The films of this place, in one program. The films the public owns play here whole, under their holders' terms, each with its program note: what you are about to see. The films that stand elsewhere are named in the program with their holder and the reason they cannot play here.
Now Showing
The Columbia River (1948)
The Bonneville Power Administration's own film of the river, whole: produced and written by Stephen B. Kahn for the Department of the Interior, with songs Woody Guthrie wrote for it, three of them heard in his own recordings for the agency. Its subject is the entire river, from the dams to the sea; the lower river and the mouth are passages in it.
Public domain: a work of the United States government, held at the Internet Archive under the Public Domain Mark 1.0. It plays here inside the Internet Archive's own player. Running time 21 minutes, 10 seconds.
The film at the Internet Archive
From the record at its source
A 1948 government film of the Columbia: the Bonneville Project, the dams, and the river remade for power, shipping, irrigation, and salmon, with songs by Woody Guthrie.
Made byU.S. Department of the Interior
Date, as the source gives it1948
Kept byInternet Archive
What it isFilm
In itStephen B. Kahn, Woody Guthrie
SubjectsBonneville Power Administration · Woody Guthrie · Columbia River · Washington · dams · power · rivers · water · folk music · songs
RightsPublic domain (Public Domain Mark 1.0)
The Mighty Columbia River (1947)
Coronet Instructional Films' classroom short on the river, from the Prelinger Collection: the river as mid-century America taught it to its schoolchildren, nine minutes and fifty-four seconds of it.
Public domain, per the Internet Archive's record of the Prelinger copy. It plays here inside the Internet Archive's own player.
The film at the Internet Archive
From the record at its source
Hydroelectric power, shipping, irrigation and salmon fishing.
Made byCoronet Instructional Films
Date, as the source gives it1947
Kept byInternet Archive · Collection: Prelinger Collection
What it isFilm
SubjectsGeography: U.S.: Pacific Northwest · Rivers: Western U.S. · Environment
RightsPublic domain
The bar, filmed by its own service (2023)
A Coast Guard rescue at the Columbia River bar, February 3, 2023: a mariner pulled from a capsized vessel, filmed by Petty Officer 1st Class Kyle Turcotte. This is the modern service working the same water the rest of this section describes in older voices.
Public domain: a work of the United States Coast Guard, distributed by the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service (DVIDS). It plays here inside DVIDS's own player.
The video at DVIDS
From the record at its source
U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer 3rd Class Branch Walton, a rescue swimmer assigned to Coast Guard Air Station North Bend, Oregon, rescues a mariner after his vessel capsizes near Astoria, Oregon, Feb. 3, 2023. An MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter crew with the Advanced Helicopter Rescue School at Coast Guard Aviation Training Center Mobile, Alabama, and three motor life boat crews participated in the rescue.
Made byPetty Officer 1st Class Kyle Turcotte
Date, as the source gives itFebruary 3, 2023
PlaceAstoria, Oregon, US
Kept byDefense Visual Information Distribution Service (DVIDS)
What it isFilm
In itBranch Walton
RightsPublic domain
A fishing crew rescued at the river's mouth (2017)
January 7, 2017: the Star King, a 55-foot stern trawler homeported in Astoria, sank near the entrance to the Columbia River. The crew of the Sea Ballad took the five fishermen off, and a Coast Guard 47-foot motor lifeboat from Station Cape Disappointment carried them to Ilwaco. Filmed by Petty Officer 1st Class Levi Read; forty-five seconds.
Public domain: a work of the United States Coast Guard, distributed by the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service (DVIDS), which marks the video's page public domain. It plays here inside DVIDS's own player.
The video at DVIDS
From the record at its source
The crew of the commercial fishing vessel Sea Ballad acted as good Samaritans and rescued five fellow commercial fishermen after the fishing vessel Star King, a 55-foot stern trawler homeported in Astoria, Ore., sank near the entrance to the Columbia River, Jan. 7, 2017. The five fishermen were transferred to an on-scene Coast Guard 47-foot Motor Life Boat, from Station Cape Disappointment.
Made byU.S. Coast Guard, Sector Columbia River
Date, as the source gives itJanuary 7, 2017
Placenear the entrance to the Columbia River
Kept byDefense Visual Information Distribution Service (DVIDS)
What it isFilm
RightsPublic domain
Films that stream at their holders
Columbia River Gillnetters (1978)
Oregon State University Sea Grant Communications · Moving Images FV185:002
The gillnetters filmed themselves, a generation before the Bergeron tapes: narrated by Jack Marincovich of the Columbia River Fishermen's Protective Union, photographed and edited by William C. Smith. It streams at the university's own player, under the university's terms, so this desk links to it and prints the rights line either way: the film is OSU Sea Grant's, and it plays at OSU.
