The Northwest Film Center is a regional nonprofit media arts organization founded to encourage the study, appreciation, and utilization of the moving image arts, foster their artistic and professional excellence, and help create a climate in which they may flourish.

The oldest media arts organization in the Northwest, the Film Center’s activities include a year-round exhibition program (800 films screened annually), classes and workshops for adults and youth, community-based media artist residency programs, and artist services that range from low-cost equipment access to the Oregon Media Arts Fellowship. Through these mutually supportive programs the Center seeks to recognize filmmakers and their works as integral voices in the culture of the region. In all, the Center serves 80,000 people annually.

In addition to producing annual film festivals such as the Reel Music Festival (January), the Portland International Film Festival (March), the Portland Jewish Film Festival (June), Top Down: Rooftop Cinema (July-August), the Northwest Filmmakers' Festival (November), the Film Center also offers filmmaker retrospectives, first-run weekend engagements, a monthly genre film series, and much more.

Through year-round exhibition programs surveying cinema past and present, audiences and filmmakers come together for discovery through the moving image arts; and through education programs and innovative community collaborations that advance media literacy and engage the next generation, regional filmmakers are supported as artists, educators, mentors, connectors and community leaders, strengthening cinema’s place in the creative, social and economic sectors of the community.