Seeing Shipman

Here’s one reaction, not altogether polite, to news that three of Nell Shipman’s short films are going to be given a free screening Saturday at the Coeur d’Alene Library:

Who cares?

I mean, the films date back to the mid-1920s, they were made by an obscure filmmaker in a remote part of the country, and all three were shot in black and white. Not exactly the kind of stuff that’s likely to rouse your typical “Dark Knight” fan from a fit of bat envy.

Polite or not, such sentiments are likely to get a rise out of Tom Trusky.

A professor of English at Boise State University, Trusky has spent much of the past three decades working to recover whatever of Shipman’s work that survives. And he is the guy who will be introducing the three shorts – he calls them “little dramas” – when they screen at 7 p.m.

“OK, some small corrections,” the genial Trusky said with a laugh, recognizing intentional provocation when he hears it.

“First of all, silent films were never silent. They were always accompanied by music. So they’re scored, some with music written for them, some with new original but traditional scores by contemporary writers.”

The trio of films, by the way, are included in the third volume of Shipman’s work that the Idaho Film Collection has put on DVD. Besides the most recent find, “White Water” (1924, :23), Saturday’s slate includes “The Trail of the North Wind” (1924, :22) and “The Light on Lookout,” (1924, :19).

“Second, there’s some big news,” Trusky continued.

The news, he said, involves the film’s color scheme, which long has been thought to be lacking. The negative was black and white, as have been the prints made so far (one each in England and Canada, and one at Boise State).

“But we have tinting instructions for that film,” Trusky said.

“It was a tinted print,” he repeated for emphasis, “and we’ve gone back for the DVD and made the only, I would say, authentic version of the film. It’s tinted and it’s beautiful. It’s almost, I would say, in living color.”

Which would be the perfect thing for Shipman, whose surviving feature film, “The Grub-Stake,” along with the three shorts, all were shot at least in part at Idaho’s Priest Lake.

And that leads to Trusky’s third reason why we should care about Shipman’s movies: They embody themes that play well to modern audiences.

“The thing that has always grabbed people about Shipman is, first of all, the films are very realistic,” Trusky said. “They’re set in the natural world – hello Washington and Idaho. And they’ve got lovely, charming, funny, heroic animals.”

Furthermore, he said, “The woman is always the hero of the piece, so it always seems remarkably contemporary. So the themes seem very relevant to today.”

Trusky says there’s at least one more Shipman film out there somewhere, and he hopes one day to find it. Until then, though, he’ll keep showing what he has, encouraging movie fans to buy all three volumes of Shipman’s collected works (for information, go online at www.boisestate.edu/heming way/film.htm).

And he’ll bid welcome to the audiences that can’t seem to get enough of a filmmaker who tried her best to portray on film what she liked to call God’s Country.

“We had a film festival down here in February,” Trusky said. “We have an old Egyptian-style theater here in Boise, and we packed the place. And people went crazy for the films. So audiences seem to be quite pleased with what they see.”

You may be pleased, too. To find out for sure, go and see for yourself.

“White Water,” “The Trail of the North Wind” and “The Light on Lookout” will screen at 7 p.m. Saturday at the Coeur d’Alene Public Library, 702 E. Front Ave. The event is free and open to the public. Call (208) 769-2315.