Just Out Says

We just wanted to give a big shout out to Just Out for this awesome write up they gave us!




I Want My MTV

Remember when MTV was good? Karl Lind does. He is the head of film and video programming for Gallery Homeland, an exhibition and project space for visual and performing artists founded in Southeast Portland in 2005. Lind has curated Odds and Ends Volume 3: The Sight and Sound of Music Videos, a screening of short films and animation by artists ranging from local to international. "The idea with this year’s program was to recapture those long-forgotten moments back in the day when you could zone out watching a certain corporate Music Television channel for hours on end," he says.

The resulting collection is diverse in terms of both music and visuals, ranging from a delightfully sugary confection by Kara Blake, to a ludicrous romp in which pink-wigged nurses help pregnant men deliver babies set to a bouncy rap track by Plastic Little, to director Chioke Nassor’s disturbing vignette of a Columbine-style school slaying with a female protagonist interlaced with statistics on child sexual abuse and rape. The program also showcases work by local queer artists Ali Cotterill and Vanessa Renwick.

Cotterill, founder of the exalted drag king troupe DK PDX (which called it quits last year), recently earned a bachelor’s degree from The Art Institute of Portland and founded Astro Films. She directed "Toi et Moi" for Scream Club, a queer electro duo out of Olympia, Wash. The video features some of Portland’s hottest queer glitterati—including members of Sissyboy, DK PDX and Glam Star Burlesque—and has popped up at film festivals across the country as well as on gay television channel Logo. (See it along with other Cotterill productions at www.astrofilms.org.) Of her future projects, Cotterill says, "I’m searching for the subject of my next documentary." Attention, interesting subjects!

You have to write fast when interviewing Renwick: Her quicksilver mind spills words out like Lego blocks from an upended container. As "founder and janitor of the Oregon Department of Kick Ass," she has been busy creating installations and making film and video since 1983. Her short film "Red Stallion’s Revenge" tells the story of a colt that serves vengeance on the bear that killed its mother. The fight between bear and horse lasts a full five minutes, with a crowd of animal onlookers, but no adult humans. Renwick assembled the film from vintage movie clips, cutting out all the speaking parts and splicing the footage together to fit her concept. Lind describes the clip as "an absolute hoot and a total show-stealer." Learn more about Renwick and her impressive body of work at www.odoka.org.

The screening starts 8 p.m. Jan. 12 at 2505 S.E. 11th Ave. The suggested donation is $7. For more information visit www.galleryhomeland.org.

—Tony LeTigre