Students J.J. Burkart, Ayako Katooka and Michael Ferry show off their Emmys. Photo courtesy of Dan Miller.

J.J. Burkart, ’03, earns top regional honors for Outstanding Student Documentary Project for his history of Silver Falls, Ore.

After months of traveling I5 to collect archival information, conduct interviews and shoot footage and scores of hours more organizing that material into a film, recent University of Oregon graduate J.J. Burkart landed an unexpected payoff for all his hard work—an Emmy Award for his student documentary, “Reclaimed Treasure: The History of Silver Falls.”

Burkart’s film, co-produced with Mike Ferry, was one of two nominations in the Outstanding Student Award category from the UO. The other, “For the Love of the Tune: Irish Women and Traditional Music,” was produced by Carol Spellman and Erik Talbert as Spellman’s thesis project in folklore.

All of the nominees attended the 40th annual Northwest Regional Emmy Awards Gala on June 21 in Seattle. “It was super exciting. I was all ready to start taking pictures of the other group—then they said, ‘And the Emmy goes to ...,’ and showed a clip of my documentary,” Burkart says. “I was in shock.”

But not everyone associated with his project was so surprised. Burkart’s film was developed in Assistant Professor Dan Miller’s Documentary Production class, in which students create documentaries on Oregon history, society and culture both for the Oregon Documentary Project and for broadcast on Oregon Public Broadcasting.

Burkart’s is the second regional Emmy to be awarded to a UO student documentary filmmaker. “The Heppner Flood of 1903” won in 1996, and this year the city of Heppner will use the film to publicize the centennial anniversary of the flood. “Documentaries produced in the program have won a number of nominations and awards over the past several years,” says Miller.

Oregon Documentary Project films pepper the OPB program schedule. “We are averaging three broadcasts a week,” says Miller. “We had four approved for OPB broadcast this year, and I predict we will have at least eight on by year’s end.”

Burkart’s subject, Silver Falls, had a personal resonance before it became the focus of an academic project. A frequent visitor to the area, he originally intended to examine the Falls as a spiritual place. Instead, he says, “I started looking into the history and realized there was such an interesting story there.”

Winning the Emmy put an exclamation point on Burkart’s UO career.
Says Burkart, “When Dr. Miller suggested we enter the film, I thought we didn’t have a chance and just forgot about it. It turned out to be a great experience.”

Short video clips of “Reclaimed Treasure: The History of Silver Falls” are available at odp.uoregon.edu/projects/02-03/index.html