A film festival. A community film school. Salons featuring screenings, special events and discussion panels. A future production lab. A future filmmaker grant program. And one stubborn belief that Astoria deserves them all.
Astoria Picture Show (APS) started with a question that felt almost too simple: why doesn’t a place this interesting have a different kind of organization dedicated to the motion picture arts?
Astoria, Oregon is a city that has always lived in proximity to stories — a fishing town, a port, a place of remarkable natural beauty and hard economic history, a community that has watched the film industry drive by for years without stopping. It deserved better. It deserved filmmaking resources.
But as the idea took shape, it became clear that unlike some town, a festival alone wasn’t enough for Astoria. What Astoria really needed was a pipeline — a reason for people here to see filmmaking as something they could actually do, not just consume. That’s where the APS Film School came from.
And then: what happens when we get these two big initiatives off the ground? Then what? What about the people already here, already making things, who just needed a little support to finish them? Or a place to put their ideas into full motion? Those programs are next.
Astoria Picture Show is all these things at once: an annual festival committed to showing films that matter, a year-round school committed to helping people make them, and future programs committed to supporting the local work that should exist in the world.
Why These Films
We made a choice about programming from the beginning. We weren’t going to be a festival that celebrates bleakness, or one that requires you to suffer through Important Cinema. We were going to look for films that surprise you. That find something honest and strange and alive in the world. That make you feel better — not because they’re easy, but because they’re paying attention.
“These films suggest that feeling better doesn’t require a grand solution — just closer attention.”
Why Astoria
Because this is where we are. Because the Oregon coast deserves cultural institutions that take it seriously. Because there are young people in Astoria who would be extraordinary filmmakers if anyone gave them the tools and the room to try. Because there are filmmakers here already, making things quietly, who deserve support. And because sometimes the best festivals — the best organizations — are the ones that are genuinely, specifically rooted in a place.
Where We’re Headed
We’re in our first years. We’re building carefully. In the near future: a well-established annual festival, a fully running Film School with strong partnerships at Clatsop Community College and Astoria High School, and future programs supporting our first cohort of local films.
In the longer future: a model that can expand. To Seaside. To Cannon Beach. To other communities on the coast that are hungry for exactly this kind of thing.
But first: movies. Astoria. October. You should come.
