As a media partner for 2025’s Portland Festival of Cinema, Animation & Technology, the Filmmaker Mixer Podcast extended review opportunities to the Official Selections who were made by Portland-based filmmakers.
THE WILD HISTORY OF WILLAMETTE FALLS screens during the Documentary Shorts: Real Stories Rewired
Friday August 8th at 6pm
Theory Theater
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https://tickets.omsi.edu/events/01977fca-24ff-9865-2cf8-15a92a3fc40d
Not the end, is the last title card in the short documentary by Kyle LaMontagne called, The Wild History of Willamette Falls. I would have wanted more of this story-even if Kyle hadn’t given that teaser. Once again, Kyle has impressed me with his storytelling skills- this time including clever animations to those bits of history not caught on film- like the ice age. To give context- the area of Willamette Falls has been used, per the short, for many purposes- most notably being the end of the Oregon Trail.
Available news clippings, maps, historical photographs, and even painting and other such relevant ephemera are brilliantly utilized by Kyle who seamlessly and cleverly blends these images into an informative short documentary. I think I was most struck by learning the statistic that from 1800 to 1850, 90% of First Nations Peoples died of disease from the settlers. As hard as that was to hear, Kyle did a great job balancing the information because luckily there has been a recent boon in the area with the reclaiming and repurposing of the land- and that brings us back to Not the End. I look forward to learning more.
The Wild History of Willamette Falls is an imaginative and engaging documentary that covers long spans of history in short amount of time.
FILMMAKER MIXER PODCAST
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