Not all Oregon film historians are women, but this first group was. Left to right: Heather Petrocelli,  Anne Richardson, Ellen Thomas, Rose Bond. Not pictured: Michele Kribs, unavailable because she was out riding her motorcycle.

Dateline: 2033, 20 years from now.

The Oregon Film History Initiative celebrated its 20th birthday today by blowing out candles on 20 virtual cakes scattered throughout the state.

Founded in 2013 by a group of librarians and historians, OFHI’s original mission was to ensure that key documents and artifacts essential to a full understanding Oregon’s unique film history were successfully archived within the state.

The Initiative began unofficially with the acquisition of James Ivory’s papers at the U of O.  A trickle of film scholarship triggered by Richard Herskowitz’s 2013 James Blue Tribute turned into a steady stream. Portland’s silent film industry, Oregon’s McCarthy era Westerns,  Godard’s trip through the Pacific Northwest with Jon Jost in 1972 – books on these subjects transformed public understanding of the intersection between Oregon film history and American film history.

Few can remember the time before a full length biography of Portland musician Melvin Jerome Blank, aka Mel Blanc, radically re-positioned pre-Portlandia Jazz Age Portland as an engine of American pop culture, and launched a new cultural tourism industry.

Oregon Film History Initiative brought together a truly diverse set of stakeholders. While UO collected papers of Oregon filmmakers, Oregon Heritage Commission, in cooperation with Travel Oregon and Oregon Cultural Trust, supported the restoration of downtown theaters in rural Oregon towns.

NWFC continued their trademark events. Lewis & Clark began a media literacy summer school for teachers. UO, working in partnership with Oregon Cartoon Institute, began hosting an annual Oregon film history conference.  OCI secured a digital humanities grant to tell the story of Lew Cook, Homer Groening, and Frank Hood, three WWII vets whose passion for 16mm filmmaking would re-ignite Portland’s independent film scene.

Meanwhile, the Initiative’s popular annual fundraisers provide homesick Oregon film artists in LA and NY an annual reason to fly home for a visit.

Virtual candles for the 20th birthday celebration were blown out  in Salem, Astoria, Eugene, Pendleton, Cottage Grove, Joseph, Grants Pass, Bend, Baker, Klamath Falls, Jacksonville, Oregon City, McMinnville, Sandy, Brownsville, Corvallis, and all four quadrants of the city of Portland.

I am still thinking about Camille A. Brown’s Mr. TOL E. RAncE, performed in Portland earlier this month.  My essay below, written in 2005, addresses the American performance tradition which Brown examines, critiques, celebrates, discards and transcends.

Thirteen Ways Of Looking At Blackface

Acting on the principle that if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all, many books of American theater history either make no mention of blackface minstrelsy, or include a brief discussion focusing mostly on how deeply horrified the author is by the information he/she is about to convey.

If this policy was intended to help blackface go away, it didn’t work. It never would work. Blackface, and the influence of blackface, is everywhere. With a tip of the hat to Wallace Stevens, here are thirteen ways to view the long, vexing, love affair our country has with cross racial impersonation.

1. Blackface is Evil

Bill Robinson compares notes with Shirley Temple in THE LITTLEST REBEL (1935).

“What does that mean – “free the slaves”?“ Shirley Temple asks Bill Robinson, a wise old man in formal dress who happens to be her own personal property. “I don’t know what it means myself.” he replies thoughtfully.

The clues that the South these two inhabit exists solely  in the minds of white Northern show business professionals are all over THE LITTLEST REBEL: from the blackface Shirley later puts on, to the banjo Robinson plays while Shirley sings Polly Wolly Doodle, to Zip Coon, the tune with which Robinson entertains Shirley’s birthday party guests.

Zip Coon was introduced by pioneering solo blackface entertainer George Washington Dixon in 1829. A tsunami sized hit whose popularity presaged the minstrel craze yet to come, today we know it as Turkey In The Straw.

2. Blackface is Essential

Judy Garland sings Under The Bamboo Tree with Margaret O’Brien in MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS (1944)

Hollywood didn’t make a musical which included an actual turn-of-the-century coon song. However, in MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS, Judy Garland sings the best selling song three African American geniuses created in deliberate response to that craze.

