Skip to main contentFor the first time in nearly two years, movies will be playing at the Portland Art Museum’s Whitsell Auditorium.
The downtown institution announced this week that it is scheduled to begin screening weekend matinees on Feb. 26. The programming lineup will feature works by this year’s Cinema Unbound Awards honorees. That includes everything from high-profile Will Smith-starring film King Richard, which was also just nominated for several Oscars, to The Nowhere Inn—a mockumentary featuring musician and Portlandia co-creator Carrie Brownstein.
“We are thrilled to throw the doors wide open and welcome film and art lovers, as well as all folks excited by cinematic stories in all their wild and wonderful forms,” Amy Dotson, the NW Film Center’s director, stated in a press release. “Like the incredible folks we are honoring, we look forward to leaping into an untold tomorrow unleashed from past expectation of what can or has or should be.”
The Portland Art Museum and the adjacent NW Film Center, like most public venues, had a rocky couple of years due to the pandemic. In 2020, the museum closed twice: first, during the initial spring lockdown, and then again in November after COVID cases began to soar and Gov. Kate Brown ordered a freeze on indoor recreational facilities.
The museum did eventually reopen in April 2021, but that did not include Whitsell Auditorium because of continued concerns about the virus’s spread. Screenings instead went online and even moved outdoors—the Cinema Unbound Drive-In at Zidell Yards proved to be a popular pandemic attraction.
As the Film Center and museum continue to recover from the effects of the pandemic, the 2022 Portland International Film Festival is being postponed. The event, which usually takes place in March, will be reenvisioned for 2023 in order to broaden its cinematic reach.
In the meantime, matinees will continue in March with the upcoming Tilda-Whirl, a celebration of the ever-evolving performances of Tilda Swinton. And the Cinema Unbound Awards will take place, in person, at the Portland Art Museum on March 8.