James Ivory listens to screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala in New Dehli (above)/James Blue listens to director Roberto Rossellini in Houston (below)

On Oct. 10 at 7:00 PM, three time Oscar nominee James Ivory comes to Portland to introduce MAURICE (1987), starring James Wilby, Hugh Grant and Rupert Graves. Handpicked by Ivory for the Hollywood event, MAURICE is on the short list of films for which he served as both screenwriter (with Kit Hesketh-Harvey) and director.

James Ivory grew up in Klamath Falls and graduated from the University of Oregon in 1951.  Famously well traveled, he lives in New York and London, and does not often visit Portland. He’s coming this time to see an extremely rare film, and to help celebrate the life and career of its director, James Blue, who was Oregon’s first Oscar nominated director, and Ivory’s UO classmate.

On Oct. 11 at 1:00 PM, Richard Blue, the brother of James Blue, will introduce James Blue’s THE OLIVE TREES OF JUSTICE, winner of the Critics Prize at Cannes in 1962.

James Blue grew up in Portland and graduated from the University of Oregon in 1953. James Ivory remembers working with him building sets for a college drama production. Did they have any idea they would become Oregon’s first Oscar nominated directors?

And that they both would launch careers from outside this country?

I learned about James Blue directly from James Ivory in 2009. Since that time, it has become easier for Oregonians to learn about this forgotten Oregon artist. Thanks to the James and Richard Blue Foundation, James Blue’s papers have joined James Ivory’s as part of the University of Oregon’s Special Collections in the Knight Library.

But who was James Blue?

On Oct. 11 at 2:30 PM, following the screening of THE OLIVE TREES OF JUSTICE, there will be a panel discussion titled James Blue, a life in conversation.

Using archival photos from the Blue Collection to structure the narrative, three panelists will retrace his life from Tulsa to Portland to Eugene to Paris, then on to his professional breakthrough in Algiers, where he made THE OLIVE TREES OF JUSTICE, his subsequent embrace of documentary, and his dual identity as filmmaker and educator.

The panelists are:

Richard Blue, the brother of James Blue

James Dormeyer, Blue’s classmate at L’Institut des hautes études cinématographiques in Paris and a close friend

Gill Dennis, the screenwriter of Blue’s 1969 Oscar nominated doc, A FEW NOTES ON OUR FOOD PROBLEM, and a close friend.

Earlier on Oct. 11, at 11:00 AM at the Hollywood, we will screen James Ivory’s AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PRINCESS (1977), starring Madhur Jaffrey and James Mason. Ivory chose AUTOBIOGRAPHY specifically to complement THE OLIVE TREES OF JUSTICE, which shares its theme of post colonial identity crisis.

Tickets can be purchased online at hollywoodtheatre.org.

The Mid Century Oregon Genius screening of THE OLIVE TREES OF JUSTICE is co-sponsored by The James and Richard Blue Foundation.

Here’s more information about the Mid Century Oregon Genius screening series.

Fiscally sponsored by the Oregon Cultural Heritage Commission, the Mid Century Oregon Genius screening series is funded by grants from Kinsman Foundation and Miller Foundation.

More information about the parallel career tracks of these two Oscar nominated directors can be found here.

James Chasse lived independently with severe and persistent mental illness in downtown Portland. On Sept. 17, 2007, he died in the custody of Portland police.

The sound of the impact of two bodies crashing against pavement attracted the attention of diners at Bluehour. Autopsy revealed that 16 of James Chasse’ ribs had been fractured. Was it from the weight of police officer Christopher Humphreys? Or could it have been the punches and kicks, witnessed by the horrified diners, which he received once he was down?

Tasered and hog tied, Chasse lay in a pool of his own blood while cops and medics wrote up the incident. They described him to bystanders as a drug using transient with a police record. Chasse was thin and filthy, but he had no drugs in his system nor in his possession. He had no police record.

Nevertheless, in his report Officer Humphreys faithfully recorded what his imagination told him about the bleeding man hogtied at his feet. Who would object if he entered the word “transient” where he could have entered the address plainly stated on Chasse’s ID? As it turns out, Chasse’s parents took exception to having their son beaten to death in broad daylight and took the City of Portland to court.

Brian Lindstrom’s approach as a documentarian has always been to use his camera to amplify the voices of people we ignore, a self effacing tactic which showcases his ability to listen, not to speak. In Kicking and Finding Normal, he focused on people struggling with substance abuse. In Pay My Way With Stories, he followed students in a writing workshop for at risk teens. His focus was always on his subject, not on his reaction to his subject. Embracing the stripped down visual aesthetic of cinema verite, he was attentive, patient, and heroically compassionate, if a little emotionally remote.

