September 9, 2008 marked the opening of the Humboldt Neighborhood History Exhibit in north Portland. We designed this micro exhibit to fit in a 4-foot-wide by 3-foot-deep alcove originally built to accommodate a Coke machine. The concave, rear-lit exhibit is deeply textured, using a 1900 street grid of the neighborhood, a 1909 rendering of the community's high school, and an 1870 illustration of the Portland area as background images, with photos, illustrations, maps, a historical timeline, and other visual imagery to complete the main 4 foot x 7 foot panel. To add a little more to the exhibit, we interviewed some of the long-time residents to hear their stories about the community, from its world-class jazz club and once vibrant community center to segregation and red lining. As a visitor approaches the exhibit, the stories begin to play. While the exhibit is on a micro scale, it was designed to embrace a community and to encourage its reinvestment in itself through a remarkable history.

Imagining Home chronicles a striking example in a national community revitalization movement where Columbia Villa, a cherished, stigmatized, and historic Portland, Oregon public housing neighborhood is demolished and rebuilt to house nearly 3,000 residents of mixed socio-economic backgrounds. Hailed by many as a success when many original residents are welcomed back to the neighborhood, New Columbia is also criticized as "social engineering," and expected by many to fail. This feature documentary closely follows several former residents as they fight for self-sufficiency and belonging in an equitable, sustainable community.


A fine cut of Imagining Home was showcased in March 2008 at the Third PolicyLink Advancing Regional Equity Summit in New Orleans, where over 1,700 participants--academics, policy change advocates, grassroots organizers--and many others gathered to seek best practices on topics ranging from sustainable community development to eradication of poverty to environmentally wise land use. Imagining Home screened with the assistance of Active Voice, whose mission is to "put a human face on public policy," through uniting film with organizations devoted to advancing progressive policy change.


Nominated for the prestigious Helen and Martin Schwartz Prize for Public Humanities Programs from the Federation of State Humanities Councils, Imagining Home was selected by the Ford Foundation to be screened at PolicyLink's Summit Conference: Advancing Regional Equity in Philadelphia and was selected for screening at the Urban Affairs Association Conference in Salt Lake City.

Imagining Home was finished in September 2009 and is in distribution. Please go to our Store page or contact us for details.

We have filmed six Lind Combine Demolition Derbies (2003-2008) and spent many days in the fields and farms of Eastern Washington, talking with the people who put food on our tables. We're excited to be able to present the story of "Jaws" the 1974 model 6602 John Deere side hill combine, as Josh's and Matt's quest to gain and hold the derby championship has taken shape. We've also been fortunate to work with their families, other Lind residents, and experts in the areas of agricultural science, economics, history, and the sociology of the struggling family farm town in the intermountain West.

A release date for Amber Waves & Checkered Flags is set for fall 2010.

2007 was an excellent year for Proving Up, with a tour through three amazing archaeological film festivals in the United States, Italy, and Spain. We enjoyed attending both the Archaeology Channel International Film Festival in Eugene, Oregon, and the XVIII Rassegna Internazionale del Cinema Archeologico in Rovereto, Italy, October 4, 2007, where the film screened to an audience of hundreds of international viewers. (It's interesting to hear the film, with all its Old West aphorisms, dubbed in Italian!) The DVD has reached hundreds of viewers in more than a dozen countries, where the lure of the West and the lore of Hells Canyon--one of America's most remote locations--survive. On September 28, 2008, Proving Up will be screened at the Idaho International Film Festival in Boise.

This intimate portrait of a summer bagpipe school in northern Idaho was filmed in 1988--20 years ago this July--at the Coeur d'Alene Summer School of Piping & Drumming. Though two decades have elapsed, the school still thrives, and students from around North America convene to preserve the art and craft of the Scottish pipes and drums. Stay tuned for an anniversary re-release of this award-winning film summer 2008!

Completed in 2006, this multimedia interpretive exhibit, located at 4625 N. Trenton in the New Columbia neighborhood of Portland, has drawn thousands of viewers to experience the 10,000 year history of this community from the Chinook Indian society through the present-day neighborhood. The exhibit includes film, photographs, natural sounds, music, maps, drawings, and objects relating to the Chinook Indians, the Kaiser shipyards, the Vanport flood and the residents now living in this place. We invite you to visit the exhibit--admission is free. Business hours, Monday through Friday.