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 Cartoon Institute opened up a storefront catering to tourists. 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. OSU began a media literacy summer school for teachers. PSU, working in cooperation with Oregon Cartoon Institute and Northwest Animation Festival, began hosting a biennial animation studies conference.  OHS 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.

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 new films: 3

Number of new books: 2

Number of new scores to silent films:  2

Number of articles:  3

Number of academic papers: 2

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

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!

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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.

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, KGW, right in their own building, the Oregonian Tower. Radio later served as an Early Warning System to identify the talent of Portlanders-gone-Hollywood 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 (originally conceived as a radio supply store) named Tektronix. He processed films he made for them, after losing patience with the delays of sending films to out of town labs. Eventually, he went into business as Teknifilm Lab. A filmmaker himself, he acted as teacher and mentor to customers. More important to the development of independent filmmaking in Portland:  Hood’s lax attitude toward payment schedules, which subsidized generations of Oregon artists working in film.

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 Sheldon Renan succeeded in persuading National Endowment for the Arts 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, with a push from Sheldon Renan

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

Ron Finne, Tom Taylor and Brooke Jacobson found Northwest Media Project 1974

Will Vinton and Bob Gardiner make Closed Mondays 1974

Don Zavin makes Fast Break 1977

Penny Allen makes Property 1977

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.

Vanessa Renwick makes The Yodeling Lesson 1998

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?”