Written by three of the most talented, disciplined, and ambitious artists ever to turn their attention to the creation of pop, Under The Bamboo Tree was the product of Robert Cole, the writer-director-producer-star of the first all black musical, A Trip To Coontown;  J. Rosamond Johnson, the composer of Lift Every Voice & Sing, the black national anthem; and James Weldon Johnson, the author of The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man.

They constructed Under The Bamboo Tree to cater to the nationwide fad for dialect songs, while steering clear of negative racial cliches. The commercial and artistic successes they enjoyed as a team helped pave the way for both Tin Pan Alley and the Harlem Renaissance.

3. Blackface is Benign

Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed sing Buffalo Gals in IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946)

The song Jimmy Stewart sings with Donna Reed on the way home from a high school dance, just before she accidentally loses her robe and jumps into a Bedford Falls rosebush, was originally intended to both express and lampoon the powerful allure of Buffalo, New York prostitutes to the men who worked the Erie Canal.

Buffalo Gals was copyrighted to Cool White, one the first minstrel superstars. Some of its many variants (Bowery Gals, Alabama Gals, Darktown Gals, etc.) testify to an alternate reading of “buffalo” as a coded reference to “African American”, as seen in the term “buffalo soldiers”. Whether the song was inspired by prostitutes from Buffalo, or by prostitutes who were coded as “buffalo”, nothing is left of its minstrel past in the sanitized lyrics we now know.

4. Blackface is Pathetic

Click here to view the embedded video.

Fred Astaire brings Dixie to Paris with Kay Thompson in FUNNY FACE (1957)

Fred Astaire and Kay Thompson are spiritually, if not actually, blacked up when they sing Clap Yo Hands in a Parisian salon filled with bored intellectuals. Minstrelsy is the flag they wave to set themselves apart from the Old World ennui which envelopes everyone else in the room.

In their hands “Why does a chicken cross the road?”, the oldest of minstrel show jokes, is an act of patriotism. But the Parisians were right to yawn. Even two show business pros can’t revive this corpse. What you learn from FUNNY FACE is that beatniks had their own link to minstrelsy – the tambourine. And that Michael Jackson definitely stole his look, especially his socks, from Astaire’s wardrobe.

5. Blackface is Angry

Click here to view the embedded video.

Ossie Davis directs Mabel Thompson as the militant, strip teasing Topsy in COTTON COMES TO HARLEM (1970)

She comes onto the stage, doubled over, wearing rags, with a bandanna on her head. By the end of the song she is triumphantly naked, except for a few strategically placed balls of cotton. The mood of Mabel Thompson’s dance is defiant. She is defeating slavery, defeating cotton, defeating history.

The crowd roars in delight when she takes off her bandanna to reveal a multi-braided Topsy hairdo, and roars again in approval when she lifts off the Topsy wig to reveal her own natural hair.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the most popular stage play of the nineteenth century, provided multiple opportunities for blackface. Uncle Tom was played in blackface. So was Topsy. Ossie Davis uses this history in Cotton Comes To Harlem - in several ways.

6. Blackface is Haunted

Gary Cooper sings Sweet Genevieve with his six bachelor housemates in BALL OF FIRE (1941)

Not all minstrelsy was clowning. You went to cry as much as to laugh. Woodman, Spare That Tree kept minstrel show audiences weeping for decades, as did Silver Threads Among The Gold. Victorian Americans may have kept their emotions under control elsewhere, but once they were inside the minstrel hall, they cried their eyes out. They cried for Old Black Joe when he was in slavery, they cried for him during the war, and they cried for him after the war. When they got tired of crying over Joe, they pined for long ago girlfriends (Sweet Genevieve) or dead ones (Jeannie With The Light Brown Hair).

In this scene, Cooper’s posse of aging bookworms toasts love with a wine addled sing along. Minstrelsy was born amidst beer, so it is appropriate that these nutty professors would be boozing it while they close harmonize a wistful old minstrel tune.

