I’ve been thinking of the word “eidetic” to describe the nostalgia of long-time Whidbey Island residents. Eidetic is defined as mental images that are so vivid and detailed that they seem real, and sometimes my vivid memory of the island skews the current image of it. I am a long-time resident who experiences this phenomenon. Having lived primarily in the same house on Whidbey Island for more than 35 years, I’ve seen a lot of changes. Despite being a filmmaker and looking around with a motion camera in the present day, I am prone to nostalgia. Sometimes, the distinct vision of Whidbey Island in my mind’s eye conflicts with reality or emphasizes that I’m living a sort of magical realism.
The rambling acreage of Ebey’s Landing Historical Reserve is a beautiful place, photogenic as a little kid with a puppy, and a location that can be embraced by poets and artists to inspire the sort of craft and creativity found in the seven films shown at the “Ebey’s Reserve Film Slam.”
The films were created under strict time pressure and required certain elements that weren’t revealed to filmmakers until the very beginning of the 50-consecutive-hour creative marathon. Film teams went from rough ideas to writing, filming, editing, adding music, and everything else it takes to create a finished product in that remarkably short period of time. This year, seven films made it to the finish line on May 6 in the Coupeville High School Performing Arts Center.
James Linsley was a simple man who wasn’t impressed by “gadgets” or flashy things. Nothing symbolizes that presence more than the small brass top he would spin every year on Christmas Eve—a tradition begun by his father David Linsley in 1868. Since then, there were only two years when the top wasn’t spun. This year it will spin for the first time on the floor of my home on Whidbey Island.
We traveled 1,500 miles from the prairie city of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, to this magical island that Colonel Isaac Ebey called “almost a paradise of nature.” His quest to find a new home to settle in with his family paralleled our own in many ways. Just as Isaac brought his family to Ebey’s Prairie in the early 1850s, I came here with my wife and youngest son and eventually brought my mother. It was while learning about our new declared home that we discovered the Ebey’s Landing Film Slam contest. Fifty hours to write a script, video, edit, and turn in a video about Ebey’s Landing National Historic Reserve with the theme of “Find Your Park.”
While parents have long wondered how to get kids to eat their veggies, Cary Peterson has cultivated a simple solution that has students clamoring for “garden tacos” that they grow themselves in their school’s backyard.
Half a world away from Whidbey, an intrepid group of Ukrainian women have refused to let one of the world’s worst nuclear disasters keep them from returning to their beloved home: Chernobyl. To tell their incredible story, award-winning filmmaker, “adventure diva” and Hedgebrook alumna Holly Morris is bringing her unflinching documentary “The Babushkas Of Chernobyl” to The Clyde Theatre.
Orson Ossman, a Whidbey native, returns home this week for the 10th year reunion of his 2006 South Whidbey High School graduating class.
When Mark Dworkin sat in the projectionist’s booth of The Clyde Theatre in the 1970s making sure the images on the screen kept moving, he didn’t know his own movies would one day be projected on that screen.
I’m also pretty sure that if WLM was suddenly not available it would be missed.
