Profile: Filmmaker Sarah Koenigsberg's "Beaver Believers"

There’s a saying about making documentary film that likens it to taking a bunch of sentences, slicing them up, putting them in a bag, dumping the bag out on the table, then trying to rearrange the pieces into a cohesive story, according to Walla Walla filmmaker Sarah Koenigsberg.

Documentary filmmaker Sarah Koenigsberg.

Koenigsberg’s first documentary, The Beaver Believers, tells the story of an unlikely group of activists from around the country who are united in trying to bring back the American beaver from the edge of extinction. These advocates believe that the beaver is a keystone species, that its near-demise at the hands of fur traders caused much of the West to become arid land, and that returning the beaver to healthy population levels would restore ecosystems, creating the biodiversity, complexity, and resiliency watersheds need to absorb the impacts of climate change.

Already well-received at the Banff Mountain Film Festival, the film is a finalist in the prestigious Vancouver International Mountain Film Festival, and will be screened at the Environmental Film Festival at Yale. The film was several years in the making, and shot in eight western states as well as Mexico and Canada.

“We had to really work as a team,” she said of the challenge of working with college interns to film the easily spooked animals in their natural habitat. “We had to learn to intuitively sense each other's movements. It was a really cool little dance that we ended up working out. Especially for students who'd never done anything like that before, watching them get it and watching their confidence build.”

Her path to becoming a filmmaker was circuitous. Like many young people, it took time for Koenigsberg to find her calling.

One of the stars of her first feature film.

With some theater experience in her early years, by the time Koenigsberg got to college she’d decided it wasn’t the career for her. An introductory class in environmental studies intrigued her, as did a geology class, both of which exposed her to the problems of pollution and climate change. An introductory film class she took required making a short film, and while putting it together she had her epiphany.

“The first time I put some clips together in a timeline, and put in some music, and [saw] what happens when clips go together with music, a light bulb clicked,” she said.

A critical component in her filmmaking style came when she did work with place-based collaboratives in the West. “[I was] meeting small groups of people, potentially with very different mindsets, recognizing that if they all care about the place they live, even if they disagree, they need to figure out how to work together and hear each other," she said, using a collaborative rather than a litigation model.

She moved to New York City, volunteering to work on film crews, jumping in to grab a light or hold a boom microphone. That dogged persistence earned her a stint on a film crew in Ecuador, which cemented her decision to go into documentary filmmaking.

“Being in the field, collecting stories of a community that had no voice in the world, but they were trying to have more sustainable agriculture to lead to better lives for their kids,” Koenigsberg said of her time in Ecuador. “It all just resonated.”

She returned to Walla Walla and started her own film company called Tensegrity Productions, after a term coined by architect Buckminster Fuller to describe the fluid interconnectivity in nature, a tensional integrity, or tensegrity.

Living out her principles and challenging her own presumptions is a key to being a successful documentary filmmaker, Koenigsberg believes.

“No matter how good your education, there are always other modalities of knowledge, other bodies of experience from living and working in a place, that you've got to listen to,” she said. “If you go in assuming you already know everything that person has to offer as a character or as a viewpoint, you're not going to give them the chance to give you the most little beautiful nugget of truth. You're just turning them into a very flat character. I want to find very vibrant characters who, through their personal journey, are hinting at much larger, global-level issues.”

Photos from Tensegrity Productions.

Kay Boyle, the Most Dangerous Writer in America

"Kay Boyle is the most dangerous woman in America." - S.I. Hayakawa, president of San Francisco State College (now University)

Kay Boyle by Man Ray.

Local filmmaker Kelley Baker has been working to tell the story of this dangerous woman for nearly 30 years. In 1983 he was researching the stories of the expatriates who made up the demimonde of Paris in the 1920s. A name, that of writer Kay Boyle, kept coming up. Further digging revealed that Boyle was at the epicenter of much of that world and knew most of the key players, writers like Gertrude Stein, James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway, as well as artists like Marcel Duchamp, Picasso and Brancusi.