7. Blackface is Political

Click here to view the embedded video.

Brian De Palma turns the tables in the Be Black, Baby sequence in HI MOM (1970).

In HI MOM, Robert De Niro brilliantly interrogates a mop. “What’s that? Make love, not war? I make love very well, thank you very much!” he screams. He is auditioning for an acting job, and he gets it. He plays a white cop in Be Black, Baby, an Off Off Broadway play in which black actors in whiteface invite white playgoers to share the black experience by having their wallets taken and their women sexually violated, followed by wrongful arrest. They also get blacked up.

If you think you fully understand the power politics behind cross racial impersonation, and do not think you could possibly be shocked by anything De Palma has to say, see HI MOM.

8. Blackface is Over

Duke Ellington passes Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll by in CHECK & DOUBLE CHECK (1930)

The dapper Duke gives a quizzical look to two shabbily dressed white men wearing blackface  as he heads past them into a brightly lit mansion where he and his band have been hired to play a sumptuous party. This moment marks an historic changing of the guard, when African American entertainers sans blackface left white blackface entertainers in the dust.

CHECK & DOUBLE CHECK is the first and last film in which you can see Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll, the white actors who created AMOS ‘N’ ANDY. Duke Ellington would go on to appear in eight Hollywood films, never in blackface, always as himself.

9. Blackface is Current

Andy Samberg and Chris Parnell cruise for cupcakes in LAZY SUNDAY (2005)

The best possible proof that cross racial impersonation is still with us as a national obsession is the instant success of Andy Samberg and Chris Parnell’s rap parody, LAZY SUNDAY. Downloaded by millions and sent around the world minutes after airing on Saturday Night Live, LAZY SUNDAY inspired a string of online homage parodies, the best of which ends with two nice Jewish boys bringing home a menorah.

(I wrote this list in 2005. Andy Samberg didn’t rest on his laurels. His Iran So Far is a comprehensive lexicon of minstrel tropes. See it to believe it!)

10. Blackface is Sublime

Tim Moore in a tutu smoking a cigar in BOY WHAT A GIRL (1947).

There is no blackface in BOY WHAT A GIRL.

However there is cross dressing, and cross gender impersonation was second only to cross racial impersonation on the list of transgressive thrills offered the Victorian audiences of the minstrel show. The incomparable Tim Moore carries on this performance tradition in BOY WHAT A GIRL, as have, more recently, both Martin Lawrence and Tyler Perry.

11. Blackface is Tasteless

Ben Stiller blacks up in ZOOLANDER (2001)

With an Irish mom in show business and a Jewish dad in show business, Ben Stiller’s credentials are impeccable for blacking up. Irish performers dominated the minstrel industry for most of the nineteenth century, Jewish ones brought it into the the twentieth. George M. Cohan, Eddie Cantor and Al Jolsen all practiced “white out of black”, as does Ben Stiller in ZOOLANDER.

12. Blackface is Enigmatic

Click here to view the embedded video.

Cliff Edwards sings When You Wish Upon A Star in PINOCCHIO (1940)

Minstrel shows no longer drew crowds when Cliff Edwards began his career in the 1920’s, but blackface still secured individual performers license to be more emotional, more theatrical, more unpredictable than they could be without it. Edwards made his name playing the ukelele and singing in blackface. By the time he supplied the voice for Walt Disney’s Jiminy Cricket, blackface was no longer part of his public persona. It is, however, where he began.

13. Blackface is Our Inheritance

Bert Williams plays cards in NATURAL BORN GAMBLER (1916); Eddie Cantor runs away from Ethel Shutta in WHOOPEE (1930); Mae West checks George Raft’s hat in NIGHT AFTER NIGHT (1932)

NATURAL BORN GAMBLER provides film record of Bert Williams’ blackface. WHOOPEE does the same for his Ziegfield Follies protégée, Eddie Cantor. But Mae West left no film record of the blackface she wore while doing Bert Williams imitations at the beginning of her career in New York. It was gone by the time she went Hollywood.

