Film buffs rejoice: Criterion Mobile Closet comes to Portland

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It’s 9:30 on a Friday morning in May, and in ordinary Portland fashion it is raining. But what’s out of the ordinary is that there are 300 people standing in a line that snakes around the South Park Blocks in downtown Portland.

“I actually got here at about 8:20 a.m. and a line had already formed, but then they reshuffled the line and somehow I wound up in first spot,” said Brian Joines, one of the hundreds of cinephiles waiting for the opportunity to sift through a coveted archive of arthouse DVDs and Blu-ray Discs.

As part of a weeklong celebration of cinema, the Portland Art Museum’s Center for an Untold Tomorrow is bringing together Portland’s film buffs to explore the famed Criterion Mobile Closet.

“I do have a list,” Joines explained. “But I didn’t actually realize it was limited to three, so now I’m doing a lot of Sophie’s Choice. But I think I have it narrowed down, so I’m excited.”

If you’re not a film buff, the Criterion Collection is dedicated to preserving, restoring and re-releasing some of the most influential classic and contemporary films of our time. The archive is filled with more than 1,700 films from 50 countries. And the Criterion Mobile Closet is a traveling replica of the archive storage space at their New York City headquarters.

“I am a huge fan of the Criterion Collection,” said Portland author and screenwriter Jon Raymond. “For someone who’s involved in art movies, this is the archive that you just wanna go back to again and again.”

For more than a decade, actors, writers and filmmakers have been invited into the Criterion Closet to search through the archives and select titles to take home as part of the “Criterion Closet Picks” series.

“I think anyone into art movies wants to do this,” Raymond said. “I’ve actually asked them if I could do it before, but you kind of need to clear a certain level of fame and notoriety to do it, so this is like sneaking in the back door.”

Raymond is being modest: He co-wrote the movie “Old Joy” with director Kelly Reichardt. It’s an adaptation of his short story of the same name, and it’s among the hundreds of celebrated films in the collection.

Inside the 18-foot Freightliner van, movies are lining the walls floor to ceiling and you have just three minutes to make your selections — and that time limit goes by quickly.

“Yeah, I stupidly didn’t look at the list beforehand, so I don’t even know exactly what’s on there,” he said. “But I would have loved to have done a [Robert] Altman movie. It would’ve been great to do “Nashville”, which I think everyone should see. John Schlesinger I would have loved to have done, Nicolas Roeg, I could have done a [John] Cassavetes.”

Raymond explained with so many films to choose from, making a selection is almost as paralyzing beforehand as it was while inside the closet.

“There was really no avoiding this problem,” he laughed.

Unlike Raymond, local fiber and textile artist Lana Crooks came prepared with her movie selections.

“David Lynch’s “Inland Empire” is on my list. [Bong Joon Ho’s] “Memories of Murder” and an [Andrei] Tarkovsky of some sort, but we’ll see what’s available,” she said.

Others were using their time waiting in line to their advantage, like Jamon Jorgensen who came from another state with girlfriend Mary Jo Barker.

“I’ve seen this event online in other cities, and when it was announced to come to the Pacific Northwest, I knew I had to come,” Jorgensen said. “We’re from Central Washington, so we traveled about three hours here.”

The pair were some of the many of the 20-somethings standing in line, like Erin Anderson who heard about the Criterion Collection coming to town on TikTok.

“I told my friend I would definitely get her [[Akira Kurosawa’s]] “Seven Samurai” because she loves that movie, and unfortunately she lives in Spokane, Washington, so can’t be here,” she said.

One of the reasons Anderson said she was excited to come was because she was looking forward to having a piece of physical media, something her generation is seeing less and less.

“With all the streaming services, it’s like everything has been made so easy for us, we have everything at our fingertips. But maybe what we really need is just to do it the hard way,” Anderson said. “Looking through a shelf of books or movies and picking out what we want. It’s more fun to discover something like that.”

The Criterion Mobile Closet is parked outside the Portland Art Museum throughout the weekend, opening at 11 a.m. Saturday, May 30 and 10 a.m. Sunday, May 31.