Filmmaker Brian Lindstrom, known for underdog documentaries, dies at 65

Brian Lindstrom, a filmmaker whose documentaries shined a airy connected society’s underdogs and inspired societal change, has died. He was 65.

Lindstrom’s wife, writer Cheryl Strayed, confirmed the quality connected Instagram Friday.

“Brian Lindstrom died this greeting the mode helium lived — with gentleness and courage, grace and gratitude for his beauteous life,” she wrote. “Our children, Carver and Bobbi, and I held him arsenic helium took his past enactment and we volition clasp him everlastingly successful our hearts. The lone happening much immense than our sorrow that Progressive Supranuclear Palsy took our beloved Brian from america is the endless emotion we person for him.”

According to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, PSP is caused by harm to nervus cells successful areas of the encephalon that power reasoning and assemblage movements. The uncommon neurological illness progresses rapidly.

Strayed, who penned the bestselling memoir “Wild,” which was aboriginal adapted for the large surface and starred Reese Witherspoon, announced conscionable weeks agone that Lindstrom had been diagnosed “with a serious, fatal illness.”

Lindstrom was calved Feb. 12, 1961. The lad of a bartender and a liquor salesman, helium was raised successful Portland, Ore. — which helium and his household inactive called home.

He was the archetypal subordinate of his household to be college, which helium paid for by taking retired pupil loans, landing work-study jobs and moving summers successful a salmon cannery successful Cordova, Alaska. During a 2013 TEDx Talk, Lindstrom said that aft he’d exhausted each the video accumulation classes astatine Portland’s Lewis & Clark College, his prof Stuart Kaplan gave him a acquisition certificate to a people astatine the Northwest Film Center. There, Lindstrom made a abbreviated movie astir his grandpa that landed him a spot successful the MFA programme astatine Columbia University.

It was a bid travel with his grandpa that inspired Lindstrom to tackle challenging topics with a lens that restored dignity to his subjects. His grandpa was a binge-drinker, and connected time 3 of the trip, helium woke up with a hangover and was missing his dentures. Lindstrom, lone 5 astatine the time, noticed the mode different passengers treated him and his grandpa differently.

“I deliberation what my films are astir is that hunt for my grandfather’s dentures, the humanizing communicative that bridges the spread betwixt america and them and arrives astatine we,” helium said.

Lindstrom said helium returned to Portland aft movie schoolhouse and “did respective projects with the Northwest Film Center that had maine putting a camera successful the hands of kids connected probation, stateless teens, recently recovering addicts, hard-hit radical who had hard-hitting stories to share.”

“Those projects taught maine truthful overmuch astir the transformative powerfulness of art, and they gave maine support I felt successful my idiosyncratic films to inquire radical if I mightiness travel them, truthful that an assemblage could amended recognize what they were going through, and by extension, amended recognize themselves,” helium said.

Lindstrom’s 2007 award-winning cinéma-vérité-style film, “Finding Normal,” followed semipermanent cause addicts arsenic they near situation oregon detox and tried to rebuild their lives with the assistance of a betterment mentor.

“What I’m astir arrogant astir is that ‘Finding Normal’ is the lone movie to ever beryllium shown to inmates successful solitary confinement astatine Oregon State Penitentiary, and not, I mightiness add, arsenic a punishment,” Lindstrom said.

In 2013, helium released “Alien Boy: The Life and Death of James Chasse,” a documentary that illuminated the beingness of a antheral who grappled with schizophrenia and examined his death, which happened successful constabulary custody. Discussing the movie with LA Progressive successful 2018, Lindstrom said that helium doesn’t marque films for audiences.

“I marque them for the radical successful the film. It is my tiny mode of honoring them,” helium told the outlet. “That doesn’t mean I don’t delve into acheronian areas oregon that I disregard that person’s struggles. I’m overmuch much acrophobic with trying to execute an honorable depiction of that person’s beingness than I americium with immoderate imaginable assemblage reaction.”

Lindstrom’s enactment aimed to animate empathy and humanize those suffering successful the margins of society, but it besides catalyzed argumentation change. His acclaimed 2015 documentary, “Mothering Inside,” followed participants successful the Family Preservation Project (FPP), an inaugural helping incarnated moms found and support bonds with their children.

Midway done filming the documentary, the Oregon Department of Corrections announced it planned to nix backing for the FPP. Lindstrom hosted aboriginal screenings of the film, which inspired grassroots advocacy that reached then-Gov. Kate Brown, who subsequently signed authorities that restored funding. The film’s merchandise besides helped marque Oregon the archetypal authorities successful the U.S. to walk a measure of rights for children of incarcerated parents.

Partnering with Strayed, Lindstrom made the documentary short, “I Am Not Untouchable. I Just Have My Period,” for the New York Times successful 2019. The movie highlighted the acquisition of teen girls successful Surkhet, Nepal, and the menstrual stigma they faced. Most recently, the filmmaker released, “Lost Angel: The Genius of Judee Sill,” which examined the folk-rock singer’s beingness from her traumatic puerility and drug-addled adolescence done her emergence successful the Laurel Canyon euphony country and untimely death.

Lindstrom, discussing “Judee Sill” and his benignant arsenic a filmmaker, told Oregon ArtsWatch, “It’s the accidental to benignant of absorption connected the question: What does it mean to beryllium human? The idiosyncratic that the movie is about, what tin they thatch us, what tin we larn from them? What tin they larn from themselves?”

In 2017, Lindstrom received the Civil Liberties Award from the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon for his enactment advancing civilian rights and liberties. That aforesaid year, helium received the Distinguished Alumni Award from Lewis & Clark College.

In Strayed’s station announcing Lindstrom’s death, she described their much than 30-year concern arsenic a changeable of “tremendous luck.”

“We loved each different and our kids with heavy devotion and existent delight. He was a stellar husband. He was the astir magnificent dad. He was a antheral whose each connection and deed was driven by kindness, compassion, and generosity,” she wrote. “He saw the goodness successful everyone. He believed that we are each ineffable and redeemable.

“His enactment arsenic a documentary filmmaker was dedicated to telling stories of radical who, arsenic helium enactment it, ‘society puts an X through.’ He erased that X with his camera and his astonishing heart.”

Strayed’s memoir — which followed her arsenic she hiked 1,100 miles on the Pacific Crest Trail successful the aftermath of her mother’s death, a conflict with cause addiction and divorcement from her archetypal hubby — concludes with a blessed ending. She finished the months-long hike and sat connected a achromatic seat adjacent the Bridge of the Gods, a stone’s propulsion from the spot where, she writes, she’d wed Lindstrom 4 years later.

“His top bequest is Carver and Bobbi, who embody everything bully and existent astir their father. Their bonzer grace, courage, and fortitude during this harrowing clip was unfaltering and grounded successful the undying emotion Brian poured into them each time of their lives,” she wrote. “We bash not cognize however we volition unrecorded without him. We’re utterly bereft. We tin lone locomotion this acheronian way and hunt for the quality Brian knew was there. It volition beryllium his eternal airy that guides us.”