We talk with Stephanie Hough about how Portland Panorama is reimagining the film and arts festival experience – championing creativity, diversity, and innovation in a bold, immersive way.
Watch this snippet of our conversation, read the full interview below, and learn more about the Portland Panorama Film Festival and how you can get your tickets!
See the Portland Panorama Film Guide
Full Interview
Dawn
Okay. Tell us about Portland Panorama.
Stephanie
Portland Panorama is an 11-day international film festival. It’s brand new here in Portland. We will be starting the first part of the festival, seven days on the west side of Portland at Cinema 21, showcasing international films. We have Academy Award-winning shorts, Oscar-nominated films, and films from all across the globe. The second part of the festival, we go to the east side of Portland to the Hollywood Theater, where we’ll be showcasing films from the Northwest and Northwest North America. We’ll have premieres, opportunities for Northwest filmmakers to showcase their work alongside international cinema-makers.
Dawn
How is Portland Panorama unique in the Oregon festival landscape?
Stephanie
I would say Portland has a rich tapestry of a lot of different festivals across the year, but we are aiming to be the largest footprint in Portland. So we run for 11 days this year. We’re at multiple venues all across the city, spanning from the west side to the east side to northeast Portland. We take a collaborative approach to our programming. We’re working with multiple community partners to bring in guest speakers and panelists, moderators. We’re also featuring live music performances we’re really excited about. We have some VR and immersive components, installation art, and we’re just trying to be an all encompassing collaborative effort.
Dawn
What was the vision for this festival when you first had the idea?
Stephanie
Yeah. My vision for Portland Panorama when I first had the idea was to have a place for both the local filmmaking community to come and gather, see each other’s films and network, find creative partners, but also for a way for us in Portland to bring international titles that wouldn’t otherwise screen here in town and be able to share those with Portlanders.
My vision for Portland Panorama when I first had the idea was to have a place for the local filmmaking community to come and gather, see each other’s films, network, find creative partners… and to bring international titles that wouldn’t otherwise screen here in town and be able to share those with Portlanders.
Dawn
Can you talk a little bit about the support the festival has received?
Stephanie
From the very beginning, Portland Panorama has had a ton of support from all across the city. So early on, we had large support from Prosper Portland, Portland Events and Film Office, Oregon Film, Metro has come on as a premier sponsor as well. We also have support from Film Science, and OPB, Alpha Media, the list goes on, but it really ranges from government organizations to other non-profits, local Oregon businesses and media companies.
Dawn
What do you want to brag about, about the festival?
Stephanie
I’m really proud of our team that we’ve assembled for this project. I think that our team are all working artists and bring a ton of experience that are really adding to this event to make us like a world class event. Our director of programming is Melina Coumas. She is a brilliant experimental filmmaker in her own right. And she also does programming for the Hawaii International Film Festival. And so she’s bringing a lot of her experiences from that festival. That almost runs, you know, multiple weeks and they have, you know, other showcases throughout the year. So she’s got a ton of experience and we love her beyond.
Dawn
You’re also the head of Women in Film.
Stephanie
Yeah. Because I can’t get enough of being busy all the time, I’m also the president of Women in Film Portland. We’re the Portland chapter of the National Organization of Women in Film. And I’m really excited to be featuring so many female filmmakers in this program. Two of the Northwest feature…One of the films we’ll be using as our opening night for the Northwest Showcase is “Firebreak” by Kenzie Bruce. She worked on this documentary during our Educate Incubate Program with Women in Film. So we’re really excited to see her premiering that film locally. And we also just have a ton of our members work in the Northwest Shorts showcases as well.
Dawn
What do you think about the future of film? Is film dying?
Stephanie
No. Film is not dying. It’s alive more than ever. It’s been a tough few years for the Hollywood industry, so a lot of people think that film is dead, and that with the distributors and streaming, there’s just a lot of controversy. But I think now more than ever film is alive and thriving. I think people are really finding ways to express themselves in creative ways that we never would’ve imagined. And because of access to this technology, there’s a lot of emerging voices that wouldn’t have otherwise been able to share their stories. And I’m really excited to be showcasing some of those at Portland Panorama.
No. Film is not dying. It’s alive more than ever… I think people are really finding ways to express themselves in creative ways that we never would’ve imagined. And because of access to this technology, there’s a lot of emerging voices that wouldn’t have otherwise been able to share their stories. And I’m really excited to be showcasing some of those at Portland Panorama.
Dawn
And then any other events coming up that you want to share?
Stephanie
I could talk about every single event that we have.
Dawn
Give us some highlights of some of the events.
Stephanie
We have so many great events where we have visiting artists traveling to Portland. So the first one we have is a collaboration with Oregon Media Lab and Doc Camp. We’ll be screening a documentary called “Pretty Ugly: The Story of the Luna Chicks,” about this awesome punk rock band. And the director, Ilya Chakin will be here in attendance, so really excited to bring her here with that film.
We’re partnering with Q Doc to present “Sally,” a brand-new documentary that premiered at Sundance about Sally Ride, the astronaut. We have an amazing showcase for the first time ever showing the trilogy of humanitarian documentaries by local filmmaker, Sky Fitzgerald. Each of these films was shortlisted or nominated for the Academy Award. One of them won for the Academy Award, so it’s the first time all three of these films are showcasing together as a trilogy.
Dawn
Tell us about Ponyboi.
Stephanie
Ponyboi is our opening night film. We’re really excited to have it. It premiered at a lot of the larger festivals. Written by and stars River Gallo, an amazing, remarkable performance. And we’re just really excited. It hadn’t screened yet here in Portland. We thought that was a real loss for the community, so we thought we would bring it and use it as our opening night film.
Dawn
What are the dates of the festival?
Stephanie
Portland Panorama kicks off April 10th and runs through the 20th.
Dawn
Awesome. Anything else that you want to say?
Stephanie
Please come. Buy a ticket.
[Laughter]