Film collector Nyback puts Marylhurst in festival business
Marylhurst University film festival continues through Sunday
Dennis Nyback stands by some of the stacks of his amazing 7,000 film collection, now archived at Marylhurst University.
CLIFF NEWELL / Lake Oswego Review
When Marylhurst University officials asked Dennis Nyback if he could be the curator for the Oregon Sesquicentennial Film Festival, his answer was instantaneous.
“I said, ‘Could I? I’d love to!’” Nyback said.
After all, without Nyback, along with his wife Anne Richardson, there would not be any film festival this week.
It was Nyback who agreed to line up the films for the festival’s 10-day run, and it was Richardson who lined up the big names who agreed to appear at the festival — James Ivory, Gus Van Sant, Mike Rich and Bill Plympton.
“Anne’s vision was getting the guests,” Nyback said. “Mine was getting the films.”
All of the films in the festival, which concludes on Sunday, have a strong Oregon connection, and the variety is incredible — ranging from silent classics to animation to home movies of the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary.
It’s a story that could only happen in the movies. Two years ago, Nyback needed a place to store his giant film collection and Marylhurst discovered it didn’t have quite enough money in its building project to tear down Villa Maria Hall and put in a new road. The timing was perfect.
Thus, Nyback had a place to archive his films. All 7,000 of them.
However, such happy happenstance is pretty common in the career of Dennis Nyback.
His life in films began when he started working his way through the University by Washington by being a film projectionist, and his only goal was to earn a few bucks, not get ready for a career.
“Nobody planned for a career back then,” Nyback said. “It was the hippie era.”
But although he didn’t realize it at the time, Nyback had found his calling. He joined the projectionists union (“Which is very tough to get in!”), bought his first movie theater in Seattle in 1979, and became a film festival promoter, lecturer, teacher and author.
His most important role is being a film collector. America has gone from being totally cavalier in preserving old films to frantically trying to preserve every film possible.
Nyback has done this without any big corporate bucks in his pocket, just by going to garage sales, flea markets and quaint little shops over the years, digging up hidden treasures in old film canisters.
It is downright depressing to film lovers that 90 percent of the silent era films have decomposed into dust, including the work of Mack Sennett, founder of the American film comedy tradition, and Theda Bara, first sex symbol of the movies. If anyone finds a copy of Bara’s Cleopatra, please call Nyback immediately. This would take the swine flu off the front pages of the nation’s newspapers.
But just like a good Capraesque movie hero, Nyback is an eternal optimist when it comes to film preservation.
“They’re finding stuff all the time,” he said. “The original Frankenstein movie, made in 1910, was at the top of lost films that people wanted the most. Then some old guy in Minnesota read about it and said, ‘Hey, I got this movie.’”
Before the start of the Marylhurst film fest on May 1, Nyback was undaunted and unstinting in his efforts to transform Villa Maria Hall into a movie theater.
“I hope this is just the beginning,” Nyback said. “I hope we can have a film festival here every year.”
For more information about the Oregon Sesquicentennial Film Festival at Marylhurst University, go to www.mufilmfest.com.