On the second Monday of every month, we let freak flags fly, revel in diversity, and value creativity at every skill and experience level. Call us millennial snowflakes, because it’s time for participation awards! Here, any filmmaker has a chance to show their hard work on the big screen, and audiences get a chance to see films that could otherwise be gatekept from them by the politics, commercialism, and financial barriers often set in place by the current festival circuit.
Appropriately set in Portland, Oregon’s vibrant Hawthorne district, our weird festival has no judges or competitions. Instead, films are pre-viewed by our team only to ensure alignment with our community values and assigned screening dates until we run out of room. Films are grouped by theme, and every month at the Backdoor Theater we have screenings based on these themes. (Sometimes with costumes encouraged!) Local filmmakers attend, walk our red carpet, and interact with their newly minted fans.
