Portland State Magazine Winter 2013

WINTER 2013 PORTLAND STATE MAGAZINE 15 BACKSTORY Portland State’s relatively new film program had a first act. In 1969, the Center for the Moving Image (CMI) was established at Portland State University and quickly gained an international reputation for the ground- breaking work of its students and the quality of its faculty. It grew to become the most complete filmmaking and film studies program in the Pacific Northwest, and helped launch the successful careers of numerous students. The program was started by Andries Deinum and Tom Taylor and approached film studies and production with a focus on community engagement. Deinum was originally from Southern California, where he worked in Hollywood for Warner Bros. and Universal Studios and as an assistant to the German director Fritz Lang. He also taught film at Univer- sity of Southern California (USC), but he was fired and blacklisted in 1955 after refusing to cooperate with the Congressional House Un-American Activities Committee. Deinum moved to Portland in 1957, and worked with the Multnomah County Library and the Portland Extension Center, which was an evening program separate from Portland State. He taught a weekly film series and film classes through the center, through which he gained a loyal following in the community. Taylor was a successful documentary filmmaker of international renown when he moved to Portland in 1965 to help his friend and former USC professor Deinum start the CMI, which began as the Institutional Television Department. Taylor ran the production side of the film program and worked with students to create documentaries that focused on craftsmanship and on using the medium of film to promote social justice and democracy. He and his students produced the film The Seventh Day , which chronicled student protests on the PSU campus in May 1970 in response to the killings at Kent State—protests that led to violent confrontations between protes- tors and police. The CMI ran on a shoestring budget during its final years, and funding was eventually cut off entirely in 1981 by then Portland State President Joseph Blumel, who was faced with budget shortfalls. Deinum passed away in 1995, and Taylor passed away in 2009. Andries Deinum directed the PSU Center for the Moving Image in the 1970s. Photographs from the 1969 Viking yearbook. based out of Portland where productions are happening, and where the hub of Oregon filmmaking is. We have a program that could cradle that, that could hold it all together.” The film program is designed as a holistic one that readies students for careers in production, but also keeps a focus on film studies. Students have embraced that dual emphasis as an opportunity to gain hands-on experience while also focusing on fundamentals. “I prefer having film studies as a basis, and then the production stuff adds value to that, rather than being all I’m focused on,” says film student Tiffany Creed. “They’re both challenging to me for different reasons.” Creed, who moved from Alaska to attend Portland State, chose to study film using her Western Undergraduate Exchange Scholarship, which allows students to attend colleges out of state at reduced tuition. Film students are also benefitting from the Evelyn I. Crowell Endowed Scholarship funded by a retired PSU librarian. Professor Morrow sees the newness of the program as an opportunity to build a center of study that caters to what students are inter- ested in now while continuing to develop the core fundamental skills of teamwork and storytelling. “I didn’t want to walk in and say, ‘here’s how I want to do it,’ and impose my own ideas of the perfect film program without listening to the students,” says Morrow. “That’s why we’re growing fast, but not so fast as to not be listening.”  Heather Quinn-Bork, a graduate assistant in the Office of University Communications, wrote the article “Asking the Right Questions” in the fall 2012 Portland State Magazine. The still frames on page 13 are from the video, I Go To Sleep , created by film students Darcy Sharpe and Kat Audick. Their film is also featured above along with frames from Geek to Go by student Clarke Leland.