Award-winning director shows ecodocumentaries at special festival

Oregon’s soggy reputation is a running joke outside our state’s borders, but it is not a well-deserved one. In fact, Oregon has a lower annual rainfall than many other states, including Virginia, and often struggles with problems of drought.

While that’s hard to believe during a steady spring downpour, it’s something that intrigues director Dave Eckert, a new arrival in Corvallis. Eckert and his wife, Annette Mills, moved to Corvallis in November from Virginia, after spending a long time researching Oregon’s potential.

“We wanted a medium-sized community with a real downtown, and real agriculture around so there was food and it was accessible,” he said, “and we wanted a place where we could sell our car and live car-free.”

With relatives living in several parts of Oregon, the state seemed like a good place to relocate, and because having a university nearby and plenty of good water sources were also priorities, Corvallis was the perfect fit.

“There really was nowhere else,” he said, that matched all their criteria.

It’s also a great place for Eckert to continue his career as a documentary filmmaker, something that he wouldn’t have considered doing 10 years ago. But in 1999, Eckert began making a film about a local watershed in his community simply because he felt it needed to be done, and no one else was stepping up to do it.

Eckert had worked with cameras previously, while studying the body movements of adults with physical disabilities. But the idea of storytelling through film, and the entire editing process, was a new world.

“I had a lot of people to help me,” Eckert said. The Washington, D.C., area has a high concentration of filmmakers, although most do their work elsewhere in the country and keep the D.C. area as their home base. He depended on the expertise of others to help hone his craft, but he made plenty of beginner’s mistakes.

“One was underestimating the time it would take, and one was underestimating the cost,” he said. The project was supposed to last three months; it lasted 18. And because Eckert didn’t have a sponsor, he was paying out of pocket for the filmmaking.

He said he was grateful for epiphanies along the way, which taught him that he shouldn’t begin a film with a set agenda, but should see where the story leads. He also learned three key components to making a viewable documentary; get a famous person to appear, use your own music, create a catchy theme song and get a lot of people involved in the film.

“If you’re trying to get an issue-oriented film viewed, the buzz is often more important than the film itself,” he said.

The system worked. His film screened first at a historic theater in his hometown, and then at the D.C. Environmental Film Festival, where out of 100 films, his was the only one to feature a local environmental issue.

The result of his film was the allocation of $2 million to help the health of the Potomac River Dyke Marsh, and a change in local planning processes that would help protect the marsh.

Since that time, Eckert has made four additional films, all of them based around water issues, and he’s been contracted to make each one. He now runs a production company called Virginia Village Productions, and he calls his first five films “The Watershed Quintology,” although he said he didn’t intentionally set out to focus on water issues.

Now that he’s relocated, Eckert has found his new community has plenty of fodder for new film projects.

The couple moved to Corvallis from Falls Church, Va., where they were considered cornerstones of the community for two decades of community service work, mainly in the area of environmental protection and sustainability. They hoped to buy a house in Corvallis, but after temporarily moving into a vegetarian rooming house called “Veggie House,” near campus, they decided they might settle there instead.

“We’re re-questioning the value of buying a house,” Eckert said. After all, living in a group setting and sharing resources is an important way to live in a sustainable way.

Eckert’s new project combines documentary making and grass-roots sustainability work. He is starting a rainwater harvesting demonstration project at the First Alternative Co-op in south Corvallis that will collect rainwater from the store’s roof and store it for use on the business’s landscaping. He will be filming the project’s process, from the installation of the cistern to its eventual use by the store.

Eckert has garnered volunteer help from a variety of sources, including building and planning experts and government entities. He hopes that the project and the resulting documentary will be educational tools promoting rainwater harvesting for other businesses and homes.

Another local project Eckert has become involved in is a monthly eco-film festival launching Friday from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m., at the Westminster House, 101 N.W. 23rd St. The free event will feature two of Eckert’s short films, music by The Dixie Chickens and the Earthwalkers, and refreshments. The next screening takes place in late June, and features a film by Don Boucher, music by the Raging Grannies, and more free snacks.

The events will continue through the summer, and Eckert’s hope is that each film and discussion will prompt Corvallis residents to take a closer look at how they interact with the environment and what changes they might make to improve the world. Talking is a good start, but action is essential, he said.

“It’s only successful if we do something.”

To find out more about Eckert’s film production company, go to www.virginiavillageproductions.com.