Watch at OSU MediaSpace
The John Jacob Astor Branch Experiment Station film (about 1955)
About 7 minutes · black and white · silent · Oregon State University Archives, FV P029
The experiment station the town's farming shore ran on, filmed in its working years: the station buildings and their unidentified staff, the test plots, the dairy cattle. The station was founded in 1913 and closed in 1973. The university's archives state that the film has been digitized and made available online; its finding aid is the link, and the preferred citation there is the archives' own.
The finding aid at Archives West
Linked, with their rights lines printed
The Work of the River (about 1944)
Prelinger Collection · Internet Archive
A wartime film of the river's work, at the Internet Archive. Its record there states no rights for the copy, and until rights clear it is linked, not played: the link is all there is, and this line is the reason printed on it.
The film's page at the Internet Archive
Work Is Our Joy: The Story of the Columbia River Gillnetter (1989)
32 minutes · Columbia River Maritime Museum with Oregon Sea Grant
The film drawn from the Bergeron tapes in the Voices section above: a generation of gillnetters, edited into half an hour. No public streaming of it was found. It rests with the museum that made it, in person, where the tapes rest.
Astoria-Megler Bridge Construction, 1962 to 1964
A compilation posted on YouTube · cinematography Dick Thompson, Hap Johnson, and Chuck Adams · editing John Goodenberger
The bridge rising over the river, assembled from the film of the men who shot it as it happened. Its rights are unstated, and this Archive links to it as a compilation of other people's film, never as a public-domain holding.
Watch the compilation on YouTube
Film in Astoria, a recorded program
Clatsop County Historical Society · in the society's Internet Archive collections
The county society has recorded its own program on the town's film history, and it stands inside the society's moving-image collections at the Internet Archive, at the same link as the society's public videos in the Voices section. Linked only: the society's programs are the society's.
The society's collection at the Internet Archive
The films the public owns, played here; the films other people own, linked at their holders. The movies themselves belong to their makers. What is free here is the footage the public owns, and the record the town kept. No trailer for any commercial film is embedded or re-hosted here, ever. The free period record of those films is their newspaper advertising, and it stands behind the Reading Room's newspaper links.
The Record Around the Movies
Shot in Astoria: the confirmed list
The Fisherman's Bride
1909 · Selig
The first commercial narrative film shot in Oregon, made here in August 1909. The film is lost; its full record stands in Lost and Catalogued, below.
California Mix
1981
A feature shot in Astoria, on the filmography's confirmed list.
The Goonies
1985
The jailbreak that opens it is the old Clatsop County Jail on Duane Street, today the Oregon Film Museum; the film also shot at Ecola State Park and Cannon Beach. Astoria has been showing visitors its corners ever since.
Short Circuit
1985 · released 1986
The robot Number 5's Astoria. Oregon Film Trail sign number 3, below, marks Alameda Park, under the bridge it fell from.
Benji the Hunted
1987
Shot at Newport, Astoria, and Youngs River Falls.
Come See the Paradise
1989 · released 1990
The American Film Institute's record and the director's own production diary agree: the production moved to Astoria after Portland, and the Terminal Island scenes were built here with thirty period fishing boats.
Kindergarten Cop
1990
John Jacob Astor Elementary School stands in as the school; when the production wrapped, the crew left the playground equipment in place for the town's children.
Free Willy
1993
Shot in Astoria, Warrenton, Ecola State Park, and Portland. Warrenton carries Oregon Film Trail sign number 4 for it.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III
1993
Its time-travel fight was staged at Youngs River Falls, south of town.
Free Willy 2: The Adventure Home
1994 · released 1995
The sequel came back to the same water.
Eban and Charley
2000
A small feature on the filmography's Astoria list.
The Ring Two
2004 · released 2005
Set in Astoria outright: Rachel works at the Daily Astorian. The correction about the first Ring stands with the claimed and corrected entries, below.
Cthulhu
2005 · released 2007
An Astoria feature from the town's independent filmmaking years.
Into the Wild
2006 · released 2007
Astoria is among its locations in the filmography's record.
Wendy and Lucy
2007 · released 2008
Shot in Astoria, on the confirmed list.
Green Room
2015
Shot in Astoria, on the confirmed list.
The Mortuary Collection
2020
Shot in Astoria, on the confirmed list.
Sometimes I Think About Dying
2023
The filmography's most recent Astoria feature.
