Presented By: Portland Art Museum
In its third year, PAM CUT’s PLUS PLUS Festival of Tomorrow returns to celebrate unbound artists who dissolve boundaries, defy easy categorization, and expand the notion of what’s possible in cinema and beyond. This world-class gathering in Portland amplifies PAM CUT’s vision, where storytelling, tech, media artists, and creative communities collide to explore new ideas and build new audiences, charting fresh ways to move our world and ourselves forward. PLUS PLUS features wildly imaginative programming for cultural snackers, including unbound cinema, comedy, performances, sound-driven and interactive storytelling, live animation, and other media arts.
2026 Festival highlights include: Station to Station by world-renowned multi-media artist Doug Aitken; a special live music/video game performance by Portland’s EMA; an evening of ‘90s “analogue ecstasy” hosted by music video legends and filmmakers Mark Pellington and Lance Bangs; a one-night-only evening of stand-up with Joel Kim Booster (Loot, Fire Island); an afternoon with MacArthur Fellows and multi-hyphenate storytellers Sterlin Harjo (Reservation Dogs, The Lowdown) and Reginald Dwayne Betts in a spirited discussion on the nature of “truthiness”; and a screening of the new film Wicker hosted by romance bookstore, Grand Gesture Books.
New in 2026! The PLUS PLUS Bizarre Bazaar, where a curated group of local and national media artists, publishers, exhibitors, community organizations, indie distributors, and creative collectives will gather to bring the idea of Plus Plus to life. Visitors will be able to browse and buy artist editions, books, comics, zines, physical media, prints, apparel, games, and connect local and national artists, filmmakers, publishers, and organizations from across the independent, multi-media creative community. The market will be bustling with storytelling in its many forms, including live makeup demos and interactive gaming experiences, among other to-be-announced activations.
MAKE YOUR PLANS!
OPENING NIGHT: THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 19
Joel Kim Booster Stand Up // CARTE BLANCHE
Thursday, November 19 at 7 p.m. | Tickets $45 | at the Tomorrow Theater
Artists in attendance: Joel Kim Booster
Join us for a one-night-only evening with the one-and-only Joel Kim Booster! The comedian brings his sharp, hilarious, and self-aware observations to the Tomorrow Theater for a special evening of comedy and conversation.
Booster is a multi-hyphenate who has been seen starring opposite Maya Rudolph in the Apple TV+ comedy series Loot, writer and actor in Fire Island, and recently lent his voice to Sony Pictures Animation’s K-Pop Demon Hunters, one of the biggest animated hits of the year. His first hour-long comedy special, which debuted on Netflix in 2022, Joel Kim Booster: Psychosexual explores his experiences and observations as a gay Asian American male with commentary on identity, sexuality, cultural expectations, and more. The special was nominated for a Critics Choice Award and named one of the best comedy specials of 2022 by Variety.
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 20
90’s ANALOG ECSTASY NIGHT
THIS IS BUZZ || with MARK PELLINGTON
Friday, November 20 at 7 p.m. | Tickets $15 | at the Tomorrow Theater
Artists in attendance: Mark Pellington; Lance Bangs with Special Guest Stars & Vendors
Join us for a wild evening of Analog Ecstasy, taking a time machine back to 1990 to channel the ‘90s energy with an evening of music videos, pop culture, art, design, nostalgia candies, and live performances before a special screening of THIS IS BUZZ, helmed by iconic filmmaker and music video director Mark Pellington.
In 1990, MTV aired BUZZ, a television experiment in non-linearity & cut-up collage that drew heavily from—and presented—culture, music, cinema, cyberpunk, the avant-garde, and postmodern literary figures. Notable contributors and subjects included William S. Burroughs, Jenny Holzer, Jaron Lanier, Timothy Leary, William Gibson, and many others. BUZZ exploded minds, confused execs, and paved the way for the chaos we now consume on our screens.
THIS IS BUZZ is the kaleidoscopic story of this show’s radical redefinition of what news and media could be. A window into a pre-internet global age of tech euphoria that saw the world’s dystopian problems as a non-narrative vision, THIS IS BUZZ is led by hypnotic audio and a music-driven phantasmagoria of ideas, words, sounds, and images all juxtaposed for us to make of it what we could.
