The Portland International Film Festival seeks to engage, educate, entertain, and challenge. It also unites our community, bringing together culturally diverse audiences, a remarkable cross-section of cinematic voices, public and private funders of the arts, corporate sponsors, and global film industry members.

For 17 days the world will come to us in film. Go explore and tell us what you discover.

http://festivals.nwfilm.org/piff33/

http://pdxjazz.com/home.php

Reel Music Festival – NW Film Center
Reel Music is the Film Center’s annual showcase exploring the lively interplay between sound and image and music and culture. Featuring everything from collections of vintage performance clips to new documentary and dramatic films, to cutting edge music videos and animation, Reel Music mixes everything from jazz, blues, and rock to classical, opera, and avant-garde music related works into a unique cinematic celebration.

Lan Su Chinese Garden Celebrating Ten Years with Ten Free Days – Lan Su Chinese Garden
Lan Su Chinese Garden turns ten. To commemorate this exciting milestone and honor our special relationship with our sister city Suzhou, we’re hosting a yearlong celebration–and everyone is invited. Beginning with ten free admission days and continuing throughout the year, we’re filling the calendar with events and surprises not to be missed.

Portland Japanese Garden Hosts O-Shogatsu (New Year’s) Celebration – Japanese Garden
This year the Portland Japanese Garden will celebrate O-Shogatsu (New Year’s) with a special Family Day on Sunday, January 10 from Noon-3pm. The event will be held in the Garden’s Pavilion and will include tea and light refreshments, traditional New Year’s activities for kids, and calligraphy writing.

World Forestry Center presents ChocolateFest 2010 – World Forestry Center Discovery Museum
Join us for the 5th annual ChocolateFest and make all your chocolate dreams come true. We’ll have over 45 vendors along with demonstrations and presentations so you can taste, smell, feel and see some of the finest chocolate in the Pacific Northwest.

BroadArts Theatre presents A/Broad For All Seasons – BroadArts Theatre
BroadArts Theatre invites you to solve the mystery at A/BROAD FOR ALL SEASONS, our newest original theatre-comedy with music. If you saw WONDERBROADS, our musical that won the Oregon Book Award for Best Drama, then you are familiar with the energy and fun of our shows. In this sequel, A/BROAD overflows with BroadArts Theatre’s trademark funny, edgy, dangerous, factual, inspiring, sexy, interactive performance. BroadArts is proud to collaborate with our fellow members of the Portland theater Community as a participant in Fertile Ground: A city-wide festival of new work presented by the Portland Area Theater Alliance January 2010.

Rose Quarter presents Tyler Perry’s “Laugh To Keep From Crying” – Rose Quarter
Amazingly, Tyler Perry has built a solid portfolio of stage productions over the past 12 years. Tyler Perry’s “Laugh to Keep from Crying” will surely bring much needed laughter with all the challenges we face today. This 11th production touches the depths of our souls and has a lot of great poignant moments. It explores confusion versus an illustration of courage. A cast of veterans from former Tyler Perry productions will provide you with a clear perception to manage your own situations but on a lighter scale.

Fred Meyer Broadway Across America: Xanadu – Fred Meyer Broadway Across America Portland
PUT A BUNCH of smash hit songs, Tony® Award-nominee Douglas Carter Beane and the cutest couple in town into a Broadway musical comedy blender, and what do you get? “Heaven on Wheels” says The New York Times. Taking audiences back to 1980 California, this hilarious new musical follows the beautiful Kira, who travels to earth to inspire a struggling young artist named Sonny, as she helps this aspiring painter to find his voice, discover true love and build the world’s first roller disco (not necessarily in that order).

Portland Center Stage: Snow Falling on Cedars – Portland Center Stage
This haunting story takes place in 1954, north of Puget Sound, on an island so isolated that no one who lives there can afford to make enemies. But when Kabuo Miyamoto is charged with murder, the community’s secrets emerge one by one. Gripping and densely atmospheric, Snow Falling on Cedars is a masterpiece of suspense.

Miracle Theatre Group: American Sueño – Miracle Theatre Group
Hitchhiking down the interstate, heart on my sleeve.
Two years in a six by nine, waiting for a call from the outside.
Escaping from my past, living under a bridge.
Hiding behind my desk job, waiting for the call to run.
We are the outsiders — the homeless, the outcast, the gay, the immigrant — but we still dream “The American Dream” … everybody’s hope for a better job, a better life, a better tomorrow. Weaving together our real-life stories, American Sueño is our hopeful journey toward a new era of acceptance.

CoHo Productions presents Hamlet – CoHo Productions
With this brisk, exciting new cut, the play focuses on the familial themes of Hamlet. The trimming shortens the overall play and gives a sharp focus to the plot lines that directly tell the story. With a company of five actors and minimal tech, this is Hamlet in its essence. Without excessive technical distractions or out-of-context ideals (post-Apocalypse, No, thank you!), this version of Hamlet will remind you why you fell in love with this play in the first place

Literary Arts presents THE MOTH in Portland Made to be Broken: Stories of Disobedience – Literary Arts, Inc.
The Moth is a huge hit with broadcasting on more than 200 stations in the U.S. and more than one million downloads per month on iTunes. Having spurred a revival in oral storytelling, The Moth is dedicated to promoting the art of storytelling through true stories told live on stage without scripts, notes, props or accompaniment. Each Moth event mixes humorous and heartbreaking tales told with honesty, bravery and wit.

