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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 5, 2014)
street roots Dec. 5, 2014 having to explain why they didn’t want to be an accountant. S.Z.: What drew you to film making? B.L.: The chance to tell stories in various forms. I think of the camera as a sort of passport I was really excited about the idea that I could use the camera to hang out with people who I thought were interesting. Especially cinéma vérité filmmaking, which I’ve done a lot of and I really enjoy. It allows me to insert myself into people’s lives in hopefully not too obtrusive of a way and kind of reveals the kind of everyday struggles and beauty and transcendence that is out there. If you look for it, you can find it S.Z. Cinéma vérité? B.L. Ifs a French term that means “film truth”. The idea is that if you spend enough time with someone and you’re filming them, if you just get out of the way and let life unfold, there will be revealing moments that give you special insight into that person’s character and the challenges they face and their special way in the world. I don’t know how someone like myself, if they were coming up now, could put themselves through college. I don’t know if the work in the salmon cannery or elsewhere would be available. I don’t know if the Pell Grant would be available. I really worry that the gap between the haves and the have nots is growing ever wider. I worry about what kind of society that creates. s S.Z.: You’ve said: “My films attempt to answer the question, how does a person grow?” In your experience, how can a person grow and why is that important? “So many o f my film s have been about ivhat happens . seftf-w someone reaches out to someone eke and ivluil that j response looks like f - Bnoff ¿M t/V W P HO TO BY DIEG O DIAZ The Portland film m aker goes behind bars to document the families living on both sides o f the fence o f Oregon’s only women’s prison BY SUE ZALOKAR single, working mother and a pair of divorced grandparents. He was the first in atch Brian Lindstrom’s recent films his family to go to college, attending the and it’s clear the importance the University of Oregon, Rutgers and Lewis & filmmaker places on compassion. Clark College before heading to Columbia “Finding Normal” is about recovering for his masters. I asked him about this addicts who reach out to help others experience and how it contributed to his through recovery. “Alien Boy” explores worldview. issues of police accountability in the case o f James Chasse, a man with schizophrenia Brian Lindstrom: My mom was a who was brutally killed by members of the bartender and my dad was a produce person Portland Police Department and a at Fred Meyer. They divorced when I was 7 Multnomah County deputy after a years old. No one else in my family had confrontation on Sept 17, 2006. The film gone to college. It was kind of understood was applauded by critics and the public alike that I would go, although we never really when it premiered at the Portland talked about what that would look like or International Film Festival in February how that would be paid for. 2013. I put myself through college. I worked in Lindstrom is currently working on a film a salmon cannery in Cordova, Alaska, for about the Family Preservation Project, a nine summers. program that is contracted through Peninsula Community College at Coffee S.Z.: in the fishing industry can Creek Correctional Facility, Oregon’s only be very demanding. Nine summers. That says women’s prison. The working title is a lot about your character. “Mothering Inside,” and the anticipated completion date is Jan. 15. B.L.: The freedom of putting myself Lindstrom and his wife, Cheryl Strayed through school also meant that I didn’t have (“Wild,” “Dear Sugar”), are raising a family to answer to anyone about what I wanted to here in Portland, his native town. The film study or what I wanted to be. Sometimes version of Strayed’s popular I’m sure I felt a little jealous about my autobiographical novel, “Wild,” is now in classmates whose college educations were theaters. paid for. But I certainly didn’t envy them Lindstrom was raised in Portland by a STAFF WRITER W B.L.: (Long pause) I think a person grows from realizing an obligation they might have to other people. That can take many different forms. So many of my films have been about what happens when someone reaches out to someone else and what that response looks like. Like in “Finding Normal,” recovering mentors who have been through the hell of addiction and have a hard-won knowledge about what it takes to stay clean. They reach out to people newly into recovery and, by sharing their own stories, give that person hope. I think different versions of that kind of happen every day in these .little exchanges. We never really know what is at stake or what some simple statement or inquiry like, “How are you today?” can mean to someone. I’ll never forget, when I transferred into Lewis & Clark College as a junior, I felt completely like a fish out of water because I was putting myself through school. I was with kids who were talking about prep school and trust funds and I was like, * “Where am I? I don’t belong here.” I was really thinking maybe I needed to make a change, and my film professor, Stuart Kaplan, just sat down and had lunch with me. Suddenly I felt that I did belong there. This professor was showing an interest in me. It was one of those pivotal moments in my life and it was simply him taking the time to sit down and ask me how I was doing. I think sometimes we forget how those small gestures can have profound impact I’m reminded of Dr. Russell Sacco in “Alien Boy.” He went to the same church as Jim. I’m always so touched by his story. He just decided that he was not going to let Jim’s mental illness be a barrier to them talking. As he put i t “I’m just a person, Jim’s just a person. We’re here in church, I should just talk to him.” And so Russell did th a t every Sunday he would talk to Jim and at the beginning, Jim wouldn’t really respond. He wouldn’t say anything. And very slowly Jim started to say “Hi” back to him. And they gradually built a relationship. I’m sure that relationship made a big difference in Jim’s life because not m a n y See LINDSTROM, page 9 Coffee Creek Correctional Facility, the setting for Brian Lindstrom’s latest film, opened in 2001. It was built to accommodate the rise in inmates as a result of the state’s new mandatory minimum sentencing laws. It is Oregon’s only women’s prison. With more than 1,600 beds, it far and away surpassed the previous 200-bed Women’s Correctional Center in Salem.