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 21
BIZARRE BAZAAR
Saturday, November 21, 12 p.m. – 5 p.m. | Tickets FREE | at the Portland Art Museum’s Fred and Suzanne Fields Ballroom
This year we’re excited to introduce the PLUS PLUS Bizarre Bazaar. Co-programmed by PAM CUT and long-time independent media exec Liz Mowe, and supported by production specialists Revel Events, the event features a tightly curated group of artists, publishers, exhibitors, community organizations, indie distributors, and creative collectives to help bring the market to life. Visitors will be able to browse and buy artist editions, books, comics, zines, physical media, prints, apparel, games, and more while meeting artists, filmmakers, publishers, and organizations from across the independent creative community. Vendor highlights include: VideoStore•Age, Grilka Press, PIGsquad, and Microcosm Publishing. Sponsored by Kickstarter & Prosper Portland.
PANEL: MacArthur Fellows at 45
TRUTHINESS: FEATURING STERLIN HARJO & REGINALD DWAYNE BETTS
Saturday, November 21, at 2 p.m. | Tickets FREE | at The Whitsell Auditorium
Revisiting Miriam-Webster’s 2006 Word of the Year twenty years later, “truthiness” still refers to the quality of claiming that a statement is true based on intuition, personal feelings, or a desire for it to be true, without any regard for facts, logic, or evidence. Coined by comedian and host Stephen Colbert, the word seems particularly relevant today when technology, politics, and creativity seem to be swirling away from shared understanding and ever closer to truthiness.
With a discussion led by PAM CUT Director Amy Dotson, multi-faceted storytellers and MacArthur Fellows Sterlin Harjo & Reginald Dwayne Betts share how they maintain honesty and integrity in their creative processes and in their ongoing collaborations with artists, as well as how they protect their authentic truths that manifest in their poetry, television writing, filmmaking, and music. This panel is presented by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation as part of their series Defying Boundaries: MacArthur Fellows at 45.
Be sure to catch March Forth, a sneak peek of a new documentary about Reginald Dwayne Betts’ life, at the PAM CUT Tomorrow Theater during the festival on Sunday, November 22!
MEMORY AS A ROCK OUT OF REACH
Saturday, November 21 at 7 p.m. | Tickets $15 | at the Tomorrow Theater
Artists in attendance: Erika M. Anderson (EMA) & Tabitha Nikolai
Part origin story, part healing spell. Decrepit psychedelia with a powerdrone score. Memory As A Rock Out Of Reach is a duet performance in which Erika M. Anderson (EMA) and visual artist Tabitha Nikolai use video game technologies to build out the psycho-sexual inner world of a girl-child in the ’80s. Soundtracked by modular synth and guitar, a narrator searches for her shape amid commercial detritus, degraded 3D scans and a Polly Pocket apocalypse.
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 22
Station to Station: A Roadtrip Through Modern Creativity by DOUG AITKEN
Sunday, November 22 at 2 p.m. | Tickets FREE | at The Whitsell
The Station to Station feature film is made up of 62 one-minute films, including conversations, performances and unrepeatable moments from the journey, bringing together an amazing cross- section of people and places, from icons of culture to a hitchhiker found on a desert road. With each changing minute the film explores creativity through a different artist, musician, place or perspective, ultimately revealing a larger sense of modern expression transcending the individual voices. Station to Station is a journey through our evolving creative culture.
MARCH FORTH w/ Reginald Dwayne Betts, Robe Imbriano, and Thomas Curtis
Sunday, November 22 at 3 p.m. | Tickets $15 | at the Tomorrow Theater
Artists in attendance: Reginald Dwayne Betts; Robe Imbriano (director/producer); Thomas Curtis (animator and designer)
Just off its premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival 2026, join us for a sneak preview of March Forth, an intimate exploration into the life and thoughts of the acclaimed poet, author, lawyer, activist, and MacArthur Fellow Award winner Reginald Dwayne Betts.
March Forth offers an intimate look into how Betts carries the two realities he moves through, one of immeasurable success, contribution, and accolades, and one of guilt and persistent doubt of his own self-worth. Through live performance, animation, poetry, and memoir excerpts narrated by Brian Tyree Henry, March Forth explores the lasting impact of serving time in adult prison as a teenager.
Wicker x Grand Gesture Books
Sunday, November 22 at 7 p.m. | Tickets $15 | at the Tomorrow Theater
Grab your baskets and join us for a screening of Wicker, hosted by our friends at Grand Gesture Books. On the outskirts of a village by the sea, lives a Fisherwoman, smelly, single, and perpetually ridiculed. One day, fed up with her stuffy, small-minded neighbors, she commissions herself a husband to be made from wicker. In an otherwise conservative town, this unconventional romance sparks outrage, jealousy, and chaos.
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