Shot elsewhere in Clatsop County
The Great Race
1965 · Gearhart
The county's entry in it is the Gearhart portion.
Point Break
1991 · Wheeler and Ecola State Park
Its Oregon coast is this county's coast, with Tillamook beside it in the filmography's geography.
Twilight
2008 · Ecola State Park
Indian Beach, in Ecola State Park, stands in for La Push.
Cold Weather
2009
Confirmed for the county, outside Astoria itself.
Seaside
2018 · Arch Cape
Its location is Arch Cape, at the county's south edge.
Sophie Jones
2021 · Cannon Beach
Shot at Cannon Beach.
Television
Route 66: “One Tiger to a Hill”
Aired on CBS September 21, 1962
Buz and Tod hire out as deckhands on a salmon trawler out of Astoria, with David Janssen as guest star; the episode guides agree on the airdate and the story. One conflict prints with it: the state filmography lists a Route 66 episode under 1965 for Astoria. The guides' 1962 stands; the filmography's year is the outlier, and it is not adopted.
Claimed, corrected, and not confirmed
The Black Stallion (1979): claimed, not confirmed
A claim this record prints as a claim
Astoria's chamber of commerce has claimed the film for Astoria and the Liberty Theatre. Against the claim: the director Carroll Ballard's published account describes a pickup shot at Cannon Beach, and the American Film Institute's record of the film's own end credits names Fort Erie, Toronto, Sardinia, and the Cinecittà studios, with no Oregon in it; and the state filmography omits the film entirely. It does not stand on the confirmed list above, and it never will on this evidence.
The Guardian (2006): two published statements
Printed as both stand
A Coast Guard press release states that Air Station Astoria, at Warrenton, served as one of the filming locations. The state filmography omits the film. Both statements are published, both are printed, and this record settles neither.
The Ring (2002): a correction
Not an Astoria film
The filmography places the first Ring at Newport and the Columbia River Gorge. The Astoria film is its sequel, The Ring Two, on the confirmed list above. Town memory often merges the two; the record keeps them apart.
Grimm (2011 to 2017): a correction
A Portland production
Every season of Grimm stands in the Portland area in the filmography: an Oregon production, not an Astoria shoot. Its mural on Duane Street is a statewide honor the town commissioned, and the record says exactly that, no more. The same mural logic that confirms Twilight, shot at Ecola, excludes The Shining, whose lodge is Timberline, not local at all.
On the ground
The Oregon Film Museum
732 Duane Street, Astoria · the old Clatsop County Jail · kept with the county historical society
The one place on the ground for everything in this section: the jail the Goonies escaped from, now a museum of Oregon filmmaking, with the Goonies props and costumes among its rooms. A ten-million-dollar expansion is planned. The museum also gives an annual Selig Award to a young Oregon filmmaker, named for the studio that made the town's first film in 1909.
The museum and its fellow Astoria museums
The Oregon Film Trail signs
Numbered markers where the films were made · verified against the trail's published list for this record
The state's film trail began in Astoria, and its first signs are this county's:
Named in the volume:
- Number 1, Astoria: The Goonies (1985), beside the Oregon Film Museum.
- Number 2, Astoria: Kindergarten Cop (1990).
- Number 3, Astoria: Short Circuit (1986).
- Number 4, Warrenton: Free Willy (1993).
- Number 9, Ecola State Park: The Goonies and Kindergarten Cop.
- Number 10, Ecola State Park: Point Break and Twilight.
The trail's signs stand in public places, and that is where this record photographs and points. The Goonies house is a private home; the trail's own sign at the East End Mooring Basin exists so fans can see it from public ground.
The trail, at Travel Oregon
A director's diary: Come See the Paradise
Alan Parker's own production diary · kept on the director's site
For one film on the confirmed list, the making survives in the maker's own words: Alan Parker kept a production diary that names the Astoria unit and its thirty period fishing boats. It reads at his own site, and this record names it as the kind of source the list above was built from: the maker's account first, the town's memory second.
The period record of these films, the coverage and the listings as the town read them, stands in the newspapers: an “At the Pastime” column in the East Oregonian of December 17, 1909 for the first picture shows, and the Daily Astorian's own retrospectives of 2017 for the modern era. The newspapers stand in the Reading Room.
To the Reading Room's newspapers
What is free here, beside the footage, is the record the town kept: the list of what was made here, drawn from the state filmography Filmed in Oregon 1908-2023, read line by line. Years are production years unless a release year is printed beside them. Conflicts print where the record has them. Nothing in this record licenses a still, a frame grab, or a clip from any of these films: the list is the town's, the movies are their makers'.