Oregon has a film at the Oscars this year.

Documentarian Marshall Curry followed Daniel McGowan from Brooklyn, where he was a graduate student, to Eugene, where he was an environmental activist,  to Illinois, where he is serving time in the Communication Management Unit, aka a highly restrictive federal prison. McGowan is serving a 7 year sentence for two counts of arson and conspiracy, one in Glendale and one in Clatskanie.

If A Tree Falls: A Story Of The Earth Liberation Front first aired on the PBS documentary series P.O.V. It has been nominated for an Academy Award in the category of Best Documentary.

From The Gothamist’s interview with Curry.

There’s some footage that you included in If a Tree Falls from the Warner Creek blockade in the mid-90’s, where activists were attempting to stop logging in a national forest in Oregon. Their encampment looks exactly like Zuccotti Park—the tents, the signs, everything. And it’s destroyed by the police, just like the Zuccotti encampment was. In what ways are eco-terrorism and “economic inequality terrorism,” as the authorities might call it, similar, and in what ways are they different?

I think there are a lot of thematic similarities between what happened in the 90s, in the environmental movement, and what we see now with the Occupy movement. There there are things that I was seeing on television as the Occupy movement was being covered that seem to be almost lifted from the movie. Whether it’s scenes like the one you describe where folks were being evicted from an encampment where they were trying to keep logging trucks from getting into the forest, or whether it was the use of pepper spray by police to go after non-violent protestors.

We saw it in Zuccotti and it’s similar to the WTO protests and a number of other places in the 90s in the film. And what’s been interesting is when the film came out in the theaters this summer, it was a couple of months before the Occupy movement had started, and a lot of people kind of saw protest movements in the United States as a quaint historical event. There was no discussion of a current protest movement about to happen. And as soon as it happened it really seemed to follow the playbook, and I feel like the film could be a cautionary tale both for activists to consider the types of tactics that they’re engaging in, and also for law enforcement to think about how they’re reacting to activists because I think there are some responses to activism that radicalize people and other responses that bring people into the democratic argument.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This is Curry’s second Academy Award nomination. His first was in 2005 for Street Fight, a profile of a mayoral race in Newark, NJ.

Curry was a Comparative Religion major at Swarthmore. Just to show you what it takes to become an Oscar nominated filmmaker.

If A Tree Falls is distributed by Oscilloscope Pictures, which also distributes Meek’s Cutoff, Wendy and Lucy and Howl.

I hereby claim If A Tree Falls: A Story Of The Earth Liberation Front as an Oregon film, on the basis of location shooting, and on the basis of the inspiration provided by Oregon forests, which impelled McGowan to take the journey Curry documented.

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If A Tree Falls is an Oregon film by virtue of subject matter and location.

For Oscar nominated films which have Oregon directors and/or are based on work by Oregon authors: See this Handy Guide

For Oscar nominated animation by Oregon artists, including three Oscar winning Oregonians: See this Handy Guide

John “This Is What True Self Acceptance Looks Like” Waters came out of the closet as a fan of Oregon filmmaking in his Top Ten For 2011 film list in Artforum.

Three of his ten are Oregon films.

#2 on Water’s list: Mildred Pierce

Qualifying criteria: Portland screenwriter Jon Raymond’s first collaboration with Portland director Todd Haynes.

#6 on Waters’ list: If A Tree Falls: The Story Of Earth Liberation Front

Qualifying criteria: Brooklyn filmmakers Marshall Curry and Sam Cullman followed their subject, an environmental activist, to Oregon.

#9 on Waters’ list: We Were Here

Qualifying criteria:  Like Todd Haynes, David Weissman is now a Portland director. Up until We Were Here, he was based in San Francisco. (Perhaps he maintains dual citizenship.) He co-directed We Were Here with Bill Weber.

John Waters is obviously begging for a invitation to come out to the Rose City and see what’s going on – let’s invite him!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Mayor Sam Adams sees potential for economic growth in Portland in four areas: software, sportswear, clean tech and advanced manufacturing.  He doesn’t include filmmaking, perhaps because this industry seems to be growing by leaps and bounds without his help.

