, their last bookseller stint being at Powell's, where they started the Small Press and Journals Section and had a small press reading series called The dew.claw.  While working there, they were befriended by William Tanner Vollmann. Through a roundabout way, they ended up shooting footage of him in The Tenderloin, resulting in The Ugly Movie, a film that is mostly retired, it is so unbearably ugly. But Rankin will screen it tonight.

And read some poems and essays of their own scribbling.

odoka.org

Filament Reading Series is a monthly reading event showcasing the poets & writers from Portland State University's MFA program in Creative Writing. At Word Virus Books, we will have six readers: Katie Johnson, Grace Lawrence, Rachel Blair, AG Dupont, Beth Pickard, & Luca Fontanetta followed by a brief open-mic with a sign-up sheet.

Detour Film Series presents: The Lovers on the Bridge (Leos Carax, 1991)

Leos Carax’s delirious saga of l’amour fou burns with an intoxicating stylistic freedom as it traces the highs and lows of the passionate relationship that develops between a homeless artist (Juliette Binoche) who is losing her sight and a troubled, alcoholic street performer (Denis Lavant) living on Paris’s famed Pont-Neuf bridge. Capturing their romantic abandon with a giddy expressionist energy—especially in a wild dance sequence set against an explosion of fireworks— this whirlwind love story is an exhilarating journey through a relationship that confirmed Carax’s status as one of the leading lights of the post–New Wave French cinema.

(from Janus Films)

A year long exploration of In Search of Lost Time. At meeting #2, we will discuss parts II & III of Swann’s Way

Screening of “The Flower Thief” (Ron Rice, 1960, featuring Taylor Mead and Bob Kaufman)

Discussion of Fifty Sounds by Polly Barton.

Spare Room presents a night a readings with Miranda Mellis, Sara Jaffe, and Janice Lee.

Detour Film Series presents a screening of Jacques Tourneur’s
I Walked with a Zombie (1943), with pre-show readings of Chris Fujiwara & Sylvie Pierre and a special recorded introduction from “Jacques Tourneur: Cinema of a Nightfall” author Chris Fujiwara.

Seating is limited to 28 spots. Early arrival is encouraged.

Screening of Sátántangó (Béla Tarr, 1994)

The first of 12 monthly meetings in a year-long reading of Proust's In Search of Lost Time. ‍ ‍We will discuss through the “Combray” section of Swann’s Way.

Portland filmmaker and writer Jacquesrates curates a monthly trip into underground media

Author and winner of the 2025 Firebird Award for the collection of poems Mountain Spells [Rootstock Publishing 2024], former Poet Laureate of Belfast, Maine, and 2024 Nominee for Poet Laureate of Vermont, poet, bass clarinetist, and composer Toussaint St. Negritude conjures whole liberations in full tempo. US Poet Laureate Gwendolyn Brooks described his work as "full of sweet sounds and surprises." Writer Xenia Turner, of Burlington's 7 Days weekly, declares him as "A Preacher of Jazz Influenced Gospel." Originally from San Francisco, Toussaint has lived and broadly thrived across the African Diaspora, from the sacred mountains of Haiti to the Coltrane District of North Philadelphia. He, along with bassist Gahlord Dewald, is the leader of the band Jaguar Stereo!, a free-form ensemble of his own poetry and improvisational jazz, and his works have been widely published and recorded for over 40 years. He is also an avid educator, annually teaching poetry for the Governor's Institute of the Arts, among other institutions. On an alpine sanctuary facing east, Toussaint St. Negritude continues to thrive in the farthest elevations of Vermont's Northeast Kingdom.

Portland-based poets and PSU faculty Janice Lee and John Beer join Jake Levine, poet and translator visiting from Korea

The Heiken Gallery is a bi-monthly exhibition of visual art curated by artist Benjamin Heiken.

Please join us for the opening of January/February’s show by Benjamin Terrell.

The first screening in a monthly film series that will include pre-show readings from criticism, theory, and other texts related to the film.  A free zine of the readings will be provided. 

“The Long Day Closes is the most gloriously cinematic expression of the unique sensibility of Terence Davies, widely celebrated as Britain’s greatest living filmmaker. Suffused with both enchantment and melancholy, this autobiographical film takes on the perspective of a quiet, lonely boy growing up in Liverpool in the 1950s. But rather than employ a straightforward narrative, Davies jumps in and out of time, swoops into fantasies and fears, summons memories and dreams. A singular filmic tapestry, The Long Day Closes is an evocative, movie- and music-besotted portrait of the artist as a young man.” (Criterion)