Stranger Than Fiction | Documentary Filmmaker Beth Harrington - 📍 Vancouver, WA

Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker Beth Harrington has spent decades telling true stories. But why does she choose the subjects she does? What does it mean to live with a story for over 10 years, wondering if it'll ever be seen by the light of day? And why is independent documentary filmmaking at such a difficult crossroads? Our conversation about artists who focus on the past uncovers what's going on in the present and what we can hope for in the future.

🗺️ Visit her at bethharrington.com | ourmrmatsura.com | Instagram | Facebook

👀 For pictureas and more, visit the episode page.

🎉 This episode also celebrates:

• Okanogan County Historical Society
• ArtsHub 
• Husubis’ Poke Shop 
• Brian Tashima
• Kiggins Theatre

You can see an exhibit of Frank Matsura’s work at the Japanese American Museum of Oregon through February 8, 2026.

⭐️  Thanks to our sponsor, Gardner School of Arts & Sciences. Enrollment is open and financial aid is available!

⭐️  Thanks to our sponsor, Sissys Cookies! Reach out on Facebook, Instagram, or email her at sissyscookies@myyahoo.com.

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📍 I'm Into This Place is Clark County, Washington's arts, culture, and heritage podcast. We take you behind the scenes with the artists, makers, and community leaders shaping our local culture - from art and music to food, history, and heritage. Find more at imintothisplace.com.

Transcript

Adriana: [00:00:00] Recently, I was sorting through my parents' record collection that I inherited years ago, and one of the records I found was an old Johnny Cash album right next to it was an album from the Carter family, and it made me think of this cool documentary called “The Winding Stream: the Carters, the Cashes, and the Course of Country Music.”

This film, which premiered at South by Southwest, was directed and created by one of our local documentary filmmakers, Beth Harrington. She has won an Emmy award for her work. She's been Grammy nominated for “Welcome to The Club: the Women of Rockabilly,” and she also has a brand new documentary called “Our Mr. Matsura.”

And that documentary opened my eyes to the incredible body of work of this long ago, relatively under the radar documentary [00:01:00] photographer. And it's so interesting that Beth Harrington decided to do a film about Frank Matsuura because she is a documentarian and she's been with it for a couple of decades now, and is really looking at what's about to happen or what is happening with independent documentary filmmaking now that many of the funding streams for making that work happen are dried up or being taken away.

I find Beth to be just a perfect example of her art form because she's so good at telling her own story and she also is an incredible storyteller. We were together for almost two hours. But of course, I try to keep these episodes short for you so you can listen while you're driving from point A to point B.

So today you'll hear our short but deep conversation. She has [00:02:00] a breadth that is really inspiring and a depth that makes you wanna sit down and learn more about her. So I hope you enjoy stepping into the world of documentary filmmaker Beth Harrington. 

Welcome to I’m Into This Place, your deep dive into the local arts, culture, and heritage of Clark County.

From fabulous new restaurants to quirky art installations to the historical sites you never even knew to look for we’re inviting you along. Whether you're a Clark County connoisseur or just starting to get to know her, get ready to fall head over heels for this place we call home. I'm your host, Adriana Baer, and I'm into this place. Let's go. 

Beth, I'm here in your studio, your home office studio, and it's really lovely in here. I'm seeing all kinds of cool film equipment [00:03:00] and posters and scripts. Thank you so much for welcoming me into your space. 

Beth: Thank you. I'm glad you're here. 

Adriana: So you are a documentary filmmaker. 

Beth: Mm-hmm. 

Adriana: And that is a very unique and wonderful genre within the film world in general.

And so today we're gonna talk about what got you there and also some of the amazing projects that you've worked on and directed and created. And we're gonna talk about your newest project. How did you catch the film bug back in the day? 

Beth: You know it, it was a long time coming because when I was coming up as a young person, and even into my early twenties, there really wasn't such a thing as independent filmmaking on the level that it exists now.

Documentary filmmaking at the time was really the domain of news organizations, you know, doing these social issues [00:04:00] documentaries, or public television was kind of in its infancy and was starting to do this stuff. I mean, I'm old. So this stuff didn't really exist and I remember the first time I saw a documentary that really blew my mind.

It was on public television and I was in my teens, and it was a show called an American Family, which was really groundbreaking. It's not as choreographed as reality shows are now. It was very much fly on the wall and I was just kind of mesmerized by that. I thought that was really cool. 

I got outta college. I was a media communications major in college, and then I got outta school. It still took me a number of years to find my footing and figure out what I was gonna do with the creativity I felt and the desire to tell stories. And really eventually I fell in with other documentary filmmakers and went, yeah, this is my happy place.

