Vanessa Renwick

A woman observes another woman on a surveillance camera and describes her actions, with no other interaction between them.

This video was made for the re-release on LP of the cassette of "Music and Poetry of the Kesh", a soundtrack that Todd Barton and Ursula K. Le Guin made to accompany her book "Always Coming Home".

A tour through the mind of obsessive collagist and front yard artist Richard Tracy. While confined to a psychiatric ward at age 50, "Richart" Tracy made this discovery: "If you want to get out of the hospital - start making art like this. They will get rid of you - fast!" Seventeen years later, he's turned three residential lots into a massive black and white maze of his visions. This documentary takes a trip through his yard, art, methods and his mind. Wait until you see what he keeps in his basement!

An interview with a pro-lifer who has been picketing an abortion clinic for 6 years, 6 days a week, 6 hours a day. In every city one can find examples of a zealot taking a stand, wielding a sign, registering outrage to the traffic lights and passersby. Why does a man stage a 6-hour, 6+year daily protest at an abortion clinic? Who are the targets of his moral disruptions? What is wrong with people? This video is a result of a spontaneous desire to ask these question with a camera, where culture creator meets culture judge on his home turf, a strip of sidewalk on a street named after one of the city’s founders. The Ladies Accordion Gospel Team provide a spirited and spiteful respite with a performance of The March of the Pro-lifer. When the end result is rage, fear and scorn, it’s hard to know who the good guys are. Where do you stand?

A swan song for the factory age. Every autumn, a South America-bound colony of Vaux’s Swifts numbering in the tens of thousands enjoy a layover in a Portland, Oregon elementary school chimney. Sunset brings a vortex of swirling shapes, whose each tiny piece combines to form a hypnotic, ever-changing pattern; an equinoctial rhythm beats in every swoop of the organic overhead spiral. The defunct industrial chimney is our own demise, and yet the relentless, fluid choreography of the tiny migrants signals a new start, the turning wheel.

Four alternating stories about mundane, personal methods of control. Children and a developmentally disabled adult operate control panels made out of paper, lists, monsters and their own bodies.

A visceral personal response to surviving a near-fatal case of Toxic Shock Syndrome. Toxic Shock combines intimate taboos of needles, blood and tampons with tried and true hands-on self-defense, set to a spare, penetrating and unknown score provided by a cassette tape gifted by a forgotten friend. A call to arms; what will you do in defense of your body? "Penetration up the wazoo, blood, fire, gas, needles, tampons, liquid power and cocktails of the burning sort. My experimental response to sweating out near death with Toxic Shock Syndrome." --Vanessa Renwick

This journal entry of a film describes a young artist in the midst of over two years of shoe-free peregrinations, with a spare, mesmerizing narration that reflects a landscape ranging from the slimy underbelly of dirty Chicago to a hitchhiker’s perch in the back of a dusty pickup truck.

Vanessa Renwick's memorial to murals made in the 40's by Oregon switchman Tom Stefopoulos. This revealing folk documentarian records the restoration of these marvelous columns, featured in Van Zant's Drugstore Cowboy.

Mosaic artist Jeffrey Bale transformed a former Portland crack house into a stone art paradise, an urban sanctuary and bird haven. Crack House, edited in-camera, is a cosmic burst of color and sound created to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the introduction of Super-8 film.

Ivan Besse managed the Strand movie theater manager in Britton, South Dakota during the Depression. Besse owned a 16mm camera and used it to shoot people at their various activities around town during the day. He screened the local footage before feature films and newsreels as a lure to entice paying customers into the theater.

Things are fucked up. Even before Covid! Get your panties untangled with some geologic time. "Realism, compassion, hostility, Mother Nature, rage, spirituality in your very unique hard working tough no apologies way making art Herstory Energystory. Really gnarly" -Chris Johanson

The Trojan Nuclear Power Plant, with its 499-foot tall cooling tower that loomed over its otherwise bucolic Columbia river setting, is the only commercial nuclear power plant ever built in the state of Oregon, at the cost of $450 million in the 1970's economy (almost 3 trillion dollars in today’s money). [...] "Portrait #2: Trojan" is a sublime representation of the surrounding environment leading dramatically up to the moment of demolition. Sam Coomes’ flawless score provides stunning sonic context for the happy ending of the Oregon nuclear skyline. The film is an effective prescription in prevention of politically-triggered anxiety and depression in post-modern Cascadia.

"Renwick recounts a sad time in her life, when a friend was dying and she suddenly became aware of the presence of crows. The dark birds in turn point her to the practice of counting crows, which is both a children's rhyming game and a form of divination in which the number of crows suggests events in the future. Eight crows augur death: nine crows reference a secret. Renwick combines these fragments with glimpses of imagery - a bed, the crows captures as silhouettes, a man's twisted body - to craft a lyrical and moving essay that works its magic through poetic accretion rather than narrative logic." -Holly Willis, L.A. Weekly

NO HANDS! NO BRAKES! NO CLOTHES! The True Story of the of the Yodeling Lesson, By Moe Bowstern, bicyclist: I was recently arrived in Portland from Chicago and always on my bike, delighted by this rainy city of manageable size and climate, generous, well-paved streets and hills! After the endless flat grind of the prairie city, hills were a daily thrill. I began teasing my way no-handed down Mississippi Hill, venturing further and further before seizing my handlebars. One morning I threw my leg over my bicycle with a bad case of the f*ckits, heading to the train station to bid a dear friend farewell, and I decided I just did not care. I stuck my chin into the wind and kept my hands off the handlebars all the way down. By the time I arrived exhilarated at Union Station, I no longer cared about my departing comrade; I could ride no-handed down Mississippi Hill! I was going to be fine! ...

Vanessa Renwick's mesmerizing stare at the most efficient grain terminal at the port of Vancouver, B.C.

Short by Vanessa Renwick.

A video made with vintage 16mm educational footage transferred to video and layered. The images came to my mind for the 17 days that the orca whale mother pushed her dead infant around in the Salish Sea this past fall 2018 in what biologists referred to as a "tour of grief". This piece to me is about how the ocean is a gigantic home to so many we know very little about, who are migrating all the time. And it is about hope for something better. And love of your offspring. And it is a peaceful slow and hypnotizing work, with the fluidity and beauty of the oceans inhabitants. Marisa Anderson created a guitar score and wave and whale breath sounds were added to create a complimentary sound design, the waves and the breathes of the whales soothing and connecting with our own breaths.

A collection of films from an eclectic array of contributors commissioned to raise funds for the Bristol independent cinema The Cube.

A wolf dog’s restlessness prompts a pilgrimage from the burly sprawl of Chicago to investigate the myth of San Francisco. A hitchhiking triumph–even with the enormous canine companion, the camera-toting traveler never waited longer than 5 minutes roadside before ‘strangers in the brotherhood of hitchhiking’ furthered the pair down the long road west. The narration showcases the filmmaker’s gift with words as well as images. Viewing the film, we become hitchhikers as well, drawn into the mesmerizing, flickering story. Highlights include encounters with famous beatnik writers and the acquisition of a Holy Grail that has since influenced Renwick’s bright career–a copy of James Broughton’s Seeing the Light, purchased, perfectly, at City Lights Books.