Band of Outsiders: Bill Daniel and Vanessa Renwick

Words: Adam Hart

Photo: Shawn Records

As the real independents get pushed further and further underground, filmmakers have been forced to get creative in order to drum up audiences. Some have adapted better than others. Bill Daniel and Vanessa Renwick were among the first of a steadily growing wave of artists who have taken the indie rock approach to indie filmmaking. "I joke that I was stolen from a gypsy family as a kid, and turned to filmmaking to make up for lost travel time," Renwick explains. Annual tours of their films and installations, most of which can be categorized by the term "experimental documentaries," throughout the Pacific Northwest (occasionally reaching the rest of the country, as with 2002's 75-city Lucky Bum tour) have developed a small but devoted fan base in each of their regular stops. Last summer's Heart Attack Island tour was the perfect illustration of DIY exhibition. Their home on the road (and the tour's brilliant publicity hook) was the Sailvan, a well-worn, nondescript black minivan that periodically sprouts sails for use as projection screens in Daniel's latest installation, Ponder Yonder. In his work, Daniel is attracted to outsiders in the most literal sense -- people who live on the outside of civilization, for whom, in Daniel's eyes, mere survival is an act of artistic expression. Daniel's junkyard Waldenism is shared by the more formally-concerned Renwick, whose films offer textbook-perfect examples of what can be done when sound and image are separated. Her best work might be her most personal. In 9 Is a Secret and Crowdog, Renwick marries parallel visuals to her own diary-like narration to fascinating effect. More information on Renwick and her irresistibly named production company, The Oregon Department of Kick Ass, can be found at www.odoka.org. Bill Daniel is online at www.sunsetscavenger.net