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There are distinct differences among the three Portland artists profiled in Karina Lomelin Ripper’s new short documentary Visions.
Vietnamese textile artist Vo Vo is seen dyeing fabric and discussing their family’s history in sweatshops. Naomi Likayi, a painter and illustrator, speaks about her Congolese parents’ perceptions of her graphic art. And Papi Fimbres, the prolific Chicanx drummer from Portland bands like Sávila and Orquestra Pacifico Tropical, reflects on gaining an appreciation of his parents’ old-school taste in music.
Then, through symmetry and style, Lomelin Ripper brings the artist profiles to a rapturous confluence, as all three are seen working in ethereal art arenas (namely Portland Center Stage and the Center for Native Arts and Cultures), illuminated by spacey, eye-catching tube lighting, as though they’ve ascended to otherworldly creative planes.
“When you’re an artist, you just have to be an artist,” says Lomelin Ripper of her subjects but also herself.
Playing at the Portland Film Festival, Visions is a testament to how artists’ roots shape their work, through both inspiration and conflict. It’s no accident that all three subjects are first-generation Americans, as is Lomelin Ripper, who was raised in Texas by Mexican parents (and has spent the past decade in Portland, building a filmmaking career writing, directing and producing).
After filming two Portland-based Chilean letterpress printers in her 2021 short La Tienda, Lomelin Ripper says she was hooked on exploring how artists’ stories vary and harmonize with her own. That’s partly why Visions starts by discussing how immigrant families have assessed their children’s artistic aspirations—a point of interest for the director, who knew she wanted to make films after first picking up a camera at her Dallas high school.
If Visions portrays creativity as an organic, near-mystical force, Lomelin Ripper’s second film screening at the Portland Film Festival, Superfan, takes on the notion of artist as celebrity. It’s a prickly character study about a tense sleepover gone nuclear, focusing on two friends—Jeannie (Addisen Titus) and Selena (Keylee Milania Hoberock)—who begin to fall out when Jeannie, the slumber party’s host, shares her contest-entry letter to the girls’ favorite pop star only to learn that Selena won’t reciprocate by sharing hers.
Superfan marks the second time Karina has written and directed a film with her husband, Marc Ripper (who’s worked as an editor and colorist on Oregon-connected films like Clementine and Rehab Cabin). The couple previously collaborated on The Child and the Dead (2015), and Superfan finds them returning to that film’s restrained psychological dread.
The film began as many of the couple’s ideas do: with a chat at home. One night after a social gathering where the conversation touched on celebrity crushes, Lomelin Ripper says she confessed a preteen obsession with Jonathan Taylor Thomas (Home Improvement) to Marc—and revealed that her infatuation once caused a fight with a friend.
In Superfan, JTT is replaced by fictional teen idol Jesse Mitchell Scott (played by Kain Dracula Ashford, who is seen on magazine tear-outs plastered across both Jeannie’s and Selena’s bedrooms), but tension is generated by more than competing meet-a-celeb sweepstakes entries. Unlike the seemingly more middle-class Selena, Jeannie lives basically unparented in a sterile mansion (shot in Washougal, Wash.), highlighting an unspoken class and culture clash.
“I don’t blame each girl for the way she feels,” Lomelin Ripper says. “We’re definitely the puppeteers making the perfect storm.”
The particular vulnerability of a sleepover gone sour has struck a chord with some festivalgoers, who’ve approached the filmmakers to share stories of fraught childhood friendships and celebrity crushes that curdled.
“We’ve been at some festivals with Superfan just holding hands in the back of the theater, vibing on the reaction,” Marc Ripper says. “It’s fodder for saying we need to do this again as soon as possible.”
While the couple has kicked around feature-length ideas, Lomelin Ripper remains intrigued by documentaries, expressing an interest in films that blend fact with stylistic flourishes. But regardless of the precise form, she could carry the lessons of Visions into whatever she wants to make next.
“There are all these ideas percolating forever in my brain,” she says, “these visions of things that I want to see on screen.”
SEE IT: Superfan and Visions screen at the Portland Film Festival, Lloyd Center, 1405 Lloyd Center, 503-208-4757, portlandfilm.org. Superfan: noon Sunday, Oct. 16; 7 pm Tuesday, Oct. 18; 7:15 pm Sunday, Oct. 23. Visions: 7 pm Tuesday, Oct. 18; 7:15 pm Sunday, Oct. 23. Streaming also available. $7-$15.
