Filmmaker Ian McCluskey

Several years ago, Ian McCluskey’s film Eloquent Nude appeared on Oregon Lens to great acclaim. This year his team of talented filmmakers at NW Documentary took on the archetypical summer day.

Summer Snapshot combines real-life stories, music by local band The Dimes and one day spent by the Sandy River shot in super-8 Kodachrome film to create a portrait of nostalgia for youth-filled summer memories.

No less successful than Eloquent Nude, the film has been to film festivals across the country and world. Arts & Life sat down with McCluskey to learn more about what went into Summer Snapshot.

What inspired this film?

Two things inspired the film. The first was when Kodak decided they were going to discontinue Kodachrome film and at the same time pull Polaroid. And even though Kodachrome and Polaroid hadn’t really played a significant role in my own life, it almost felt like it did.

There’s this assumed nostalgia for this analog way of looking at memory, and all those home movies from the '50s, '60s, '70s — they’re all Kodachrome. This really rich, saturated, grainy film. There’s almost this American icon of what the past looked like that we’ve all inherited that’s not digital. It’s all sort of faded and grainy and has these shaggy-haired kids with aviator sunglasses and tube socks and cutoffs and they’re usually throwing a Frisbee.

So when that discontinued I wanted a chance to use that material, use that media before it was too late. It was my last opportunity to use that and it got me thinking, "What are the endings and ending points of life? And the ending point of youth?" It made me reflect on my own transition from youth into adulthood and what those memories were that stayed with me.

And one of them was a carefree summer day. And the more friends I talked to, the more I found that they all had an embodiment of a river trip, almost an archetype of a day. It could have been to a river, it could have been to a lake, it could have been to the beach. It almost didn’t matter if they had grown up in Vermont or Colorado or Oregon. You could basically replace certain words and it would all be the same.

It usually involved everyone loading up in a car and driving to a secret spot or favorite spot and spending a hot day sunning and soaking up rays, strumming an instrument, probably a guitar, jumping in the river swimming, and sitting by a campfire. And then when the last light of day finally withdraws, you have to give up and surrender. And it gives you that sort of weird pull where you know the day is slipping away, but you’re also trying to fix the memory of it: "Remember this. This will matter, this will last or this will be something you want to hang onto later in life." It’s almost that active, in-the-moment processing of memory and nostalgia.

Can you talk about your process editing the film?

The audio underneath it is interview and the visuals are all stuff that we shot originally. I shot it with some old thrift-store cameras and with some film from Kodak.

We rounded up a group of volunteers, all local. We set off to a spot on the Sandy River that I knew and where I’d actually swam myself with friends. We spent a day by the river and filmed it with Super 8 cameras and footage, and then we edited that together and cut the interviews underneath it. It creates a visual story which is based on true events that aren’t necessarily true. It’s more like a narrative but the interviews are all nonfiction.

What was it like to take your film to international film festivals?

It was funny being in France and seeing the subtitles in French and being in a totally French audience. A couple thousand people were sitting there and there’s the Sandy River and there’s a bunch of Oregonians. It made me homesick for Portland, actually, watching it in France.