In Alien Boy, he steps away from all that. His fury animates every frame.

Lavishly made, Alien Boy is a visually sumptuous, riveting narrative. For the first time, Lindstrom does not lead with his compassionate heart. He leads with his eye. A very smart choice. The filmmaking is so strong that by the time  (3/4 of the way in) you are watching the video surveillance footage – shot by one of those Orwellian overhead cameras in the police station – of the moments when Chasse, still hog tied and close to death, begs for water, you are in too deep to turn away. Alien Boy is a horror film in that sense.

Brian Lindstrom is furious that James Chasse died at the hands of Portland police. But he doesn’t romanticize his fury. Too canny for that! Instead, he prioritizes the storytelling. Is it possible to make a film in which a grieving mother’s tearful halting narrative is not the most heartbreaking primary source material? Grief, yes. Facts, yes. Lies, yes. Poetry (written by Chasse), yes. Lindstrom shows us everything. Stylistically, it is a tour de force.

Such focus. Such discipline!

Brian Lindstrom spent the six years which have passed since James Chasse died making a film which tells that story so powerfully it will be seen around the world. In Alien Boy, he comes into his own as an artist.

I hereby claim Alien Boy as an Oregon film, on the basis of every possible qualifying criteria.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Director: Brian Lindstrom. Cinematographer: John Campbell. Score: Charlie Campbell. Writer: Matt Davis. Editor: Brian Lindstrom. Asst. Editor: Andrew Saunderson. Animation: Andrew Saunderson. Producer: Jason Renaud.

Cast:

Randy Moe, Brian Lee, Steve Doughton, Mike Lastra, Eva Lake, Marian Drake, Betty Mayther, Rozz Rezbeck, Sam Henry, Michael Brophy, Brian Wasserman, Odette Dunbar, Yvonne Ingram, Russell Sacco, Richard Elliot, all James Chasse’s friends.

Linda Gerber and James Chasse, Sr. – James Chasse’s parents

Constance Doolan, Randall Stuart, Jamie Marquez, David Lillegaard – eyewitnesses

Matthew Charles Davis – Portland Mercury
Anna Griffin – The Oregonian

Karen Gunson, MD – Multnomah County Medical Examiner

Scott Westerman – Portland Police Association president

Tom Steenson – Chasse family attorney

Bob Joondeph – Disability Rights Oregon

Dan Handelman – Portland Copwatch

Karl Brimner – Director, Multnomah County Mental Health

Sam Adams – Mayor of Portland

Ted Wheeler – Multnomah County Commission chair

Alien Boy screens Feb. 24 – Mar. 7 at Cinema 21 in Portland, Oregon.

When I began exploring Oregon film history, I knew I would run across surprises. I never expected to run across a filmmaker as accomplished, and as forgotten, as James Blue.

James Blue (1930-1980) grew up in Portland. He studied speech and theater at University of Oregon, graduating in 1953. After some years of military service, he entered film school in Paris where he was influenced by Jean Rouch. Although he first distinguished himself by winning the Critics Prize at Cannes for The Olive Trees Of Justice, a feature length narrative film, he spent the rest of his life making socially engaged documentaries.

Blue was a man of firsts. First Oregon director to go to Cannes, and the first to receive an Oscar nomination. First person ever to receive Ford Foundation funding for a film project. He helped start the Center for Advanced Film Studies at American Film Institute. The documentary programs at Rice University and at the Center for Media Study in Buffalo were both established by him. He served on the 1970- 1972 NEA funding panel which launched the first network of regional film centers, as proposed by Sheldon Renan. Northwest Film Center is the result of that NEA initiative.

Two Oregonians, James Blue and Sheldon Renan, on that panel!

The reason you haven’t heard of James Blue, or seen his films, is that his films have no distributor. They are not digitized. I am not sure even SUNY Buffalo, the school where he was teaching at the time of his death, can offer access to his films.

Here’s the crash course on Blue:

His IMDB page.

An interview with one of his students

A booklet compiled to accompany a retrospective of his films.

I am still trying to make sense of this new-to-me filmmaker. James Blue never returned to live/teach/work in Oregon. He is buried in Willamette Cemetery.

The first person to tell me about Oregon filmmaker James Blue was James Ivory.

Then Penny Allen told me that James Blue was the first Oregonian to take a film to Cannes. Blue was awarded the Critics Prize at Cannes  in 1962 for his first feature length film, The Olive Trees Of Justice.

I don’t know much about Blue! He grew up in Portland and graduated from University of Oregon in 1953.

