Movie house celebrates world premier

Sisters experienced its first red carpet, world film premiere on Thursday night, March 8. The venue was Sisters Movie House. The event was the monthly interactive film discussion series, "Talkies."

The movie was "Streetcar Named Perspire." And independent animator Joanna Priestley was the celebrity.

The Redmond-based improvisational theater group Triage provided Priestley with a red carpet welcome.

"Thank you for being there when I drove up. That was amazing. It took me like 20 minutes to get in the door I was laughing so hard," Priestley said about her star-studded welcome.

As is becoming a "Talkies" tradition, Thursday evening's program started with song. Local graphic artist Dennis McGregor, the 2003 winner of Sisters Folk Festival's Songwriting Contest, opened with a set of original songs for the near-capacity crowd. Two were especially dedicated to Monica Offield, the young Sisters musician who is suffering from a rare kidney disease.

Next, Priestley, who credits Sisters and the film series "Strictly Cinema" for her career in animation, took center stage.

Priestley founded "Strictly Cinema" with Martha Kelly in 1977. As a special feature of the series, the pair organized an animation festival and invited Portland filmmaker Bob Gardner, who had won an Oscar, to attend. As Priestley watched Gardner at work, she fell in love with animation, purchased some index cards and started experimenting herself.

"That's how I got my start. That's why I'm so excited to be back here," she said.

Animation is a time consuming art form. The vast majority of Priestley's films are seven or less minutes long. Yet, each takes her two to three years to make.

"I work a lot, but I also teach, and I travel, and I show the films. I love doing it. It helps if you're obsessive-compulsive," she said.

For Priestley, grants were easier to acquire in past years than they are today. She and Joan Gratz received a $64,000 grant to produce the 1993 film "Pro and Con." The film evolved after sending 450 questionnaires to prison inmates and touring prisons. "Now the most that I can get is $5,000 from the ... regional arts and cultural council," Priestley said. There are no national endowments to assist animators.

Countless drawings are required for an animated film that runs only a few minutes. The film itself runs 24 frames per second, and Priestley shoots two frames of film per drawing. That adds up to 12 drawings per second. Normally, Priestley uses index cards for her drawings.

To be an animator an artist must not only be able to craft the artwork but must also understand the science of motion. "You really have to study motion and figure out how many drawings it's going to take to do one thing. ... I look at a lot of sports, and I love to watch dance. I really study the movement, so I can create interesting movements," Priestley said.

In "Streetcar Named Perspire" Priestley used digital animation for the first time. She prides herself in challenging her artistic genius in every film she makes, and in the case of "Streetcar" her challenge was to do character animation. Never before had she worked with moving the mouth or the eyes. "I got a book, and I opened it up, and I learned how to ... move the lips to match the sound, and believe me you can do almost anything, and it looks like it matches," Priestley said.

Priestley plans to submit "Streetcar Named Perspire" to film festivals all over the world. The film is about the wild ride of menopause. She hopes it will show in Mongolia, Myanmar (Burma), as well as at the Bend Film Festival. "I understand that they might have animation this year," she said.

Priestley is spending the month of March as an artist in residence at Caldera's Arts Center located 14 miles west of Sisters near Blue Lake. The non-profit arts education organization awards month-long residencies to selected professional artists and writers during the winter. (See "Artists spend month at Caldera," The Nugget, March 7, 2007, page 8.)

Thursday's world premiere of "Streetcar Name Perspire" delighted "Talkies" theatergoers. "It was something unexpected for people. ... I didn't know what to expect when I first heard about this. When I saw her work, I was blown away. I hope other people were, as well," said "Talkies" founder John Simpkins.

For Simpkins the third ever "Talkies" achieved the goals he has laid out for the series. It brought added awareness about a specific and exciting area of filmmaking. It heightened community appreciation for Sisters Movie House, and it raised money for a local Sisters charity. This month's proceeds went to The Sparrow Club for the benefit of Monica Offield.