Wild & Scenic Film Festival Filmmaker Feature

The Wild & Scenic Film Festival in Nevada City, California is one of my favorite in the country, in a place that I’ve been visiting for fifteen years. Most recently, my film An Imperfect Advocate played there and they conducted a short interview with me about my career and the process of making this unique film, which gave me the opportunity to tell the story of someone I know well and admire greatly. Here is the interview in full:

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2022 Official Selection “An Imperfect Advocate” was created by filmmaker Jim Aikman. We were grateful when Jim agreed to answer some questions for our Filmmaker Feature interview series. Continue reading to learn more about Jim and his filmmaking process:

Who are you? (where are you from, where do you live, why did you get into film, whatever you want to tell us really)

• I grew up in mid-Michigan, in a suburb of Lansing, spent my twenties in Boulder, Colorado and now live in Portland, Oregon. I became obsessed with film as a kid and my high school had a phenomenal video program, where I spent as many hours of the school day as I could, producing music videos, short films, PSAs and weekly TV broadcasts. Then I graduated from University of Michigan with degrees in English Lit and Film and thought I’d move to LA to pursue narrative filmmaking, but Planet Earth had just come out and the Banff Film Tour came through Ann Arbor and I felt inspired to chase stories of outdoor adventure. I’ve now been working in the adventure documentary space since 2008 and look forward to many more years doing this work.

How many films have you had in the festival?

• I think An Imperfect Advocate was my third or fourth film in Wild & Scenic, but maybe the first that I directed.

When was your first Wild & Scenic?

• I didn’t make it in person until 2016, when Martin’s Boat screened at the festival.

How many times have you attended?

• Once or twice.

What makes Wild & Scenic Film Festival special or unique?

• Nevada City is a very special place, and somewhere I spent a lot of time before I even heard of the festival. It’s a magical little nook in California. The lineup and ethos of Wild & Scenic are also exceptional and make it a unique lineup of films that aren’t as stoke-driven as some other festivals.

What inspires you to make films? What are your favorite stories to tell?

• People! It all comes down to the human spirit, overcoming odds, challenging one’s self and chasing weird dreams. Capturing people’s experiences and philosophies is a great privilege and I try to pay that back by creating work that is authentic and meaningful.

What inspired you to make this film?

• Every film I work on becomes a beloved object, but this one was especially important to me. It’s not every day you get to make a film about one of your best friends, somebody I know so well in my life that I could suddenly package into a story that expresses all the things I love most about him. In turn, he gave me the patience and access to tell his story in a certain way. On top of that, Graham’s message is really important and this film became a platform for his brand of advocacy, which is now the work that he is doing full time. In the end, it isn’t a film about climate change or activism, but about living an examined life and considering all the factors and vulnerabilities of the modern world. It’s all a tenuous balance, but Graham navigates it with a grace and optimism that I hope comes through in the film.

Do you have any projects you are currently working on?

• Yes! We’re very busy. Stories about evolutionary biology, wildlife conservation in Africa, and of course, climbing.

How has COVID impacted your filmmaking?

• Things are getting back to normal, but it felt like Covid just became one more challenge in an already fraught environment – we just had to adapt to new protocols and keep working.

Filmmaking is a laborious job, so what keeps you motivated?

• Cash money, baby. It’s just so lucrative! I don’t know why everyone hasn’t become a documentary filmmaker chasing impossible passion projects 😉 I’m kidding, but that’s a hard question to answer. I guess I don’t know how to do anything else at this point. Maybe some day I’ll move into the forest and hunt truffles for a living, but for now I like telling stories.

What are you currently reading/watching/listening to?

• Haha, I probably listen to three hours of podcasts a day. Everything from news to comedy to true crime. I’m re-reading White Fang and a book called The Lonely City. NYT Arts & Leisure Sunday edition. The Power of the Dog was one of the best films I’ve seen in years. Jackass Forever was good medicine.

What is on the horizon for you in 2022 and beyond?

• Growth. I’m building a new studio/coworking loft in Portland in a historic building right by the river. It’s a big space and something I plan to grow into and stay for a while.

"Gila Wild" Launches with American Rivers

I was honored to team up again with long time friend and collaborator Pete McBride for a story about inclusion, preservation and exploration: Gila Wild, a short documentary produced for American Rivers. Directed by Pete McBride, edited and produced by Jim Aikman.

This film project started out simply enough: Pete mounted a quick expedition during the early months of Covid to explore an intriguing area and promote its preservation. Few people in the country have even heard of this unique Wilderness area in New Mexico, myself included, but Pedro had heard it was one of the most beautiful and unspoiled waterways in the US. What he found exceeded all expectations.

Over the months that followed the expedition, the world was plunged into a long overdue conversation about social justice and inclusivity in the outdoors. And for Pete and me as producers, a different story emerged: one that explores the difference between conservation for conservation's sake and the needs of the locals who rely on it.