Should we try to erase blackface? If you did a thorough job, all of these performers would have to go. You would have to go without both Spike Lee, who made a movie about blackface, and D. W. Griffith, who made a movie with blackface. You end up without Jimmy Rogers, Bob Wills and Hank Williams, all of whom began their careers by blacking up. No George C. Wolfe. No Irving Berlin. And that would be just the start. After you finished your purge of history, and gotten rid of your thousands, you would turn around and see all around you, still growing, a popular culture which was formed by cross racial impersonation, and is still being so formed.

It has been quite a year for Oregon film history buffs!

Oregon used to confine its film history love to an annual celebration of The Goonies in Astoria.

But in the past year……

Katherine Wilson made Animal House of Blues (2012)

Allison Elwood & Alex Gibney made Magic Trip: Ken Kesey’s Search for a Kool Place (2011)

Alexia Anastasio made Adventures In Plymptoons: A documentary on the art and animation of Bill Plympton (2011)

Umatilla County Historical Society screened Nicholas Ray’s The Lusty Men (1952)

Deschutes County Historical Society screened Jacques Tourneur’s Canyon Passage (1946)

Clinton Street Theater screened Don Zavin’s Fast Break (1977)

Oregon Cartoon Institute screened Lew Cook’s The Little Baker (c. 1925)

Brian McWhorter composed and performed a new score for Ed’s Coed (1929)

John Paul plans to tour, conducting his original chamber orchestra score for F. W. Murnau’s City Girl (1930)

Matt McCormick re-issued the Peripheral Produce AUTO-CINEMATIC Video Mix Tape (1996) on DVD

Miranda July saluted her Peripheral Produce days with a Portland-centric screening at the Hollywood

David Walker lectured on Portland’s B Movies

Oregon Cartoon Institute brought Robert Johnston to lecture on Mel Blanc’s Portland

Matt Love wrote Sometimes A Great Movie

Dan Fiebiger wrote a history of Oregon filmmaker Tom Shaw

Bill Plympton wrote Independently Animated: Bill Plympton: The Life and Art of the King of the Indies

Anne Richardson presented Oregon Goes To The Oscars at Oregon Historical Society

Ken Nolley hosted a One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) retrospective in Salem

Northwest Film Center hosted mini-retrospectives of Will Vinton, Joanna Priestley, Chel White, Lawrence Johnson, Kelley Baker, Ron Finne (with Jim Blashfield upcoming ) at the Whitsell Auditorium

Anne Richardson introduced the Dill Pickle Club’s Portland film lecture series with David Walker, David Cress, Walt Curtis, Shawn Levy, Jim Blashfield, Brooke Jacobson, Matt McCormick, Joanna Priestley, Joan Gratz, Rose Bond, Tom Robinson, Tom Chamberlin, Dennis Nyback.

Michele Kribs secured National Film Preservation Board protection for The Boy Mayor (1914)

Mary Erickson’s University of Oregon dissertation on independent filmmaking in the Pacific Northwest went online

Heather Petrocelli completed her masters thesis about the Center For The Moving Image at PSU

Lucy Burningham wrote about Oregon film history in the Bend based magazine 1859

Stan Hall wrote about Oregon film history in OMPA’s annual directory

And tomorrow, Portland Monthly’s November 2012 issue hits the stands with an article by yours truly, Anne Richardson, about Portland’s history of  independent filmmaking.

SCORECARD:

Number of public lectures: 15

Number of retrospectives: 9

Number of public screenings of historic films: 4

Number of films permanently protected by the Library of Congress: 1

Number of new films (about Oregon film history): 3

Number of new books (about Oregon film history): 2

Number of new scores to silent films:  2

Number of articles (about Oregon film history):  3

Number of academic papers: 2

Walt Curtis and Matt Love celebrate Matt’s new book SOMETIMES A GREAT MOVIE …..Photo credit: Paige Tashner

Last weekend, as if to keep an invisible, necessary balance in Portland’s cultural eco system, we celebrated director Bill Plympton at the Bagdad, writer Ken Kesey at the Hollywood, and cartoonist Joe Sacco at Mercy Corps Action Center. Never have I seen such swift response to criticism in my life! Portland seems to have taken seriously my request for more ancestor worship, in the arts department.