Married three times and the mother of six children, she wrote constantly, publishing nearly 40 works of fiction and nonfiction. She was also a political activist and human rights advocate, involving herself in movements from anti-McCarthyism to civil rights to protesting the war in Vietnam. In short, a filmmaker's dream subject.

Kay with her second husband, Laurence Vail.

"Kay Boyle was an amazing role model—not just for women or artists, she was a role model for all of us," said Baker of the woman who has inspired him to make the film he's titled "Dangerous: Kay Boyle."

"She was an example of how to live a full life and have a profound effect on the lives of others. I don’t want to see this legacy lost."

Baker is on the verge of finishing his film, a journey that's taken him from a wet-behind-the-ears young filmmaker to an accomplished professional who's worked on films with the likes of Gus Van Sant, Todd Haines and Will Vinton. His work on the Boyle film has been awarded the support of the Fredericksburg Athenaeum, which allows him to raise tax-deductible contributions for the $20,000 he needs to finish the film.

Kelley Baker.

"There are a lot of interesting projects out there that need your help, so why choose this one?" he asks. His answer? "Because if Kay’s life and work inspires just one person to speak out, not be intimidated and to help change someone’s life, then your donation did something important."

For as little as $25 you can get your name on the credits of the film, and the perks go up from there. I urge you to consider donating or, heck, to donate in the name of one of the folks on your holiday gift list. After all, who wouldn't like to see their name in lights?

All photos from Kelley's website.

Naked Ladies Redux

We wrote a couple of weeks ago about a documentary made here in Portland recounting the story of famed photographer Edward Weston and his wife, Charis Wilson, which was making its world premier at the NW Film Center. The premier itself was completely sold out, with so much demand for tickets that the venue was moved from the Whitsell Auditorium to a much larger room at the Masonic Hall. Despite the move, there were so many people clamoring for tickets that they presented a simultaneous showing at the Whitsell, and had a second showing after that!

The movie itself, titled The Eloquent Nude: The Love and Legacy of Edward Weston and Charis Wilson, was a moving and exceptional story about Weston at the peak of his powers and the young woman who was his model, muse and, eventually, his wife. The story is related in interviews with Charis, now 92, and in very well-done silent black-and-white reenactments that were filmed using period-appropriate cameras and film that fill in the gaps between interviews and photographs from the period.

If you weren't one of the nearly 1,000 people who saw the film that first night and are interested in seeing it, it's coming to Cinema 21 for one week, from Mar. 31 through April 5. It's one you will want to see, whether you're interested in photography or just want to see a very well-made film about a passionate, creative couple who made history together. I can't recommend this highly enough, and I guarantee you'll be glad you went.

Details: The Eloquent Nude: The Love and Legacy of Edward Weston and Charis Wilson at Cinema 21. Mar. 31-Apr. 5; nightly at 7 pm and Sat.-Sun. at 2 pm. Cinema 21, 616 NW 21st Ave. Phone 503-223-4515.

Naked Ladies!

Now that I've got your attention, I have to admit that we're talking about nudes here...the kind of naked ladies that don't want your lust as much as they (or the artist) want to pique your interest. The artist, in this case, is one of the best naked-lady-artists (or artists, period) ever to hoist a camera, Edward Weston. And the naked lady of the title is his model and, eventually, his wife, Charis Wilson.

The point is, the NW Film Center is premiering a movie about them called The Eloquent Nude: The Love and Legacy of Edward Weston and Charis Wilson. It was made by Northwest Documentary Arts and Media, a local production company dedicated to creating quality documentary works in the Pacific Northwest. The story of this couple's passionate relationship and collaboration in creating some of the most significant photographic work of our time is told by Charis Wilson herself. Now age 91, she fills in the often-overlooked intimate details of their relationship and how it shaped modern American photography.

Details: The Eloquent Nude: The Love and Legacy of Edward Weston and Charis Wilson. Mar. 8, 7 pm. Tickets $7 available at the NW Film Center website. Whitsell Auditorium, 1219 SW Park Ave. Phone 503-221-1156.