Small Films on the Big Screen in Klamath Falls
“Are you game?” my best friend Kathy asked, wondering if I would accompany her to the Klamath Independent Film Festival (KIFF) in Klamath Falls, a 65-mile drive through the mountains east of Ashland. Her short doc, The Road Between Us, was on the program.
“You lead and I’ll follow,” I said.
Over two days, Kathy and I would watch three feature-length films and 22 “shorts” out of a list of 35 movies, all made in Oregon or by filmmakers with Oregon roots.
“Oregon’s premium Oregon-centric all-genre film festival,” KIFF’s tagline reads.
This was my second film festival since moving to the Rogue Valley. Back in April, I had joined Kathy at the large, weeklong and well-known Ashland Independent Film Festival (AIFF), where The Road Between Us also screened, along with narrative and documentary films from around the country. I emerged intoxicated by the richness of these films—the evocativeness of the stories and actors—far from Hollywood studios.
Of course, this is what Robert Redford hoped for when he introduced us to “indies” at the now iconic Sundance Film Festival. In the 40 years since, independent film festivals like AIFF and KIFF have taken root in every state in the country—in large cities and places you’ve never heard of. They have become a public meeting space for independent filmmakers and filmgoers who relish discovery, fresh storytelling, and, sometimes, speaking truth to power. They celebrate local voices and grassroots. And “independent films have become a movement,” says AIFF’s executive director, Richard Herskowitz.
The Road Between Us, which Kathy co-produced with Joanne Feinberg, follows an Ashland-based father and son as they embark on a 58-day bicycle trip from Santa Monica to Chicago on Route 66. The film weaves together the photographs shot by the father, a professional photographer,and videos shot by the son. On-camera interviews capture father-son recollections and reflections. (“You have adventure written all over you,” a guy in a donut shop told the biking duo. “Where are you guys going?”) Since April, The Road Between Ushas screened at five regional film festivals and won five awards
An audience favorite at KIFF, Break from the Herd, features a research entomologist, a third-generation farmer, and a winemaker who refused to follow the pack. Convinced of the ecological risks of pest management, award-winning scientist Jonathan Lundgren stared down our nation’s agribusiness in favor of food production systems built on biodiversity. Determined to restore the ecosystem on his family’s farm, Gail Fuller grows nutrient-dense soil without tilling. Rejecting drip irrigation, Oregon winemaker John Paul produces wine from his own and other “dry-farmed” vineyards, a practice still common in grape fields across Europe.
In the Q & A that followed, filmmakers Monica Murray and Chris Holmes (dressed in jeans, boots, and caps) explained that this was their first feature-length film and their first film festival. They hoped Break from the Herd would challenge and change the conversation about long-held farming practices, turning audiences into advocates.
“If people begin to ask questions about how their food is grown, their wine is produced, and growing a little of their own food—that will be a great start,” said Murray.
I renewed my pledge to create a vegetable garden at our new house, something I’d always done before but in Ashland required hacking through compacted granite.
Other films of note at KIFF included Ragland, a short documentary highlighting the history of Klamath Falls’ once vibrant theater scene in the golden age of Hollywood—when there were six theaters in this logging town of 18,000. The lineup also included vampires, struggling adolescents, an outdoor performance at Crater Lake by Oregon’s Britt Orchestra and Native American musicians, and much more
Small cities that host film festivals, in addition to giving local filmmakers a chance to screen their work and compare notes, hope to buttress the local economy. The festivals barely break even, but, with luck, create favorable noise.
“Epic landscapes, welcoming locales, and hassle-free filmmaking in Klamath Falls” reads the second tag line for the Klamath Independent Film Festival.
Klamath Falls, itself, could be the subject of a compelling documentary. Its history is rooted in land, water, and environmental strife.
When the 1906 Klamath Reclamation Project (one of the first nationally) drained marsh land and moved water to allow for agriculture, the population of Klamath Falls grew from 500 to 5,000. Three years later,the Southern Pacific Railroad pulled into Klamath Falls and the value of the surrounding pine and fir forests increased exponentially. In the 1920’s, Klamath Falls was the fastest growing city in Oregon.
(Side note: During World War II, a Japanese-American internment camp just across the border in California temporarily swelled the region’s population. At its peak, with 18,700 inmates, the Tule Lake War Relocation Center was the largest of the ten concentration camps constructed to incarcerate Japanese Americans on the West Coast. Ironically, Tule Lake is now a national wildlife refuge.)
Klamath Falls’ lumber industry continued to flourish through much of the 20thcentury, until the arrival of the Endangered Species Act of 1990—and the northern spotted owl. Forest Service harvests on federal land in Oregon plummeted by more than 90 percent between 1990 and 2000. And the barred owl, it turned out, was the spotted owl’s larger threat.
Water wars soon followed. In 2001, the Endangered Species Act reared its head again in the Klamath Basin, shutting down the Klamath irrigation system. Scientists argued that further diversion of water (from Upper Klamath Lake) would harm the indigenous Lost River and shortnose suckers, along with Coho Salmon that spawned downstream. Protests by local farmers and citizens—estimated at 18,000—culminated in a “Bucket Brigade”on Main Street. A year later irrigation to farmers resumed, but the bad taste lingered.
In any case, nature had its own plan. Low river flows in the Klamath and nearby Trinity Rivers and high temperatures led to a mass salmon die-off in 2002. Dwindling salmon numbers have practically shut down the region’s fishing industry—an the Lost River sucker has yet to rebound. Gone, too, is farming: 90 percent of Trinity River water is now diverted for drought-ridden California agriculture.
I was never a loud voice in the often explosive environmental debates of the past four decades. But walking down Main Street in Klamath Falls, I understood the profound anger of those whose jobs were on the “wrong” side of policy debates, in this case over endangered species and water politics. Civil conversation requires empathy, we are all learning.
Like many cities, small and large, Klamath Falls hopes health care and technology—tourism, too, with Crater Lake at its doorstep—will save what has been lost. “We’ve had phenomenal progress,” the new mayor says.
Whether KIFF can spark a small, local film industry and add to the local economy is anybody’s guess. I’m on their side.
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