I take entire responsibility for this surge of civic pride.

I use the word surge advisedly. Greg Hamilton reported 150 Ken Kesey/Matt Love fans were turned away from Saturday night’s screening of SOMETIMES A GREAT NOTION, held to celebrate the publication of Matt Love’s Sometimes A Great Movie.

Hey! Here’s a new niche for The Hollywood Theatre to occupy: film experiences for people who love being surrounded by other people.

Hundreds and hundreds of other people.

Time to restore the balcony seating, what say, Doug Whyte?

How about asking an architect to invent a flexible wall system so the second floor can either serve as two screening rooms (as it is now), or be opened up, as needed, to temporarily reassume its original identity as a balcony.

Back to this extraordinary weekend…..

Balancing out all this ultra regional genius, and ensuring that we don’t collapse upon ourselves in self regard, Hannah Piper Burns and Ben Popp scheduled Portland’s first Experimental Film Festival. International in scope, the five day festival included work by founding Oregon avant garde scenesters Jim Blashfield and Vanessa Renwick. Matt McCormick, whose own Peripheral Produce Festival helped launch the turbo charged indie energy which swirled all over the Rose City this weekend, gallantly used his time in front of an EFF audience to show work by other filmmakers, not his own.

In a similarly large hearted gesture, S. W Conser arranged a party at Jack London Bar specifically so that boundary defying artist John Frame could see rare stop motion animation from Dennis Nyback’s equally boundary defying collection.

So concludes the weekend wherein Portland’s major export was pure authenticity. The weekend gave every appearance of a well coordinated festival of Oregon arts – yet it just happened spontaneously. Each individual arts organization toiled in darkness for weeks/months of planning, emerging with miraculous simultaneity into the spring sunshine.

And its not over yet.

Tonight Brian Kellow, author of Pauline Kael: A Life In The Dark, speaks at NWFC. Born and raised in Tillamook, Oregon, educated by OSU, Kellow now lives in New York, edits Opera News, and writes the occasional book. If you lived in New York, you would understand what this means: Mr. Kellow is the winner of the Game of Life.

Speaking of NWFC, indie legend Jon Jost, familiar to readers of Oregon Movies, A to Z as a well qualified lillypadder, having made his first film in Cottage Grove about a zillion years ago, will introduce the May 31 screening of Last Chants For a Slow Dance ( 1977), one of his most highly regarded films.

I am aware not everything happens in Portland! This weekend, just up the river, writer-producer-actress Carrie Brownstein performed with Wild Flag at Sasquatch. But some important stuff does happen here. Or at least will, come next September. It only took 50 hours on Kickstarter for Andy Baio’s Portland-centric XOXO Festival to sell out.

That’s pre-selling tickets at $400 a pop!

As Portlander Curtis Salgado, no slouch himself when it comes to authenticity, recently opined: “People came from blocks around/Just to hear his righteous sound”

Given the turnouts at the multiple arts events in Portland this weekend, I have to say …..seems to be true!

Here are the organizations behind the above described synergy:

Clinton Street Theater

The  Dill Pickle Club

Experimental Film Festival

Hollywood Theatre

Jack London Bar

KBOO’s Word & Pictures

McMenamins/Bagdad Theatre

Mercy Corps Action Center

Oregon Cartoon Institute

Oregon Media Producers Association

Portland Art Museum

Northwest Film Center

Sasquatch

XOXO Festival

Oregon Cartoon Institute is holding its second public meeting on Sunday, Feb. 12, at 2:00 PM at 5th Avenue Cinema.

All friends and fans of Oregon Cartoon Institute are invited. If you think you might belong to this group, you do.

The agenda includes a brief introduction to the all volunteer Institute, and a discussion of what is up next. We’ll have announcements from the Mel Blanc Project and the Homer Davenport Project, some proposals to consider, and some hand outs to take home.

Reminder: last time the Institute met, Dennis Nyback supplied home made refreshments.