And so I started chipping away at it and eventually started [00:05:00] making documentaries probably in my late twenties. And I contend that truth is stranger than fiction. There's just so much cool stuff out there that's real. I don't need to make anything up, you know? 

Adriana: Yeah. 

Beth: So I, I love meeting people. I love being in other people's worlds. So that kind of jazzes me about documentary filmmaking and still does, you know, that's still what motivates me. Like where can we go? Who can we meet? Ooh, cool. You know?

Adriana: What is it that draws you to a certain subject or a certain character, then? 

Beth: My happy place is making films about culture and history and um, and that includes art and music and, you know, all of the manifestations of the humanities.

For me, it's really about, you know, what's the human story at the core of a, a topic I've stumbled upon, so that can be women rockabilly singers, contemporaries of Elvis [00:06:00] Presley's in the fifties. I've, I've worked on a film about the country music family, the Carter family. 

I have done my own self-exploration of my Italian American culture on my mother's side and the religious traditions that reside within that. These things tantalize me, and then it's like over time I've realized: how long am I going to have to live with this topic and can I sustain my own interest in this topic to get this thing done? My, uh, film about the Carter family is called “The Winding Stream,” and that film took me 10 years to make and then it got distribution and was in festivals and art house cinema, and I lived with that film for like 15 years.

When I started it, a lot of people noted that it was an important American story that had not been told. These are the folks at the earliest stages of what we call Country music. It's a [00:07:00] fascinating story about this husband and wife and a sister-in-law who become foundational music figures. And - bonus - Johnny Cash married into that family.

So the film is about the Carters and the Cashes about the, the relationship, the way they helped him, the way he helped them, and eventually how their, their legacies were preserved even to this day by succeeding generations. So Johnny Cash was in the film. And I'm like, oh, this is no brainer. Like, people are gonna be throwing money at this.

And it took years to raise the money and it was really piecemeal. Like I'd say, oh, I got X number of dollars. That means I can go back to Nashville and I can shoot for three days or four days or - 

Adriana: Right. And I imagine that it's really hard to keep the through line of what you're building or even remember that early footage to figure out what questions you wanna ask, what stories are coming out.

The funding [00:08:00] piece I think is something that people don't know a lot about, and I know it's changed. Mm-hmm. A lot. 

Beth: Yeah. Just this year. There are only so many entities that were funding independent film, and they included a group called the Independent Television Service. They included federal funding, like the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and local trickle down versions of those groups.

It's gotten a lot harder now because the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is no more. The NEA and the NEH have been greatly reduced, and I would argue changed. So there's no going to those entities anymore from my standpoint and, and getting funding. And the other issue, of course, is a home for a lot of my documentaries in the past has been public television, but this year with the cuts of at PBS and the cuts with the end of [00:09:00] Corporation for Public Broadcasting, that means that the one show that was considering it is going off the air. 

Adriana: It feels like it's a very interesting time. You've been here through a, a lot of it where there wasn't an independent documentary scene. Then it really flourished.

Now it's a very uncertain time. 

Beth: Very. 

Adriana: And so as new filmmakers are coming up and as, as you even who's so experienced is looking at the next. 5, 10 years. Mm-hmm. It must be a little bit murky as to what's gonna happen and what's gonna happen with this genre. 

Beth: And the genre also, I should say, includes a consideration of length.

Right? Documentaries kind of traditionally in public television are either an hour or a couple of hours long in theaters, they're at least 90 minutes long. I think we're all suffering from attention deficit issues now. I mean, [00:10:00] whether we're diagnosed with that or not, we are all suffering from it because of social media and how we use media.

You know, asking anyone to sit through a 90 minute film is a trick. 

Adriana: Yeah. Let's talk about your most recent film, “Our Mr. Matsura,” which I got to see recently and absolutely loved. Why don't you tell us about it? 

Beth: It's a film about a Japanese immigrant photographer. Who was the son of a Samurai and left Japan as it was going through radical changes in the last half of the 19th century.

And he showed up in the Pacific Northwest in 1901, and made his way to Okanagan County, which is the largest county - to this day - it’s the largest county in Washington with the fewest people in it. Very remote. Part of it borders on Canada, and it also is adjacent to the Colville Confederated Tribe's reservation.

So [00:11:00] when Frank Matsura showed up, he started taking pictures of everyone he met. And some of them were just kind of pedestrian documentation. Here's the downtown, here's the mine, here's people growing apples. Some of the pictures are like, wait, wait, what? Are those a bunch of men in a studio with bonnets on their heads? And why is the photographer in all the pictures?