Film subjects Simon Sotelo and other Gila locals express their connection to this unique landscape, their historical reliance on it, and their vested need for its preservation - all of which certainly supercede a visit from outside recreationalists like Pete dropping in for a visit. The folks that call this place home are the ones that should be deciding it’s future, and participating in the conversations about how that takes place. The same should be considered in the conservation of all natural spaces, defering to the wishes and needs of the communities most affected by the health - or disease - of their natural surroundings. I think the film presents an important dialogue between largely unheard voices and the privilege of recreation.

As is often the case in documentary storytelling, I’m just an outsider - an interloper in someone else’s sacred space. But I hope that films like this can demonstrate the importance of listening to the voices that are left out of these conversations and give them a platform to be heard.

Rescue Dogs Nominated for Emmy Award

It’s always a pleasure working the camera for OPB, especially on this production on Mt Bachelor. Filming on skis brings its own challenges, but chasing dogs around the snow was a new one - they’re so much faster and more nimble. So it was an incredible honor to learn that the news segment we produced for Oregon Public Broadcasting was nominated for a 2021 Emmy Award for cinematography. It’s my third nomination in this field. This shoot was also an education in avalanche safety, a subject of which I am a lifelong student. Enjoy this short film about Avalanche Rescue Dogs and look for it on network television.

The Power of Story

I spend a lot of time thinking about storytelling. I’m typically reading at least 3-6 books at any given time, and I’ll often watch two movies back to back on a weeknight. In fact, I’ve built a career around sharing the stories that I find in the world, through films, photos and podcasts. So I started wondering - where does this lifelong fascination with stories come from?

Human beings are just another earth-bound animal making the most of our short lives. Eating, sleeping, playing. There are reminders every day of how intricately we are woven into the fabric of the natural world, like ants on an anthill. But of course, there are some things that set us apart - things that make us unique and distinct from all other animals.

Our humanity is defined by our sentience: awareness of self.. recognition of the singular blessing of being alive. And this sentience is really just awareness of a narrative - a story at which we are each individually at the center.

That sense of story is innate - we are born with it. We dream in stories; we experience that longing for resolution to the conflicts in our mind, to get back to sleep so we can complete some goal; we know deep down what a proper story resolution is; we construct our sense of the world around us in stories, each little event carried by a beginning, middle and end. Stories allow us to make sense of the world around us, so our brain has a thread on which to attach the events of our daily lives and the world around us.

Stories are the most effective vehicle for meaning, often the only way to get people to care about something. A person in Nebraska might not care about climate change, but show them a film about a polar brown starving on a shrinking iceberg and they will care about the bear. Hopefully.

These stories that we tell have power - the power to inform, and the power to misinform; to communicate values subliminally in ways that data never can, couching it in the human experience so it resonates and gets internalized in our brains. But that pendulum swings both ways, as stories can also be used against us - weaponized in propaganda and manipulated with disinformation, spinning whatever narrative will sell the most ad space, regardless of how nuanced the situation actually is.

It is the responsibility of storytellers to tread lightly, bring integrity to the process, and tell the truth. Not Truth with a capital “T”, but the truth of the subjects within the story. It is our responsibility to wield this power gracefully, and to understand it’s nuances. Because we, as a species, are defined by the sum total of the story that we tell.

So let’s make it a good one.

In the field with Oregon Field Guide

Oregon Field Guide is a beloved institution of public access television in the state of Oregon, playing on Oregon Public Broadcasting’s TV channel and online. I’ve been fortunate to join the crew and DP on a number of shoots for the show, and each one has been a memorable adventure.

The show explores different outdoor stories around the Pacific Northwest, always told in thoughtful and cinematic ways without compromising on the traditional “news” style coverage. It’s a slightly different approach to cinematography from the documentary style that I bring to most of my other work, and I enjoy stepping into the fundamentals of the medium. But some things are consistent: the camera needs to be stable, building clear beginning/middle/end to each scene, and audio quality is paramount.

The first one I worked on was about the Mother’s Day tradition on Mt St Helens, where hundreds of people come from all over the PNW to climb and ski the mountain in colorful dresses. We climbed the mountain twice for this piece.

The second was a story about Mt Bachelor Ski Resort’s Adaptive Sports program, which helps differently abled people get out on the slopes. It was super cool to chase these adaptive skiers around the resort.

Then this year I was able to help out with two back to back ski shoots. The first one brought me back to Mt Bachelor to cover the resort’s Avalanche Dog Rescue Program, documenting the training process that turns these adorable pooches into specialized tools on the mountain. They’re also training their next generation of canines, and Shasta the puppy was a star.

Then we headed up to northern Washington to click in with professional mountain guides and biologists to set and review camera traps that are helping them calculate wolverine populations in the Pacific Northwest. It was quite an adventure getting to these camera traps in the backcountry in a landscape that I’ll not soon forget - the North Cascades. The cameras didn’t yield any Wolverine images on our trip, but we got to see dozens that they had previously captured. Having come from the University of Michigan, wolverines definitely have a soft spot in my heart. And we lucked out with conditions, getting a little bit of fresh snow to make the skiing fantastic.

It’s always a pleasure working with the Field Guide team and I’m honored to be a part of this longstanding staple of local television.