Festival Events & Highlights

OPENING NIGHT Friday, October 14th

A Year in Mooring
FRI OCT 14 @ 7:00pm | Salem Cinema
& SAT OCT 15 @ 2:00pm | Salem Cinema

Writing Between The Lines
SAT OCT 15 @ 12:00pm | Salem Cinema

Chris Eyre's 1998 arthouse hit, Smoke Signals, garnered him critical acclaim and national attention, quickly becoming the unofficial visual anthem of Native people everywhere. A decade later, the film continues to instill pride among the Native community, with a new generation now laughing and crying at a story that hits home with so many Natives from around the country. After Smoke Signals, his successes led to People Magazine calling Chris Eyre "...the preeminent Native American filmmaker of his time". Geoff Gilmore, Director of the Sundance Film Festival, has simply called him "a great American Filmmaker." Born in Portland and raised in Klamath Falls, Chris' creative talents became apparent at a young age.  His ability to effortlessly, yet beautifully capture life in still images began in high school and after graduating from Mt. Hood in 1989, Chris was eager to continue his media studies and enrolled at the University of Arizona where he later received a bachelor's degree in Media Arts. The art of filmmaking would capture Chris' heart and his art of storytelling has surely captured ours.

It was on a visit to Willamette University that Chris was introduced to Salem screenwriter Peter Vanderwall by Willamette Film Professor Ken Nolley. Their collaboration, creativity and kinship produced our wonderful Opening Night Feature, A Year In Mooring. In addition, on Saturday, October 15th at noon, Peter will present Writing Between The Lines: A Year in Mooring's Journey from Idea to Screen. He will share his experiences in writing a screenplay based on an idea conceived years earlier. He’ll discuss the creative choices in further developing the script with director Chris Eyre and then adapting the script to a new location. He’ll talk about how the story continued to develop through collaboration with the cast and crew during production and postproduction. And he’ll show how several key scenes evolved from words on the page to images on the screen during the writing, filming, and editing phases.

Join us at Salem Cinema for this incredibly unique event!

Music Info:
Tonya Gilmore & Tent City & Noah Hall of Whiskey Priest & Axolotl Daydream

Saturday, October 15th

On The Making of September
SAT OCT 15 @ 2:00PM
Salem Cinema

Local filmmaker and recent USC graduate Bryn Silverman presents her latest project September, a short film about two travelers who turn a hostel bedroom into a home. This conversational workshop will go through the unique production of this film step-by-step, taking you through the writing, shooting, and post-production process. Come learn what it's like to make a movie by living it first and contribute your two cents by comparing and contrasting scenes/editing options. This is a great opportunity to come share in the exploration of low-budget filmmaking with the cast and crew of September. This is a non-ticketed event, but we are asking for a $5 suggested donation to benefit September's Kickstarter campaign. Read more here!

September stars David Ballantyne and Jamie Slovon.

Sunday, October 16th

Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation
SUN OCT 16 @ 12:00pm | The Grand

Youth & Amateur Program
SUN OCT 16 @ 3:00pm | The Grand

Present your Raiders ticket stub when purchasing a ticket for our Youth and Amateur Program and receive $2 off the regular $5 admission! You never know, you might be watching the next blockbuster filmmaking team!

Chris Strompolos, Eric Zala and Jayson Lamb met while attending elementary school in South Mississippi at ages nine and ten. Initially, they were mere acquaintances, but when Chris saw the theatrical debut of Raiders of the Lost Ark in 1981, he was completely captivated by the movie’s adventurous spirit and taken with the character of Indiana Jones. Eric also loved Raiders and in the summer of ‘82, the two recruited Jayson to team up with them to painstakingly recreate the Spielberg-Lucas $26 million blockbuster scene by scene. For the next seven years, they labored, their relationship tested by inevitable changes that come with growing from boys to young men. Their mission complete, it seemed that the journey had come to an end, but fifteen years later, the trio were contacted by filmmaker Eli Roth, setting off a chain of events that led to a reunion, a meeting with Steven Spielberg and ultimately, the purchase of their life rights by Hollywood mega-producer Scott Rudin and an unimaginable major motion picture deal. It’s the stuff childhood dreams are made of!

Following our screening Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation and what is considered by some to be the greatest fan film ever made, Chris Strompolos (producer and star) will be available for an extended Q&A after the film.  The first half of the question and answers session will be dedicated to fielding questions about their Spielberg acclaimed 1980s remake.  All questions welcome. There will be a brief intermission – and then Chris Strompolos will return for an open discussion with interested audience members on the topic of filmmaking, the status of the film business, problem solving, fund raising, music, digital distribution, new markets, acting – or anything else the audience wants to ask about the entertainment business. All ages, experience levels and questions welcome!

Wednesday, October 19th

Salemia
WEDS OCT 19 @ 7:45PM | The Grand

Salemia is a satirical community romp about everyday life in our quirky little city. With an array of truly original characters and storylines only true Salemites can appreciate, creators Mike Perron and Dave Jenkins inspire to bring more than just a few laughs. With a cast entirely made up of local talent, Salemia proves we’re mature enough to make fun of ourselves while keeping our thin skin intact.

If we’re in Portland’s shadow, then Salemia is one hell of a shadow play. We invite all local artists to be shadow puppets with us.

We’ll never be Portlandia, and we’re cool with that.

CLOSING NIGHT Friday, October 21st

Case Sensitive
FRI OCT 21 @ 6:30pm
Salem Cinema

Behind the Scenes
Doc Talk
immediately following, included in the price of admission to Case Sensitive

How would you like to be in a movie?! Salem Film Festival alum Gil Kofman returns with an in-depth behind the scenes look into the making of his film Case Sensitive in China: “Imagine arriving at some elegant event wearing entirely inappropriate attire. That’s what working in China felt like at every turn. At first, our the compromises were decorously made; we ‘sold’ ourselves on the fact that they were mandated by cultural imperatives, differences that delineated east and west, but we were soon disabused of this notion as we discovered that our parvenu producer was nothing more than a wolf in sheep’s clothing, using government mantle to cover up his odious requests.”

There’s an old familiar saying in Hollywood that states: all films are made three times. Once when you write the script, then when you shoot it, and finally when you edit what you shot. From Gil’s experiences in China, he discovered the obverse was true.  A film could be “unmade” three times – during the writing, shooting and editing, each stage proving more excruciating than the one before. Needless to say, the experience was fraught with such obstacles daily and at every stage and turn of the production. And still he kept going, against the odds, hoping to eke a worthwhile film from what began to look like a travesty in the making.

Fortunately, he was accompanied for most of this Sino-Sisyphean journey by a fellow filmmaker and close friend, Tanner King Barklow, who documented the absurd lunacy involved. Following the screening of the director’s cut of Case Sensitive, Tanner and Gil plan to show a bit of the version that was released in China versus theirs, and hold a filmed discussion on what it’s like for an eager American director/writer to work on a government sanctioned, independent commercial film in the People’s Republic of China. Moreover, they will be presenting some footage of the “behind the scenes” documentary they are in the process of editing about the entire experience, and will be shooting new footage during the on-going discussion with the Salem audience that will hopefully end up in the hilarious film they are assembling.