This year our featured attraction is a rare screening of The Little Baker, a stop motion animation short by early Portland filmmaker Lewis Clark Cook (1909 – 1983). We will also screen a ten-minute profile of Cook, made for OPB in the early 1980’s by Portland artist Jim Blashfield.

Michele Kribs, who was trained by Cook to succeed him as head of Oregon Historical Society’s Moving Image Archive, will be in attendance.

In the photo above, use of which was generously made possible by the Oregon Historical Society, Lew Cook is 15 years old. That is his own 35mm camera. A doting aunt, knowing that he was in love with the movies, bought it for him. He quit selling newspapers and went to work as a newsreel photographer.

Top Four Reasons You Might Want To See The Little Baker:

4. Cook made his living as an independent filmmaker using more tricks than you can imagine. Just as Bill Plympton turned down Disney, Lew Cook turned down Warner Brothers. He chose independence. Besides Plympton, the other Portland filmmakers who followed Cook’s lead include Homer Groening, Will Vinton, Joan Gratz, Jim Blashfield, Gus Van Sant, Rose Bond and  Joanna Priestley.

3. The Little Baker was made “in the 1920’s” which means Cook could have made it anywhere between age 11 and age 20. Come help us sleuth out clues as to whether this is the work of a hard working child or an uninhibited adult.

2.  No one else you know has seen this film.

1. Although you may think The Little Baker inspired Will Vinton to consider clay animation, what actually happened was that Will saw it after he had made his start with Closed Mondays. Nevertheless, there is some powerful history here. Who knows what it will inspire you to do!

=====================================================

This event is a partnership between Oregon Cartoon Institute, Oregon Historical Society and 5th Avenue Cinema.

Thank you to Kerry Tymchuk, Michele Kribs and Scott Rook of Oregon Historical Society.

Thank you to Heather Petrocelli of 5th Avenue Cinema and PSU’s Public History Interest Group.

Mayor Sam Adams added to his collection of original portraits of Portland filmmakers last week, unveiling a brand new painting of Todd Haynes by Jasper Marks.

City Hall custodians grumbled about the amount of work they face – Portland’s active film scene means the entire wall will soon be filled. The Mayor did not announce whether Marks, who moonlights in another profession under the name Steven Cohn, would be asked to paint the entire series. Some people believe Arnold Pander may be approached to help out.

Here are the names of some of the directors who, taken in conglomerate, represent Portland’s cinematic wealth:

Aaron Katz

Brian Lindstrom

Chel White

David Weissman

Donal Mosher

Gus Van Sant

Irene Taylor Brodsky

Jacob & Arnold Pander

James Westby

Jim Blashfield

Joan Gratz

Joanna Priestley

Lance Bangs

Larry Johnson

Marilyn Zornado

Matt McCormick

Michael Palmieri

Mike Shiley

Peter D. Richardson

Rose Bond

Sue Arbuthnot

Vanessa Renwick

Will Vinton

It is because Sam Adams is only Mayor of Portland, and not Governor of the State of Oregon that the following filmmakers will escape inclusion on his Hall of Fame:

Alex Cox

Bruce Campbell

Bill Plympton

Chris Eyre

Matthew Lessner

James Ivory

James Longley

Shelley Jordon

Susan Saladoff

Basil Wolverton displays his pioneering “spaghetti and meatballs” approach to human anatomy.

As Oregon Cartoon Institute heads into its fourth year, I sat down to retrace the steps that led to its creation.

This timeline of development was originally written for Jill Hartz, at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art. Thank you, Jill, for providing me with the impetus to pull this together!

1990’s in New York

As I fly back and forth between Portland and New York, I begin noticing the way Oregon press underplays the fame of Oregon’s most well received artists (Chuck Palahniuk a great example ) while at the same time New York press omits the Oregon citizenship of an artist all together. I begin to understand the way this has created a misperception that Oregon does not produce artists.

At about this same time Columbia sportswear begins showing up on the subways. The Simpsons are becoming a cultural mainstay. Elliott Smith, the Dandy Warhols, Courtney Love, Gus Van Sant — I start to feel  surrounded by Portland even when I am 3,000 miles away.