That's one facet. But then the other facet is, wow, he knew a lot of the Native American folks and they seem to really trust him. They have a relationship with him and he is taking beautiful. Extraordinary pictures of them and they seem to be participants and not subjects. And I just fell in love with the body of work.

And then I started learning more and more what we can know about him. It's still, there's so much we don't [00:12:00] know, and the film is partly about that, about the mystery of this man. He is really under the radar. So I applied for some funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities. And they gave it to me and I started working on it and it's been a sheer joy.

And Frank Matsura is like my North Star. I think he's incredible. The way he interacted with the people that he took photos of. People who know about Frank become sort of a little cult. And that's part of the film also is all the people who love him as if he were still alive and talk about him as if he were still alive.

People call him “Frank.” His pictures are all over the small towns that he worked in in Okanagan County. The folks from the tribe still know their family's relationship to the pictures, and the people in the pictures are ancestors that they can reference, and we got to go to Japan and work on it too, which was also great because he left so young [00:13:00] that most of the people in Japan don't know about him.

But we're hoping that this revives that in Japan as well. 

Adriana: It was really remarkable to think of in 1901, this person coming over, and how did he get from Seattle to Okanagan, and then how is he engaging as if he's part of - and he was - part of the community in all of these different parts of that unique community.

He really, maybe because he had a camera and therefore was able to have a way in to these relationships. 

Beth: The film had many amazing advisors from many different walks of life and many different disciplines in academia. And Maki Fukuoka, who was one of the advisors, is a photography professor at the University of Leeds in the UK and she was talking about that very thing that. It turns out his English was probably [00:14:00] pretty good.

He was Christianized in in Japan, and most Japanese Christians learned English so they could read the Bible in English. So he came with that language. But Maki says the other language he came with was photography. Using that as a way of communicating with people. Taking pictures, sharing pictures, being in pictures with people, which is crazy what he did.

I don't know of any other Western photographer who is in as many photos with other people and did a million self portraits too. 

Adriana: Now we were just selfie, selfie, click, click, click. He had to set them up and shoot them, and then process them and develop them.

Beth: Absolutely, yeah. He's lugging this huge piece of equipment.

These aren't little cameras. They're big box, you know, wooden cameras with tripods. He's trudging around all over the place, or he is in a studio. But either way, big camera [00:15:00] requires people to be relatively still, and a certain amount of lighting, and yet there's still a sort of spontaneity and fun and playfulness that's in a lot of the photographs.

It's like, how did you accomplish that knowing all the other variables are working against you. It's an extraordinary body of work. There are about 4,000 photos. They're, they're at Washington State University and they're also at the Okanagan County Historical Society, and that part of it really tugged at my heart because here are volunteers at a small

town historical society, preserving this guy's memory. And very rigorously with no real resources. And they've got his pictures on buildings and they, you know, have a little exhibit in the historical society. And they worked very closely with me on the film, which was great. It's extraordinary that this person made such an impact socially, that it [00:16:00] went beyond the transactional

“I take a picture. You have the picture.” He was taking pictures of people where they were, how they wanted to dress. Especially in the case of the Native folks, you know, they're wearing different elements. Tribal regalia, Western Street clothes. You know, there's a whole body of work of just the Native cowboys and how cool they look.

And their, uh, their cowboy outfits. All of that, you know, is him meeting people where they are. 

Adriana: Yeah. And you get a sense of what life was actually like instead of this, this, I don't know. I, you know, one of the things that struck me in the middle of the film, there's a photograph of a couple of

younger women, maybe in their early twenties or so, like sitting around and laughing. They're just having, hanging out and having a good time. And I thought, God, you know, all of the imagery we have prior to when people were able to own cameras, [00:17:00] is so staid and, and stiff. So the thing that happens in our heads is we think, oh

prior to about the 1920s, no one laughed or ever had a good time. Life was always, life was hard. And it was in black and white. There was no color anywhere. No, and and it's this funny thing like that you don't really think of, you just think, oh, in the before time, it's this black and white, very dark and terrible world, and, and then suddenly there's light and color. And then seeing his photographs, you go, oh my God of course, people, people were peopling then, you know, 

Beth: They were peopling just like we people. 

Adriana: Yeah. Yeah. And it was a real glimpse into actual life. So what other exciting projects do you have on the horizon or coming up? 

