gaycondo

…my favorite from The Portland Documentary and eXperimental Film Festival.

This week was the seventh annual PDX Film Fest (do you see? do you see? do you see how they cheated when making that acronym???) and I was lucky enough to get the chance to catch around 24 or so of the short films. They covered quite a range. There were animations, documentaries, narratives, music videos, and more flashing seizure inducing visual peices (read: boring/irritating) than you can shake a stick at. I really fell in love with several of the shorts, but my favorite by far was Andy Blubaugh’s, “The Pull”.

The film documents Blubaugh’s (real life) experimental relationship in which he and his partner at the time decided to put an experation date on there time together. Basically, on the outset of the relationship the two set a date four months in the future at which point they would break up. “The Pull” touchingly tells this story through reenactments of the events (sidenote: the “actors” are in fact Blubaugh and his ex. In the Q&A after the screening, Blubaugh admitted that it was very akward at times filming some of the more intimate scenes) intertwined with footage of the pair riding bicycles through rural Oregon. Blubaugh uses this metaphor shockingly well. He states that when riding bicycles in a pair, two people are acting as seperate individuals who just happen to be doing the same thing in the same place at the same time. At any point, one individual could simply diverge from the path and continue on, essentually remaining unchanged as an individual.

Blubaugh’s film challenges the viewer’s first inclination in judging the relationship. As outsiders, it is easy to assume that this experation date would trivialize the relationship; somehow making it less comitted. However the film maker counters this by explaining that the actual result was the creation of a deep sense of urgency. That every moment in that four months felt extremely important.

The film is only eight minutes long, however it is so well presented that it stays with the viewer a long time afterwords. The implications of the piece teach us to reevaluate the way in which we experience our own relationships with those around us in a way that is truelly profound.

I wish that the full film was available online, but unfortunately all I could dig up was this trailer: