Mighty Tacoma
2011, 9 minutes 11 seconds, digital video
synopsis:
Commissioned by the Tacoma Art Museum, Mighty Tacoma opens with a the song of a cello at dawn that tapers off to a foghorn wail. The sun rises to greet Mount Rainier, highest peak of the Cascade Range and originally named Tacoma, or Tahoma. The majestic and melancholy score remains in the foreground of the film, as it shifts between images of industrial machinery with the Olympics in the background, to a dock and work raft. Marine commerce has long played a role in the European settlement of the Pacific Northwest, and Tacoma is its workhorse, a fact that holds a grandeur and a pathos well represented in the film. Scabby logs scraped out of Northwest clearcut, farm equipment awaiting deployment–all pause here at the port. A beautiful, modern poem of a film that ends with the promise of some passing orcas, wolves of the sea.
credits:
score: Lori Goldston
cinematography: Rankin Renwick
sound recording: Kyle Hanson
edit: Rankin Renwick
online edit : Tim Scotten