History, Mystery and Odyssey was one of the Official Selections from the Portland Festival of Cinema, Animation & Technology’s 2024 festival that accepted the Filmmaker Mixer Podcast offer to review their work. It is a feature length documentary which tells the stories of six Portland animators: Jim Blashfield, Joanna Priestley, Rose Bond, Zak Margolis, Joan C. Gratz and Chel White. There’s a lot to appreciate with this documentary.
Firstly, it is a celebration of the creative process. It doesn’t matter whether your preferred medium of artistic expression is animation; if you are an artist of any kind, I can assure you that you will enjoy this film and come out of it feeling very inspired. Each animator discusses their process and their own creations with this exuberant passion that I think any artist has experienced themselves before, particularly when working on a project they loved. Though they speak casually on the matter, as an outsider, the words they say are incredibly insightful.
Secondly, I think particularly for filmmakers, some of these artist’s stories are incredibly important. Blashfield discusses his work being seen by the Talking Heads, and they liked his work and wanted him to animate a music video for them, and next thing he knew he was doing music videos for all kinds of famous people that were getting shown on MTV. Gratz’s story is also an important one, as she toiled away at one short film for about a decade (seven years of prep and three years of animation), and won an academy award for it. I think any aspiring filmmaker should see that they too could have their hard work and perseverance put in making something special that they loved, and have that thing they created take them places, and bring them all sorts of opportunities and even recognition.
The stories of each animator are told out of order; they take turns speaking their parts, but it transitions from animator to animator really, really smoothly. We also get to see some footage of the animator’s individual works as they are being discussed, and they are all incredible. This film had me feeling really encouraged to seek out their works, even beyond the ones that were shown. There’s not a dull moment in this film. The interviewees always had something interesting to say, and their works and stories were all so worth following.
-Madelyn, Filmmaker Mixer Correspondent
