In 1941, legendary folk singer Woody Guthrie, his wife, Mary, and their three children left southern California for Portland. He came to write songs for a documentary film about the dams being built on the Columbia River.

Unfortunately, upon arriving in Portland, he learned that plans for the film had been shelved. The family was at a loss—completely out of money and without prospects in the new city. The BPA agreed to give Guthrie a temporary contract for which he was expected to write a song a day.

Guthrie explored the Columbia and the dams along it daily, returning each night to Portland to write music and lyrics for songs that would later become an important part of the American folk lexicon. In 30 days in the Northwest Guthrie produced 26 songs, including Roll on Columbia, Jackhammer Blues, Pastures of Plenty, and Grand Coulee Dam. As biographer Joe Klein wrote, “It would be the most productive month of his life.”

In 1997, SOJC Adjunct professor Mike Madjic, who also works in University of Oregon Media Services, approached SOJC Assistant Professor Denise Matthews with the idea of producing a documentary to capture the “convergence of this left-wing, American poetic genius and the Department of the Interior’s great public-works project, the Bonneville and Grand Coulee Dams—built to provide cheap electricity to a people gripped by hard times.”

Roll On, Columbia: Woody Guthrie and the Bonneville Power Administration chronicles Guthrie’s short and productive time as an employee of the Bonneville Power Administration.

atthews and Majdic conducted interviews with Guthrie’s friends Pete Seeger and Studs Terkel, music historian Norm Cohen, and his former employer at the Bonneville Power Administration, Stephen Kahn. They also interviewed Guthrie’s former wife, his son Arlo and his daughter Nora, who runs the Guthrie Foundation in New York City.

The documentary also includes footage from Hydro and The Columbia, BPA documentaries from the late ’30s and ’40s, as well as images of the Grand Coulee Dam, the Columbia River and the Columbia Gorge, all set to Guthrie’s music.

Matthews and Madjic premiered the 56-minute film February 10 in the Knight Library Browsing Room.

In June, the film was awarded a Gold Camera Award at the 33rd Annual U.S. International Film and Video Festival in Chicago.

In late July, the film aired on Oregon Public Broadcasting in addition to showing at the annual celebration of Woody Guthrie’s birthday in his home state of Oklahoma.

For more information about Woody Guthrie and the film,visit http://libweb.uoregon.edu/med_svc/wguthrie/.