One month of work by Woody Guthrie in May 1941 has turned out to be a two-year project for several faculty members at the University who are documenting the legendary folk musician’s experiences.
“Roll On Columbia: Woody Guthrie and the Bonneville Power Administration” made its public debut Sunday at the Bijou Art Cinemas in front of “a nearly full house,” said Lynette Boone, who helped produce the film.
“There have been extremely positive responses,” said journalism Professor Denise Matthews, co-creator of the documentary. “It’s a thrill to see when they laugh at moments you thought were funny.”
Matthews and media services director Mike Majdic spent countless hours and some of their own money on production.
“It has been quite an investment of time and emotions,” Majdic said.
The documentary will be used as part of the Smithsonian Institution’s exhibit on Guthrie this summer in Washington, D.C. as well as the annual Guthrie Folk Music Festival in Oklahoma, Matthews said. Additionally, the producers are in contact with several TV programs, including the History Channel and Oregon Public Broadcasting. Matthews said it is likely that the documentary will be shown on at least one of those stations this summer.
The relationship between Guthrie and the Bonneville Dam is the focus of the film, with an emphasis on the month that Guthrie was hired by the Bonneville Power Administration to create a song each day. By the end of the 1941 project, Guthrie had assembled 26 songs in 30 days.
“There are a lot of lessons we can learn from this,” Majdic said.
Folk musician Arlo Guthrie, the son of Woody, and Pete Seeger, also a folk artist, are two of the 14 people interviewed for the documentary.
“It was amazing for all of those people to be in such solid condition,” Matthews said of the interview subjects, most of whom are in their 80s. “The timeliness was superb.”