There's a lot going on tonight. I might need four screens to watch Northwest Film Forum's screening of Lynn Shelton's We Go Way Back, On the Boards' Virtually Spectacular LIVE Gala, Kshama Sawant's anticipated meeting-for-one, and—the point of this short post—also attend Portland's "Movie Madness University," which will host a virtual seminar on the 1970 Hong Kong action film The Chinese Boxer. It's taught by Hollywood Theatre Head Programmer Dan Halstead, who is cool.
Movie Madness recently launched a fancy micro-theater inside their video rental store, and they were planning on launching a brand-new film appreciation program ("Movie Madness University") taught by local film experts in mid-March—but then, COVID. Now their education program has gone ViRTuAL and tonight you can attend Halsted's seminar. Our sister paper the Portland Mercury breaks it down:
Hollywood Theatre's head programmer and literal savior of Kung Fu history, Dan Halsted, leads the first class in Movie Madness University tonight at 7:30pm, looking at the impact Jimmy Wang Yu's 1970 film The Chinese Boxer had on Kung Fu history, both stylistically and financially. Tuition cost ($10) doesn't include access to the film, but Movie Madness University films are available to rent on major VOD services for $5 or less.
And here's a trailer:
And, since we're talking about Movie Madness, here are a few gems I found during my last trip down there: