Oregon Movies, A to Z » 1970’s

Basic Film Terms: A Visual Dictionary (1970)/Semi-lost film

Anne Richardson — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 06:51:19 +0000

Sheldon Renan made the fifteen minute educational short, Basic Film Terms: A Visual Dictionary, as a follow up to his 1967 book An Introduction to the American Underground Film: A Unique, Fully Illustrated Handbook To The Art Of Underground Film And Their Makers.

I believe Basic Film Terms is a lost film.

(Late breaking development – an eagle eyed reader found some copies! )

I hereby claim it as an Oregon film on the basis of the contribution of writer-director Sheldon Renan.

Natural Timber Country (1972)/Lost film

Anne Richardson — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 08:52:54 +0000

Eugene filmmaker Ron Finne’s Natural Timber Country combines 1970’s interviews with long time loggers with archival logging footage from Portland filmmaker Jesse Sill’s Webfoot Weekly newsreel series.

After reading about Natural Timber Country on 16mm Lost And Found, I discover that this lost film will be shown at the Whitsell on Monday, April 2, 2012 as part of NWFC’s Northwest Tracking/Essential Northwest series.

Director Ron Finne will be in attendance.

Here’s the description from 16mm Lost And Found:

Filmed by Oregon native Ron Finne, Natural Timber Country is the story of old-time logging in the forests of the Northwest. The film was originally available only by mail order from the director’s home in Springfield.

The film lacks a traditional narrator, instead giving us interviews with loggers taped in the field or their homes. To help us visualize the words of the loggers, Finne edits them together with shots of the Northwestern wilderness, both in Oregon and Washington. Also featured is old footage and photographs of loggers stump-rigging trees, skidding felled logs down greased tracks, and one of the first mechanical improvements in the logging business, a steam powered engine for moving larger timber. Also recalled are stunts and jokes of the loggers, such as standing at the very tip top of a limbed and topped tree, or jumping from one log to another as they rolled down a hill.

Above all, the message of the Natural Timber Country is an environmental one. As one man says at the outset of the film. “Timber all around you, you just never figure you’d use it up.”

I hereby claim Natural Timber Country as an Oregon film.

To brush up on this film’s antecedents, here’s a Handy Guide To Oregon Logging Films.

Black Sunday (1977)

Anne Richardson — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 08:29:41 +0000

Having never seen Black Sunday, I have no idea where Oregon makes her cameo appearance as a location. This film appears on lists of Oregon films, anybody know why?

Napoleon and Samantha (1972)

Anne Richardson — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 14:05:54 +0000

A star is born! That’s Jody Foster riding a circus lion in Southern Oregon. This completely implausible and uninspired children’s film also stars Michael Douglas.

What is this film about?! Everyone knows you can’t run away with a circus lion. Jody Foster was mauled by her feline co-star during the production, and has said in interview she still has scars from the stitches — in her neck– today.

This is why you don’t want your kids to star in movies with lions. However Jody survived and now owns two Oscars.

I hereby claim Napoleon and Samantha as an Oregon film, based on its location shooting.

Sometimes A Great Notion (1971)

Anne Richardson — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 05:31:56 +0000

Don’t see this movie. The screenwriter used a chainsaw to clear a narrative path through Ken Kesey’s greatest novel. Recommended only for people who can’t read.

However Sometimes A Great Notion is indisputably an Oregon film: both shot here, and based on a book by an Oregon author.