Richard Engeman did a little sleuthing:

The Oregonian reported on February 1, 1953, that James Blue was starring in “Death of a Salesman” at U. of O, where he was a senior in speech. Earlier, on October 14, 1951, he was noted as the chief carpenter for a U. of O. production of “The Madwoman of Chaillot. He also won the Oregon State Broadcasters outstanding performance award, give at the U. of O. May 14, 1953 (Oregonian, May 15). There are a number of Oregonian pieces about, or mentioning him, 1962-1980. He’s buried in Willamette National Cemetery.

The Olive Trees Of Justice, Blue’s only narrative film, was based on the novel of the same name by Algerian novelist Jean Pelegri. It was shot in Algiers, with Pelegri playing a leading role in a cast of non-professional actors. The score is by Maurice Jarre.

Here’s a description from TCM.

Jean, a young Frenchman born and reared in Algiers, returns to his native land from Paris to be with his dying father. It is during the Algerian war of independence, and as Jean sits at his father’s bedside, he recalls his happy childhood in the family vineyards, where he played with French and Arab friends. Later he walks through the strife-torn Algerian streets and feels the terrible presence of war. One day his father dies peacefully in his sleep, and relatives and friends, both French and Arab, come to pay their respects. Jean has a long discussion with an Arab friend and attempts to explain why he must return to the peaceful life he has made for himself in Paris. After his father’s funeral Jean sees his normally chauvinistic aunt hasten to help an Arab boy who has been struck by a passing truck. Moved by this genuine expression of human concern regardless of nationality, Jean decides to remain in Algeria.

James Blue was born in 1930 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He arrived with his family in Portland in 1942. He was nominated for an Oscar in 1969. He died in 1980.

I hereby claim  The Olive Trees Of Justice as an Oregon film, on the basis of James Blue’s contribution as director.

“I think history was written today which will have its effect on coming generations with respect to our democracy, with respect to our ideals, with respect to the great struggle of man toward freedom and human dignity.” A. Philip Randolph

One hot August day in 1963, 200,000 American citizens traveled to Washington DC to exercise their Constitutional right to demonstrate.

The full title of the event, now known as the March on Washington, was the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke. Mahalia Jackson, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and Marian Anderson sang. The demonstration was covered live on television.

Of the estimated five hundred cameras covering the event, twelve were under the direction of a young filmmaker from Oregon. James Blue directed and edited The March, wrote the voiceover narration, and performed it. A production of the United States Information Agency, The March was translated into 52 languages and seen all over the world.

It was not at that time, however, seen in this country.

These USIA films were rarely seen in America because, fearing propaganda, the 1948 Smith-Mundt Act mandated that no USIA film could be shown domestically without a special act of Congress. These films are being rediscovered because a 1990 act of Congress (P.L. 101-246) authorized domestic screening 12 years after release.

I hereby claim The March as an Oregon film based on the contribution of the director, Oregonian James Blue.

Portrait of Matt by Andrew Kosinski, at DINCA.org.

In 1921, William and Irene Finley pulled out a camera and documented their friendship with a hungry campsite visitor.

Here’s the filmmaker:

Finley was an early conservationist. Oregon’s first fish and game commission was set up in 1911, following his recommendation. You can visit William L. Finley National Wildlife Refuge, named in his honor, just south of Corvallis.

Here’s how short Oregon’s history is.

William Finley was born in Santa Clara California, on Aug. 9, 1876. That’s one month after Custer’s Last Stand. His parents, John Pettus Finley and Nancy Catherine Rucker, had traveled west by covered wagon. His uncle, William Asa Finley, was the first president of Oregon State University.

William himself was one of the first presidents of Audubon Society of Portland. Notice the birds on his head! He made this film the same year Rudolf Valentino appeared in The Sheik and Charlie Chaplin appeared in The Kid.

At the time Chumming With Chipmunks was made, all feature films were preceded by newsreels. So although William Finley’s chipmunk film did not win the international accolades which later came to Perri, an Oregon film with a similarly wild cast, it was seen by movie audiences across the country.

I hereby claim Chumming With Chipmunks as an Oregon film, based on the Oregon citizenship of the director William and camerawoman Irene.

I began suspecting  Oregon artists Marne Lucas and Bruce Conkle of being secretly French when they invented Eco Baroque. But here’s a few reasons to entertain the theory that all Oregonians share their hidden dual identity:

1. Wine

2. Food

3. Movies

4. Mass transit

5. Public spaces (beaches, parks, Pioneer Square)

6. Focus on quality of life (see above)

How French is Oregon?

The first ever Palme d’Or (as adjudged in 2003) went to a film based on work by an Oregon author.

