Get Your Eyeballs Ready for BendFilm
Written by Mike Bookey
Wednesday, 08 October 2008
Portland’s Pander Bros. Give a World Premier at BendFilm
Portland’s creative team of Arnold and Jacob (pronounced Ya-cub) Pander, better known as the Pander Bros., are ready to show off their first-ever feature-length film and they’ve decided to do it here at BendFilm. If anything, the fact that the Panders are showing the world premier of Selfless here in Bend is a sign of regional filmmakers acknowledging the potential of our independent film festival.
“We’d heard such great things about BendFilm and there’s something to be said about these more boutique festivals. They’re driven more by interesting films than commercial interests,” says Jacob, who wrote and directed Selfless, a film shot almost entirely in his hometown of Portland.
Selfless plays like a big-budget psychological thriller, when in fact it’s a low-budget independent film – but it’s still very much a psychological thriller. The film focuses on identity theft and through a deftly woven narrative the Pander Bros. investigate the idea of identity as a whole as they toss their lead character, Dylan Gray (played by Portland actor Joshua Rengert) through all sorts of hell. In a word, the film is unsettling – twisting reality in a relatively realistic premise and for a first-time effort, it’s a promising showing by the Panders, who are already established graphic novelists and visual artists.
But perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the film for a BendFilm attendee is the fact that it was shot in Portland and Pander allows the city to play a role in the story. Gray is a green architect (how Portland is that?) and a good deal of the film’s imagery focuses on the new buildings in the Pearl District and viewers will likely identify a few landmarks.
“We thought it would be an interesting thing if we made something that didn’t show any of the old Portland. We made a choice to never show any bricks in any shot,” Jacob says. He refers to the city they create as “neo-Portland.”
The Panders, as well as lead actors Rengert and October Moore, are coming over for the screening and will also be present at a special release party at the Summit Saloon and Stage. This sort of world premier party for a regional film seems to play right into the BendFilm mission – bringing in more innovative films accompanied by their equally innovative creators. Oh, don’t forget the parties – those are good too.