Film still for 'Field Guide to November Days'
In Portland the queer community and the bike community are inextricably linked. Arts, culture, and film overlap with both. So the latest project from Sampo films, run by Nick Peterson and openly queer partner Mary DeFreese is quintessentially west coast LGBT.
Championed by prominent gay filmmaker Gus Van Sant, the duo’s first several films were shorts that, at 20 to 40 minutes, were difficult to place in either the short or feature space. But soon they brought their cinematically beautiful films, all shot in 16mm to the feature space with 2006’s Yellow. Based on the same characters A Field Guide to November Days is a very different film although co-producer Mary DeFreese says that this time they intended to put splashes of red into every shot. This experimental project features very little dialogue, instead focusing on the intensity of silence and the power of color. It was also filmed almost entirely by bike.
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