The Portland Movie2001

A collaborative epistolary film shot and edited by Susannah Slocum. When my friend Susannah relocated from New York City to Portland, Oregon in early 2000, I devised an intimate long-distance collaboration. Working at a film lab in NYC, I would mail letters containing rolls of unexposed 16mm film to Susannah, who would shoot her new Pacific Northwest landscape and return the footage. I would then process the film at work, screening the results during my lunch breaks before mailing back both processed film and written responses. This extended correspondence through cinema culminated when I visited Portland that summer, where we completed the film together, transforming our epistolary exchange into a shared document of daily life.