Impressions of Portland

SD video with 16mm film // 3 minutes & 19 seconds // 2014

"This dense film operates on many levels. It is at once an essay about forgetting the past, a conceptual tour-de-force, a performance, a survey of Portland's streets, and a vivid use of celluloid and digital imagery. But most of all it is an anguished critique of social amnesia and how blinkered perspectives can cover an ongoing injustice." - Film historian Steve Anker

Impressions of Portland

Impressions of Portland is a short video about my experience learning about police violence and working activists on police accountability, reform, and abolition initiatives. I moved to Portland from Buffalo, NY, where I had been involved in the FBI investigation of the art collective Critical Art Ensemble, which changed my understanding of the so-called justice system and propelled me to find people who wanted to change our carceral culture, which ultimately means being anti-racist and working towards a just and equitable society free of hierarchy and oppression of all kinds. After years of working with activists and organizers, I began work on the film Arresting Power: Resisting Police Violence in Portland, Oregon with Jodi Darby and Erin Yanke, and while working on that larger project, I created Impressions of Portland.

One distinctive aspect of the Arresting Power film is that we incorporated 16mm film that I had rubbed and scratched on the sidewalks at sites of deadly police violence in Portland to get the “impressions” of the physical street. I also documented myself with a small camera as part of my Minute Movies daily practice, kneeling on the ground, making these “scratch films” at these sites. To created Impressions of Portland, I combined the digitized scratch film with the video of myself kneeling, with text that provides some of my internal thoughts about my changing consciousness. It felt vulnerable at the time, in the early 2010s, to admit that I had been less aware of how police violence disproportionately impacts communities of color, people with mental and physical disabilities, and other marginalized folks. Ultimately I am glad that I created and released this piece into the world. It shows me who I was in my early 30s and it may coax other people who aren’t impacted by police violence to push themselves to learn more.

Impressions of Portland still image

awards
2015: “Best Sleight of Hand in Making the Invisible Visible“ Judge's Award from Steve Anker, Northwest Filmmaker's Festival

selected screenings
2015: Northwest Filmmaker's Festival at the Northwest Film Center at the Portland Art Museum

Julie Perini is a filmmaker and artist in Portland, Oregon.