1999 visiting Portland

David Chelsea tells me about Basil Wolverton.

I knew about Homer Davenport, the Hearst newspaper cartoonist from Silverton.

I’d heard about Mel Blanc, Portland’s most reknowned voice artist.

But I am stupefied by Wolverton. How could a guy from Central Point (pop: 12,000)  influence an entire generation of  Americans? And do it via Mad Magazine ?

A seed starts to sprout in my mind.

2001, in Portland

Dennis Nyback and I teach an avant garde film survey course at Northwest Film Center. Preparing for it, I discover avant garde animator Harry Smith was born in Portland.

Smith was both the disciplined, insightful, completely original collector behind Folkways’ enormously influential Anthology of American Folk Music and a self taught, extravagantly experimental, completely original filmmaker. I never dreamt he had anything to do with Oregon.

In my previous understanding, Oregon rarely produced nationally known artists.

Now with Harry “High Brow” Smith and Basil “Low Brow” Wolverton in the picture, I am completely confused.

2003 in New York

Standing in Kim’s Video, I stumble across a footnote in a book about Robert Crumb which identifies Carl Barks, creator of the comic books which were a huge influence on Crumb, as being from Merrill, Oregon.

I turn the book over to see who wrote it — D. K. Holm, from Portland.

At this point I compile a list of living and dead Oregon cartoonists and animators and send it to John Canemaker, asking what he thinks. He calls me, excited and impressed.

He adds two new names.

He tells me Marc Davis, one of Disney’s Nine Old Men, graduated from high school in Klamath Falls

and that Pinto Colvig, an early animator turned voice artist, is from Jacksonville.

2006 in Portland

Dennis and I interview Portland cartoonist  John Callahan for The Portland That Was.

Callahan is surprised to learn that Mel Blanc, a life long hero, is from his own home town. Our intern, a graduate of Lincoln High School, the school Blanc attended, tells us she never heard of him.

About this time, graphic journalist  Joe Sacco returns home to live in Portland, bringing with him his 1996 American Book Award.

Dennis and I return home too.

2007 in Portland

We hold the first Oregon Cartoon Institute public event, a three week screening series at Disjecta of 16mm animation from Dennis’ collection. Jim Blashfield and Rose Bond come and speak. Both have conducted far ranging film careers from Portland.

Blashfield made his acclaimed music videos here, and Bond her monumentally scaled installations. Both use animation.

Our model for engaging audiences emerges  — we will use living artists as interpreters as we raise awareness about the dead ones. Chel White, Bill Plympton, Joan Gratz, Joanna Priestly, Marilyn Zornado and Will Vinton loan us 35mm prints for the final night of the Disjecta series, which takes place at the Hollywood Theater.

Second Oregon Cartoon Institute event: Dennis conducts video interviews with visiting and local artists at the Platform International Animation Festival. We put these online.

At this point, I thought we had found all the historic Oregon animation and cartooning figures there were to find.

I was wrong.

In the course of researching Oregon film history for the Oregon Sesquicentennial Film Festival, I stumble across George Bruns, a four time Oscar nominee for animated film scores, from Sandy

and Dennis stumbles across Ralph Wright, who won the Golden Bear in Berlin in 1957. He’s from Grants Pass.

2009 in Portland

Third Oregon Cartoon Institute event: we co-sponsored Bill Plympton Day at the Oregon Sesquicentennial Film Festival at Marylhurst.

Bill is as fascinated with this history as we are.

Not all our research comes from history books. Some comes from the news. Just when we weren’t looking,  Brad Bird received first one, then two Oscars.

Looking ahead:

An interview about Oregon Cartoon Institute’s next public event, which will take place in 2011, can be found online at  KBOO.fm. Conducted by S. W. Conser as part of his Words & Pictures series, this interview introduces our first artist in residence, Heather Perkins.

Oregon Cartoon Institute is all about partnerships. As soon as the details get finalized, we will announce our upcoming partnerships with others who share our goal of raising public awareness of  this state’s rich animation and cartooning history.