Shawn Levy reports a preponderance of Oregon films at Sundance this year. He found three Oregon docs in competition, and admits there very well may be more. Over here at Oregon Movies, A to Z, we were happy to help out by taking a closer look. We found a fourth documentary film which qualifies under our expanded definition: although the filmmakers are not Oregonians, they took as their subject Oregon events. A fifth film was just added today, when Shawn Levy identified the film which was Karen Schmeer’s last project – by the ever elastic rules of Oregon Movies, A to Z, it qualifies as an Oregon film, because a) Karen was a Oregonian and b) documentary editors play a very key creative role.

The descriptions of the films below come from Sundance.

Shawn’s List:

Hot Coffee Directed by Susan Saladoff (Ashland) – Following subjects whose lives have been devastated by an inability to access the courts, this film shows that many long-held beliefs about our civil justice system have been paid for by corporate America.

How To Die In Oregon Directed by Peter D. Richardson (Portland)– In 1994 Oregon became the first state to legalize physician-assisted suicide. How to Die in Oregon gently enters the lives of terminally ill Oregonians to illuminate the power of death with dignity.

We Were Here Directed by: David Weissman (Portland)– A deep and reflective look at the arrival and impact of AIDS in San Francisco and how individuals rose to the occasion during the first years of this unimaginable crisis.

Bobby Fischer Against the World / U.S.A. (Director: Liz Garbus) – The drama of late chess-master Bobby Fischer’s career was undeniable,as he careened from troubled childhood, to World Champion and Cold War icon, to a fugitive on the run. Edited by the late Karen Schmeer (Portland).

Anne’s addition to Shawn’s List:

If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front Directed by Marshall Curry (Brooklyn) – The Earth Liberation Front is a radical environmental group that the FBI calls America’s ‘number one domestic terrorist threat.’ Daniel McGowan, an ELF member, faces life in prison for two multi-million dollar arsons against Oregon timber companies. But who is really to blame?

Moving to non documentaries. Four Oregon feature films at Sundance, all in sidebars. Again, one is an Oregon film only by the most elastic use of the definition.

Letters From the Big Man / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Christopher Munch) – An artist and government hydrologist surveying a remote part of southwestern Oregon befriends a sasquatch man and must take bold steps to protect his privacy, as well as her own. Cast: Lily Rabe, Jason Butler Harner, Isaac C. Singleton Jr., Jim Cody Williams, Fiona Dourif. World Premiere

Meek’s Cutoff / U.S.A. (Director: Kelly Reichardt; Screenwriter: Jon Raymond (Portland)) – In 1845, three families who have hired mountaineer Stephen Meek to guide their wagons over the Cascade Mountains get lost and face hunger, thirst and a lack of faith in their instincts for survival. Cast: Michelle Williams, Paul Dano, Zoe Kazan, Bruce Greenwood, Shirley Henderson.

The Woods / U.S.A. (Director and Screenwriter: Matthew Lessner (Roseburg)) – A satirical nod to ethnographic film fashions a critique on media technology dependence, when eight young Americans move deep into to the woods to start their own utopia. Cast: Justin Phillips, Toby David, Adam Mortemore, Nicola Persky, Chris Edley. World Premiere.

And bringing up the rear:

The Oregonian / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Calvin Lee Reeder (Seattle)) – After surviving a brutal car accident, a simple farm woman limps down the road into the nightmarish unknown. Cast: Lindsay Pulsipher, Robert Longstreet, Matt Olsen, Lynne Compton, Barlow Jacobs, Chadwick Brown, Jed Maheu, Roger M. Mayer. World Premiere. Shot in California and Washington.

Number of documentaries by Oregon filmmakers at Sundance: 3

Number of documentaries edited by an Oregonian: 1

Number of documentaries about Oregon events at Sundance: 2

Number of feature films shot in Oregon: 3

Number of feature films written by an Oregonian: 1

Number of feature films with no Oregon connection whatsoever except the use of the word “Oregonian” in the title: 1

Second generation Hollywood  in the above Oregon films: 2.  Elia Kazan’s grandaughter, Zoe Kazan, in Meek’s Cutoff, and Brad  Dourif’s daughter Fiona Dourif in Letters From The Big Man

Good luck, everybody!

THIS JUST IN!!!!! Dec. 8, 2010: Shawn Levy’s follow up story.