News-Letter

Media Credit: Britni Crocker Professor Porterfield, right, and freshman Emma Needell check lighting with their meters as part of a course on film production.

Matthew Porterfield is a true Baltimore filmmaker. He was born in Baltimore, he was raised here, and it is from this city that he draws inspiration. It is the setting for both of his films.

His first film, Hamilton, was released in 2006 to considerable praise from the critics.

"For a 65-minute feature shot on 16mm and released theatrically in three cities to receive coverage in every New York press outlet - that's unheard of. The fact that the press was all good makes it a total coup," he said.

Perhaps the critics were pleased to see something that owed little to Hollywood conventions. When asked about his favorite filmmakers, Porterfield confessed, "I have a great fondness for personal, experimental, avant-garde filmmakers, as well as a deep love for the more traditional, formal, narrative-driven directors."

Some of the more familiar names on his list of favorite directors include Hitchcock, the master of the suspense film; Jean-Luc Godard, father of French New Wave films; Robert Bresson, the so-called patron saint of cinema and David Lynch, a surrealist with great skill at creating discomforting imagery.

His list of favorites also includes some esoteric filmmakers like Kenneth Anger, a filmmaker with an interest in the occult who has ties to both Led Zeppelin and Anton LaVey, and Jonas Mekas, an American avant-garde filmmaker and writer for the Village Voice.

Porterfield says that despite the difficulties involved with creating a career in the film industry outside of New York or L.A., he enjoys practicing his art in Baltimore.

"What you sacrifice in terms of proximity to the industry you make up for with creative originality. Real, regional cinema is capable of the kind of authenticity that Hollywood can't often approach." On the blog for his latest project (a film called Metal Gods), there is a link to a documentary that perfectly illustrates his point.

The documentary is called Streetwise. It is an intimate portrait of the lives of several homeless teenagers in Seattle. Without voiceover narration, dizzying camera tricks, cheap wisecracks or expensive special effects, Streetwise manages to capture the reality of the teens' lives and the emotions they feel, a goal that Porterfield set out to meet when he began working on Hamilton.

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