In 1939, a brand new film festival on the French Riviera at Cannes was cancelled due to Hitler’s invasion of Poland. In 2003, Cannes went back and revisited the list of films that would have competed that year. That jury awarded the Palme d’Or to Union Pacific (above), directed by Cecil B. DeMille and based on a novel by Portland author Ernest Haycox.

Currently, four Oregon directors are much beloved in France.

#1: James Ivory (Klamath Falls), 6 nominations for the Palme d’Or at Cannes. Winner of Cannes 45th Anniversary Special Award for Howard’s End(1992).

#2: Gus Van Sant (Portland), 3 nominations for the Palme D’Or at Cannes. Winner forElephant(2003). Winner of the Cannes 60th Anniversary Special Award for Paranoid Park(2007).

#3: Bill Plympton (Oregon City), 2 nominations for the Palme d’Or at Cannes. His latest feature, Idiots and Angels (2009), received theatrical release in France, and was seen all across that country.

#4: Penny Allen (Portland), whose latest film,The Soldier’s Tale (2007), has been seen by more filmgoers in France than America. It was a recent hit at the Nyon Festival Visions du Reel.

Oregon is so French, Bill Plympton says that everyone in France accepts without question the immediate assumption that Pink Martini is a French band.

Five year old James Francis Ivory moved to Oregon in 1933. His father owned a mill in Klamath Falls, and took his son on business trips to Los Angeles where James saw immense sets being built with his father’s lumber on movie studio back lots. He prepared for a career in movies by studying architecture and art at the University of Oregon, graduating in 1950.

Drafted in 1953, he served in the Seventh Army Special Services, booking entertainment for troops overseas. He received a Masters Degree from University of Southern California in Cinematography in 1957. While in school he wrote, shot, directed, edited and produced a documentary film, Venice: Theme and Variations which was selected by the New York Times as one the ten best non-theatrical films of 1957.

In 1961 he met Ismail Merchant, who, completely disregarding James Ivory’s inexperience directing actors, immediately began raising money for their first feature film together.

The rest is history. James Ivory and Ismail Merchant remained partners, going down in film history as the longest lasting film collaboration in the world.

One name kept coming up. Ellen Thomas said “Homer Groening”. Will Vinton said “Homer Groening”.Bill Plympton said “Homer Groening”. What was the question?  Dennis and I were asking them who we should know about in Portland film history.

From the Seattle Times obituary for Groening, in 1996.

Homer P. Groening was born Dec. 30, 1919, a U.S. citizen in Main Centre, Saskatchewan, the son of Mennonite farmers. He spent his youth in Oregon.

He earned the rank of Eagle Scout and was a co-founder in 1936 of Camp Pioneer at the base of Mount Jefferson. He graduated from Linfield College in McMinnville, Ore., in 1941.

He met his wife, Margaret, at Linfield. They married in 1942.

Mr. Groening flew a B-17 over Europe during World War II and participated in the D-Day invasion, winning a Distinguished Flying Cross.

After the war, he returned to Portland and joined the Botsford, Constantine and Gardner ad agency as a production assistant.

He was called up again to fly transport planes in Korea.

Upon his return, he became a vice president at the ad agency, working on accounts such as Jantzen, Pendleton, Olympia beer, Idaho potatoes and Western Hotels. He started his own agency in 1958.

“He was an absolute creative genius,” said former Advertising Federation President Mick Scott, who worked with Mr. Groening to found the American Advertising Museum in Portland.

When film caught his interest, he taught himself the craft.

“He was a one-man show,” said his daughter, Lisa. “He did the producing, writing, shooting, sound recording, editing, directing and narrating.”

Among his film clients were Jantzen, Timberline Lodge, Johnson Motors, Eastman Kodak and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

He won numerous Golden Eagles, given by the Council on International Non-Theatrical Events (CINE), and awards from the Advertising Association of the West and the American Film Festival.

He produced a string of films about water in all its forms, including “Get Wet,” “Getting Wetter,” “Psychedelic Wet” and “Study in Wet.”

Mr. Groening’s son, Matt, said he received creative encouragement at home, in part because his father was a cartoonist himself. Mr. Groening took colored pencils and sketch pads home to his five children. He would make up the beginning of a story and his children would finish it.

When young Will Vinton stood in Portland with his brand new Oscar in 1975, wondering if he should stick around, he took a page from Homer Groening, and decided to stay.

One consequence of that decision…..

Travis Knight and Mark Gustafson next month will be in LA nervously waiting for the moment they open the envelope for Best Animated Feature. Both artists are former Will Vinton Studio employees, mentored by Will, who was in turn inspired by Homer.