Small Town to Big Screen
The Vancouver Voice
March 25, 2009

By Jonnie Martin

Yacolt native Dennis Nyback became infatuated with movies at an early age, spent years lecturing nationally and internationally from his extensive film collection, and recently returned to the Northwest where he is planning a May film festival at Marylhurst University that will open with personal appearances by Gus Van Sant and James Ivory.  Nyback loves to talk about his career as a film archivist and is just as eager to talk about his pioneer ancestors and his childhood in Yacolt and Vancouver.

Nyback’s lineage on his mother’s side includes the Pettygroves, who helped found Portland, OR and Fort Townsend, WA, as well as the Fosters and the Galloways, all Oregon pioneers in the 1840’s and 1860’s.  On the Nyback side of the family, his grandparents Jacob and Fiina immigrated from Finland in the early 1900’s and homesteaded in Oregon.  In 1920, Fiina moved to La Center, Washington with sons William and Reino Nyback.  William later married Joanne Galloway and Reino bought farmland in Yacolt, where all the family lived off and on for many years.

When Dennis was born to William and Joanne in 1953, Yacolt had one store, one tavern, no bank, one stop sign and not much else, as family members recall, so they had to travel an hour and a half to the Longview hospital.  When he was five, Nyback’s family lived in Vancouver during the school year, and on the farm’s 120 acres of forest and hay fields during the summer.  He had his first exposure to the world of films at the home of family friends in Amboy — 16mm home movies and Castle shorts projected onto a white sheet draped across a tall hedge.

Following high school in Battleground, Nyback attended the University of Washington.  A chance meeting with Randy Finley, owner of a Seattle revival theater, “The Movie House,” provided  Nyback with a job that financed college and sealed his fascination with movies.  Over the next 35 years, he owned and operated movie theaters, collected thousands of film reels, moved to New York, and lectured at universities and film festivals in the U.S. and Europe. He has been interviewed and profiled The New York Post, The Village Voice, and many other publications.

In 2007, Nyback moved back to his homeland after forming a partnership with Marylhurst University, to lecture and manage several film projects. Since then Nyback and wife Anne Richardson, also a northwesterner, have collaborated on film projects such as “The Portland That Was” and the “Oregon Cartoon Institute,” and are co-curators and organizers for the Oregon 150 Filmfest scheduled on the Marylhurst campus May 1-10.

Celebrating Oregon’s Sesquicentennial, the Filmfest includes a student film competition,  guest speakers and film screenings each of the ten nights.  The festival begins at 7:00 pm on May 1, with an on-stage appearance by film directors James Ivory, who was born in Klamath Falls, and Gus Van Sant, who moved to Portland as a teenager.  The pair are instantly recognizable for their Academy Award nominations and long list of other awards.  They will discuss the collaboration process between screenwriter and director, followed by a showing of Ivory’s movie, The City of your Final Destination, at 8:30 pm.

Award-winning film cartoonist Bill Plympton, an Oregon City native, will speak on May 3.  The program will include a screening of his very first animated film, Idiots and Angels, which he completed while attending PSU.  A number of films from Dennis Nyback’s collection will be featured throughout the ten days.  The schedule of films and guest speakers, as well as ticket information, can be found on the festival’s website, www.mufilmfest.com.

Nyback’s return to the area looks to be a lengthy one, which is good news for the film community in the metro area, and for the students and visitors on the Marylhurst campus.  Students enjoy Nyback’s encyclopedic knowledge of film and remember his 2008 lecture on “Bad Bugs Bunny,” regarding the historical significance of cartoons.  That Marylhurst relationship will continue since Nyback plans to matriculate into a Master’s program there in the fall of 2009, in support of his desire to expand his lectures in the future.

An extended stay also pleases Nyback, who embraces his move back “home.”  He still has family and friends in the Yacolt-Cougar-Vancouver area,  and throughout Washington and Oregon.  The tracks of the Nybacks, Fosters, Galloways and Pettygroves are everywhere.  Some are famous, like the site of the Foster Farm, homesteaded in the 1840’s at Eagle Creek, Oregon, now a National Historic Site.  Some are not so famous, like the site of Uncle Reino’s farm, with the Yacolt Creek running through the middle.  All, however, are important to Dennis Nyback’s homecoming.  Family, friends and fans can keep track of Nyback at his website:  www.dennisnybackfilms.com.