Pittsburgh has George Romero, Baltimore has John Waters, and Boulder has the memory of Stan Brakhage.

Portland has Gus Van Sant, Bill Plympton, Matt Groening, Mike Richardson, Jon Raymond, Aaron Katz, Chel White, Jacob & Arnold Pander, James Westby, Jim Blashfield, Joan Gratz, Joanna Priestley, Matt McCormick, Rose Bond, Vanessa Renwick and Will Vinton.

Ever wonder why?

For cities wishing to replicate Portland’s densely populated cinematic scene, here’s a handy “how to” guide.

1.  Start early.

As soon as people were making films in New York and Fort Lee, they were making them in Portland. Portland’s first film studio, American Lifeograph, opened in 1910. That’s the same year movies came to Hollywood.

2. Have a show business friendly mayor.

During the 16 year tenure of theater-owner-turned-mayor George Baker, downtown Portland was wall to wall theaters. John Gilbert, Clark Gable, William Powell, Edward Everett Horton and Eugene Pallette are some of the actors who jumpstarted their acting careers on the Portland stage, some of them in Baker’s own stock company. It was Baker who renamed Seventh Avenue “Broadway”.

3. Support innovation.

Oregon’s oldest source of print media, The Oregonian, responded to the puzzling new medium of radio by setting up a station right in the Oregonian Tower. Radio later served as an Early Warning System to identify the talent of Portlanders Mel Blanc, Suzanne Burce (renamed Jane Powell by MGM) and Johnnie Ray.

4. Grow your own film processing lab.

After WWII, Portland inventor Frank Hood went to work for a brand new electronics firm named Tektronix. He set up his own home lab to process films he made for them, after losing patience with the delays of sending film to LA. Eventually, he went into business as Teknifilm Lab. For decades, independent filmmaking in Portland was supported by Hood’s lax attitude toward payment schedules.

5. Provide a home for an exiled Hollywood film scholar.

Andries Deinum came to Portland during the blacklist. His vision of film as a mode of social discourse laid the groundwork for PSU’s Center For The Moving Image, housed in Lincoln Hall. Jim Blashfield, Bill Plympton, and Matt Groening were among the faithful attendees of the Center’s influential screening series, run by the Portland State Film Committee.

6. Provide a day job for the guy who wants to mentor the guy who wants to revive the archaic art form of stop motion animation.

Homer Groening led a dual life – ad man by day and experimental filmmaker by night. He had a family, a home, and his own business doing what he loved – and he did it all without leaving Portland. Aspiring filmmaker Will Vinton paid attention, and followed suit. His career, like Groening’s, would encompass both television commercials and art house films, but on a much larger scale.

7. Work with, not against, a pair of cinema addled students who want to start a regional film center.

When the National Endowment for the Arts decided to seed regional filmmaking, they went looking for the right person to submit a grant for a film center in Portland. They were pointed to Brooke Jacobson and Bob Summers, members of the Portland State Film Committee. Brooke and Bob wrote the grant, Portland Art Museum acted as fiscal sponsor, and the Northwest Film Center went into business. This year marks its 40th anniversary.

8. Work with, not against, a visionary film preservationist who wants to create a moving image archive.

Lew Cook was trained as a newsreel photographer by the first generation of Portland filmmakers. His stop motion film, The Little Baker, made circa 1925, proved prophetic when it came to Portland’s future claim to cinema history. He and Thomas Vaughn conceived Oregon Historical Society’s moving image archive, and Cook personally trained the preservationist, Michele Kribs, who currently presides over it.

To re-cap: by the end of the 1970’s, Portland had a film program at Portland State University, a film archive at Oregon Historical Society, and a regional film festival (now the NWFF) located at Portland Art Museum. That nucleus of film creativity on the park blocks was balanced by a film processing lab, an emerging animation studio, and a warehouse waiting to be filled with  filmmakers’ offices over in northwest Portland. No one entity owned the scene – the infrastructure and the support system served all comers.

The following timeline concentrates on factors which contributed to a culture where independent filmmakers supported each other in Portland. It does not address the important role played by Hollywood productions shooting in Oregon. The symbiotic role of Hollywood and the Indies in Portland is embodied in the career of Gus Van Sant who slips and slides with ease between these two worlds.

A timeline:

American Lifeograph founded 1910

Lewis Moomaw makes The Chechacos 1924

Lew Cook makes The Little Baker c1925

PGE makes It Can Be Done c1936

Tektronix founded 1946

Frank Hood founds Teknifilm Lab, early 1950’s

Andries Deinum arrives 1957

Homer Groening starts his own ad agency 1958

Center For The Moving Image founded 1965

Bob Summers and Brooke Jacobson found Northwest Film Center 197o

Tim Smith and Matt Groening make Drugs: Killers or Dillers 1972

Brooke Jacobson founds Northwest Media Project 1974

Will Vinton and Bob Gardiner make Closed Mondays 1974

Don Zavin makes Fast Break 1977

Penny Allen makes Property 1979

Rose Bond makes Gaia’s Dream 1982

Gus Van Sant makes Mala Noche 1985

Bill Plympton makes Your Face 1987

Matt Groening makes The Simpsons 1987

Jim Blashfield makes Leave Me Alone 1988

Joan Gratz makes Mona Lisa Descending A Staircase 1992

Gus Van Sant makes Good Will Hunting 1997.