Oregon College of Art and Craft presents OCAC Faculty Biennial – Oregon College of Art & Craft
This biennial exhibition offers an opportunity to see new work created by the OCAC degree program faculty, whose members are working studio artists exhibiting both regionally and nationally

Oregon Jewish Museum presents The Shape of Time: accumulations of place and memory – Oregon Jewish Museum
The premiere exhibition in the new location is The Shape of Time: accumulations of place and memory, featuring the work of photographers Bobby Abrahamson, Jeff Amram, William Galen, Carol Isaak and Stu Levy, David Lanthan Reamer, and Sika Stanton. Guest-curated by writer-artist-cultural advocate Tim DuRoche, the exhibition explores urban landscape, public memory and progress through the lens of the Oregon Jewish experience.

Portland Art Museum presents China Design Now – Portland Art Museum
China Design Now explores the recent explosion of critically compelling design and architecture projects created in China, contextualizing the impact of rapid economic development on these projects in the country’s major cities. This immersive, multi-sensory exhibition captures a dynamic phase in China, as it opens up to global influences and responds to the hopes and dreams of its new urban middle class.

Charles A. Hartman Fine Art is pleased to present Nudes by Jason Langer – Charles A Hartman Fine Art
Charles A. Hartman Fine Art is pleased to present Nudes, the latest body of work by Portland-based photographer Jason Langer. Taking the most frequently represented subject in artistic works, Langer’s lens presents the female body in contexts that pivot from a photo essay of erotica, to a collection of snapshots found in a voyeur’s diary, to a candid moment summoned from a lover’s memory. In each instance, Langer casually confronts the viewer with private, poetic moments of physical intimacy.

Fourteen30 Contemporary presents Forth Estate – Fourteen30 Contemporary
Fourteen30 Contemporary is pleased to present an exhibition of recent print editions of New York based Forth Estate. Forth Estate was founded in 2005 by Luther Davis and Glen Baldridge, in the interest of producing editioned works by emerging artists using both traditional and technologically
innovative approaches to printmaking. Forth Estate prints are in the collections of the New York Public Library, Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Newark Public Library, and the Jundt Art Museum.

PDX Contemporary Art - is hosting a variety of exciting exhibits.

White Bird Uncaged presents Tere Mathern Dance / Minh Tran & Company – White Bird Dance
Tere Mathern: “Lucid, limpid and smart.” -Dance Magazine
Minh Tran: “A tour-de-force that left the audience gasping.” -Dance Magazine
Tere Mathern and Minh Tran are two of the Pacific Northwest’s finest choreographers.
A highlight of the program is a new collaborative duet by the choreographers who have long danced for and with each other.

Polaris Dance Theatre presents iCHANGE – Polaris Dance Theatre
In iCHANGE, the dynamic dancers of Portland’s Polaris Dance Theatre (with New York guests KDNY), tackle the complexity of human relationships. The “fourth wall” will be broken as Polaris connects directly with the audience in a revolutionary performance.

Charles A. Hartman presents O. Winston Link: The Last Steam Railroad in America – Charles A Hartman Fine Art
Charles A. Hartman Fine Art is excited to present The Last Steam Railroad in America, a dramatic selection of images by the late O. Winston Link. This ambitious series of photographs chronicles the final years of the Norfolk & Western Railway in the late 1950s.

White Bird Uncaged presents Bruno Beltrão/Grupo de Rua – White Bird Dance
Artistic Director Bruno Beltrão is a talented young choreographer, based in Rio de Janeiro, who has become an international sensation for using hip hop to construct something totally new and fresh. He has revolutionized the popular dance form to create an until now unkown space between hip-hop and contemporary dance – using a wide variety of music, be it classical, free jazz, or complete silence.

Powell’s Books - Readings, Lectures, and more!

http://www.powells.com/calendar.html

Not effective with Chinook Book discount.

If you’re traveling to Portland and staying at the Guesthouse, use these two sites to get good information on what to see and do in our vibrant, urban part of the city.

http://www.nobhillbiz.com/  (This is our historic neighborhood – also known as the “Alphabet District” because the streets are ordered alphabetically. This is a guide to the many shops, bars, restaurants, and cafés in our immediate area.)

http://www.explorethepearl.com/  (this is our close neighbor, the Pearl District. There is plenty to see, do – and EAT and DRINK! – in this urban enclave of Portland.)

A Great Choice for French Food in Portland!

We look forward to seeing you in Portland. Enjoy!

Portland International Guesthouse

The Portland International Guesthouse (PDX Guesthouse) is pleased to announce our Winter 2010 lodging specials. If you are traveling to Portland and looking for clean, cozy and affordable accommodations in the BEST part of the city, then you should stay with us. Starting 1 January 2010, stay with us for two nights, and get a third night on us! Just go to:  www.pdxguesthouse.com to make your reservation and include the following code to take advantage of this special discount – “wp2185“.

We look forward to seeing you soon at the Portland International Guesthouse!

Portland Internation Guesthouse

Welcome to PDX Guesthouse’s new blog on WordPress. We will be using the blog to post news about the Guesthouse, including special promotions, events in Portland, and updates on the goings-on in NW Portland and elsewhere in the city. We look forward to seeing you at the Guesthouse!