Beth: So funny overlap is that I've been working on a project that precedes Our Mr. Matsura by several years and [00:18:00] just got finished recently. It's a film called Beyond the Duplex Planet. And it's about a friend who's an artist who in his twenties, fresh out of art school, he got a job as an activities director at a nursing home. Because he was an artist and still is an artist, he decided we’re not playing bingo.

We're, we're doing something different. So he started treating the job as an art project of his own and interviewing the members of this all male mom and pop nursing home in Boston called The Duplex Nursing Home. And he took the interviews and made it into what we would refer to now as a zine called The Duplex Planet. 

And the Duplex Planet featured interviews that were not your typical interviews, so not: Where were you during the Great Depression? What did you do during the Second World War? There are things like: how close can you get to a penguin? And which do you [00:19:00] prefer, coffee or meat? Or what is embarrassment? Or, you know, these questions that forced thoughtful answers.

And for a lot of these men, they found it wildly entertaining. They loved David and over time, David was making this for them, but they weren't that interested in the finished product. They were interested in the process. But David's friends, people like me, started going, this is cool. You're really getting to know these men.

You're getting to see how human we all are. It became sort of a, a culty thing where he got a lot of subscribers like Penn and Teller and the guys in R.E.M. and um, you know, George Carlin, the comedian, and all these people started like following it. And David did this for a number of years and then it mutated into another form, which is he started performing these pieces live with music.

So he still doing it. And he's, um, gonna be [00:20:00] 72, I think, next year. He's still doing this. Really important work about meeting people where they are, finding out about their specific lives and how the specific illuminates the greater humanity that we all share. And what we hope to do with the film is show the film and then have a performance connected with it.

So I hope to bring it to the Kiggins at some point. 

Adriana: I, I hope you can. I can't wait to see it. I love it. Thank you for sharing that with us. As you know, at the end of every episode, I always ask people to shout out one of their places or people, or a few places or people that they're really into in Clark County.

So, in just a second I'm gonna ask you that question so you can think about it for just a moment. For you, our audience. I just wanna make sure that you are signed up for our newsletter. It's super easy. The link is in the show notes, and that is the best way to get special ticket offers, event updates, and to see photos and videos of our [00:21:00] podcast guests, including some special sneak

peek behind the scene things that Beth shared with me, and when you sign up for our newsletter, you help us grow and gain sponsors who support this free arts and culture content. So make sure to do that. All right. Beth, what place or person or people are you really into these days? 

Beth: Well, three things I, I would say I'm really into the Arts Hub.

Great new emerging center. Excited about that. I'm really into Husubis’, the Hawaiian Poke place downtown, and I'm really into my friend Brian Tashima’s work. Brian is a musician with a band called Second Player Score. He's an author of a young adult series with a neurodivergent hero called the Joel Suzuki Series, and he's also a filmmaker and made a cool film about Vancouver, a Vancouver centric film called Hold My Beer.

So those are my [00:22:00] top choices lately. 

Adriana: Awesome. Well, Beth, thank you so much for welcoming me into your space. I can't wait for people to see more of your films and to find out more about how they can support independent documentary filmmakers. In our community and in the greater world. Obviously there's so much important work that's being done and I'm really grateful to get to be a part of getting the word out.

Beth: Thank you. I, I really appreciate the opportunity and I'm really glad to finally meet you. This is really cool.

Adriana: I know. It's so fun. Okay. Thank you. 

Beth: Thank you. 

Adriana: And now let's hear from you. This is our Community Voices segment, where you call in to shout out your favorites in local arts, culture, and heritage. Community Voices is sponsored by Johnson Bixby, Vancouver's woman-owned, women-led financial planning and portfolio management firm helping you plan for and celebrate.

life's possibilities. Advisory Services by Johnson Bixby, SEC registered. [00:23:00] Securities through private client services, member Finra, SIPC.

Guest: Hi, I'm Esme and I'm really into Dizzy Castle. Hello, I'm Eloise and I'm really into the Vancouver Arts and Music Festival. Hi I'm Donna. I'm here at the Vancouver Arts and Music Festival, and I just wanna do a shout out to School of Rock. Such a great support for young musicians.

Adriana: We'd love to hear from you. What are your favorite spots in Clark County? Who really deserves a shout out? Give us a call and leave a message, or send us a voice note via email. All the details on how to do that are in the show notes.

I’m Into This Place is produced and edited by me, Adriana Baer. Engineering and mixing for this episode by Tansy Aster Creative. This episode was recorded at the home studio of Beth Harrington, and you can find out more about Beth and us at imintothisplace.com. See you out there. [00:24:41]