Miranda July makes The Amateurist 1998

Chris Eyre makes Smoke Signals 1998

Will Vinton makes The PJ’s 1999

Travis Knight makes Coraline 2009

Jon Raymond writes & Neil Kopp produces Meek’s Cutoff 2010, one of five Oregon films at Sundance in 2011.

This post is dedicated to Portland filmmaker/film writer David Walker, who inspired it by raising the question “how rare is regional filmmaking, anyway?”

Benjamin Popp’s Laszlo Lassu won Honorable Mention at the 38th NWFF.

The name has changed, but the mission remains the same. The Northwest Film & Video Festival, now the Northwest Filmmakers’ Festival, encompasses the full range of Northwest filmmaking. Cinematic locavores will find it all, from the obsessive self contained world of stop motion animation to harrowingly intense documentaries to hand made, small scale, sotto voce features.

This year, three features were directed by artists who cut their teeth at the festival.

Gus Van Sant’s fourteenth feature, RESTLESS, opened the festival on Nov. 12. His first NWFF entry, ONE HALF OF A TELEPHONE CONVERSATION, was in 1978. It was two minutes long.

Chel White’s first feature, BUCKSVILLE, closes the festival with its Portland premiere on Nov. 20 at 6:00 PM. White won an Honorable Mention from judge Christine Vachon for his first NWFF entry in 1998. Titled DIRT, it was four minutes long.

Matt McCormick’s first feature, SOME DAYS ARE BETTER THAN OTHERS, screens on Nov. 16. In 2001, he competed against Courtney Taylor-Taylor, Jim Blashfield, Brian Lindstrom, Chel White, Marilyn Zornado, Vanessa Renwick and Andy Blubaugh with his first NWFF entry, THE SUBCONSCIOUS ART OF GRAFFITI REMOVAL. It was 17 minutes long.

This festival is also the place to see Peter Richardson’s HOW TO DIE IN OREGON, in case you missed that, and Taggert  Siegel’s QUEEN OF THE SUN: WHAT ARE THE BEES TELLING US?.

We’re not a ghoulish bunch, here in the Pacific Northwest, I swear we are not.  However, since Gus made a film in which death looms, Matt made a film which features cremains, Peter made a film about physician assisted suicide and Taggert made a film about the collapse in bee population, I think it is fair to observe that the filmmakers of Salmon Nation tend to see death as part of life.

This must have been an usually tough year for festival director Thomas Phillipson. So many films to choose from!

Chel White arrived in Portland in 1985. Already a filmmaker, he moved into Portland indie film scene, working first for Jim Blashfield (Leave Me Alone), then for Gus Van Sant (My Own Private Idaho and others – doing visual effects), before co-founding Bent Image Lab with Ray Di Carlo and David Daniels.

Chel White has directed award winning music videos, short animation, commercials, you name it. From his website:

Don’t know anything about Bucksville, except that it is a live action feature directed by Chel White, and it has been accepted into the 2011 Hampshire Film Festival.

I think toy trains are involved.

I hereby claim Bucksville, sight unseen, as a self described genre bending Oregon drama/thriller, on the basis of the location shooting and the Oregon director, Chel White.

In 1993, Joan Gratz became the second director to bring an Oscar back home from Los Angeles to Portland.

It was her second time at the Oscars. In 1982, Gratz’ film The Creation had been nominated.

Click here to view the embedded video.

In the above clip, you can hear Joan thank Jim Blashfield, Melissa Marsland, and ( I think) Chel White.

I hereby claim Mona Lisa Descending A Staircase as an Oregon film, based on the Oregon citizenship of director Joan Gratz, in addition to the location of the studio in which it was made.

Animator Laura Di Trapani has been making films in Oregon since 1984. If you study with her at Portland State you will be learning from someone who has worked with Jim Blashfield, Gus Van Sant, Chel White, Will Vinton, and the late cartoonist John Callahan, as well as Childrens Television Workshop and Sesame Street.

Di Trapani belongs to the extraordinary sisterhood of Oregon animators which includes Joan Gratz, Rose Bond, Joanna Priestley, Marilyn Zornado.

On May 22, at 8:oo PM, Di Trapani will screen her current work in progress Exquisite Corpse at the Curious Comedy Theater, 5225 NE MLK Blvd, in Portland.

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.

I should be the right audience for Even The Cowgirls Get The Blues, because I hitchhiked across the country myself when I was younger than Uma Thurman is here. Nevertheless I couldn’t make heads or tails of Cowgirls.  I apologize to Gus and  Uma – I am sure I will grow into it.

It is my job to point out that both Gus Van Sant and James Ivory have chosen to work with Uma Thurman. Ivory cast her as the scheming, goal oriented Charlotte Stant in The Golden Bowl in 2000. Quite a stretch from the tender hearted Sissy Hankshaw, the character she plays in Cowgirls! Here’s to Uma, at home with Henry James and Tom Robbins.

If you watched the trailer with your jaw on the ground, unable to keep up with the cast list, here’s some help: Lorraine Bracco, Angie Dickinson, Pat Morita, Keanu Reeves, John Hurt (fabulous, in a role first offered to Peter O’Toole), Rain Phoenix, Ed Begley, Jr., Carol Kane, Sean Young, Crispin Glover, Roseanne Barr, and Buck Henry.

I hereby claim Even Cowgirls Get The Blues as an Oregon film, based on Gus Van Sant’s contribution as director, on Ken Kesey’s and Chel White’s contributions as actors, on John Campbell’s and Eric Edwards‘ contributions as cinematographers, and because it was shot in Central Oregon.