Got home a few hours ago from this year’s Peripheral Produce Invitational—an event that often seemed to sum up both the best and worst of experimental cinema.

The Invitational’s the main event of the Portland Documentary and eXperimental Film Festival, and its basic deal is this: The fest’s organizers invite some of their favorite local and national filmmakers to submit short works, which are then shown in one night, and the whole shebang concludes with the audience voting on who’s the best.

It’s a great concept, in part because it offers a wide range of film projects, and in part because all the filmmakers are in attendance, and also in part because of the inherent risk involved—since even the fest’s organizers haven’t seen some of the work until it’s actually up there on the screen (sometimes the films are only finished right before the screening begins, or even after the screening begins, or sometimes they’re performance-based), the overall quality of the event is pretty much left to chance. Overall, I dug the stuff that was shown tonight, but shit, there was some really lousy stuff too. Details after the jump, film nerds.

So the great stuff to start with: Chicago's Michael Robinson contributed Carol Anne Is Dead, a film that I'm not sure, well, exactly what it is--but I kind of love it all the same. Apparently shot on VHS and starring a couple of adorable kids, it's sort of a bizarre, euphoric, and creepy Poltergeist remake. It's a weird feeling, being all creeped out while laughing at the same time.

Similarly great was the film from last year's Invitational Champion--92-year-old Albany, Oregon resident George Andrus. Good Times in Nature is a collection of animal and nature footage shot by Andrus, and it's exactly what it sounds like: We see birds eating fruit and baby ducks swimming around and cats batting at flags and other feel-good stuff and etc., and all of it's lovably, earnestly narrated by the charming Andrus. One one hand, it feels like you're four years old again and your grandpa is taking you on a walk in the park, which is genuine and goofy and weird and good-hearted, but on the other hand--and maybe it's the cynical, irony-dependent douchebag in me that's wondering this, but still--I'm not sure if the audience was laughing with Andrus' film or at it. But maybe that's irrelevant--either way, the thing's enjoyable and engaging and utterly unique, and that counts for a whole lot.

But as good and original as those films are, there were a couple that were just... ugh. San Francisco's Bryan Boyce contributed He-Man Bush and the Masters of the Universe, a short that re-edits an old He-Man episode so that it stars Bush as He-Man and Cheney as Skeletor; clumsy and obvious and fantastically unfunny, this felt like something you'd accidentally stumble onto via YouTube, and it's something that'd make you force quit Firefox pretty fucking quick. I think it's safe to assume that the least subversive and entertaining thing in the world right now is pointing out how evil Bush and/or Cheney is/are; not even Battle Cat's inclusion is gonna change that.

In a (somewhat) similar thematic vein, Warsong, from Baltimore's Stephanie Barber, combines extreme close-ups of ominous, war-centric words spelled out in LCD lights before it shifts gears to focus on an American flag fluttering while a choral version of the national anthem plays. It's abstract and concrete at the same time, but like He-Man Bush, Warsong feels stuck in a groove of tired discontent.

(With these two films--and roughly a billion others--there's little doubt that the Bush administration and the Iraq War have inspired a whole lot of angry filmmakers. Which makes sense, and is fine--but honestly, is there anything important left to say about this that hasn't already been said a billion times before? Perversely, we might be at the point where a pro-Bush film is more daring and entertaining than an anti one.)

A couple of other standouts: Portland filmmaker Jennifer Hardacker's Action Film repurposes footage from the original Predator into a sort of stuttering, apocalyptic tone poem, consisting of flashing, looping frames of Arnold and jungle. At first glimpse, it just feels like you're having an epilepsy attack alongside Carl Weathers, but Action Film is brief and weird and dark and interesting, and bonus props to Hardacker for using this sort of jarring, flashing technique in a way that feels measured and intentional. All too often, lesser experimental filmmakers confuse clumsy flashing and shaking and pattern repetition with craftsmanship, with results that make you feel like you've just guzzled rubbing alcohol and are staring at a strobe light. (As was pretty effectively demonstrated this evening by Chicagoan Ben Russell's Black and White Trypps Number Four, actually--a hodgepodge of Richard Pryor audio clips that morphed into an interminable, assaultive mess of black and white visual noise.)

The evening wrapped up, appropriately enough, with a performance by Jeremy Rossen and Jean Paul Jenkins, Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son [or sun] of York. The florid title, actually, tells you most of what you need to know: It was a grandiose spectacle that didn't amount to much, though the ideas and the methodology were certainly impressive and worth experiencing firsthand. Rossen manned no fewer than four projectors that were set up, whirring, in the midst of the nearly sold-out crowd; meanwhile, onstage, a hissing fog machine cranked out ephemeral clouds of smoke. Against music that sounded like whales humping, Rossen projected slowly morphing shapes of red and white, which eventually bled into subtle, sunset-tinged shots of Portland's bridges and waterfront, as well as a friendly looking dog. It was a hell of a production to witness, but thematically, all of the production hassle just didn't seem to add up to much. (Maybe it was because of the late hour, or maybe it was the film, but I counted at least eight people who got up and left during Now is the winter, which is never a good sign.)

There was plenty of other stuff--13 selections in all--but the above films were the most notable contributions. Overall, it was definitely a worthwhile evening--at times, it was a great example of the sort of challenging, fun, daring, and intelligent stuff that the best experimental cinema both thrives on and provides. But it's the nature of experimentation for some stuff to work great and some stuff to fall flat; that risk seems heightened by such a loosely curated event as this one. But overall? I'm glad I went, and I'll be back next year. (I also took off before the winner was declared--if anybody reading this went to the afterparty at Pagoda and found out who won, let me know in the comments?)

The PDX Film Fest continues through Sunday, with a couple of highlights: Cartune Xprez: Senseless, Mock Up on Mu, a closing night party at the Moon & Sixpence, and more. For complete info, hit peripheralproduce.com.