Since October 2024, local enthusiasts of Bellingham’s former film rental, Film Is Truth: 24 Times A Second, have rediscovered its collection online at the Pickford Film Center. This change follows the closure of Film Is Truth’s physical location in April 2022.
Ben Owens, the Pickford’s projectionist and assistant manager, now operates Film is Truth online after serving its earlier storefront for eight years.
“Film Is Truth was started in 1997 by Karl Freske and Emily Marston, and their idea behind it was to create a curated collection of films and television series that you couldn’t get anywhere else at that time,” says Owens. “They wanted to make a video store that functioned like an archive where people could find everything that they were looking for, that they couldn’t find anywhere else, with a heavy emphasis on independent film, foreign film, documentary, and queer film.”
The store went through five locations before finally closing on Cornwall Avenue. Local support remained, however, and the collection of over 22,000 films is now available to rent online.
Restoring Film Is Truth
Film is Truth modeled their collection after collaborators like Scarecrow Video, the largest collection in Washington. They have also received support, screenings, and trivia nights from organizations such as Allied Arts, Black Drop Coffee, and Uisce Irish Pub.
“It’s really eclectic in terms of having silent films, having films that have been banned, or work prints of things, like non-official releases of things – like the Apocalypse Now work print, or old short films from other filmmakers that haven’t been officially released,” says Owens. “But its focus is just geared towards the diverse needs of this community. That ended up being a lot of specialty documentaries and specialty animated films, and just the kind of weird stuff that Bellingham is sort of geared towards.”
The Pickford and Film Is Truth share common goals of building community through film, television, and other media that are not always showcased in corporate American filmmaking.
“A big part of it was just the Pickfords’ willingness to have space and be patient with the process,” says Owens. “When it was becoming clear that it was no longer financially viable to run it as a brick-and-mortar store, I didn’t want to break up the collection just because of how special and large and curated it was. But housing something of that size is a substantial effort. So, the Pickford was always very, very open. We’ve collaborated with them on a bunch of individual projects and had even talked about sharing space as a location for many years before this.”
Renting from Film Is Truth’s Collection
The Pickford allows visitors to access a complete, searchable list of film titles directly from the webpage.
“They have really good infrastructure in terms of point-of-sale systems and all of the different employees here that deeply care about film and know exactly how to use different technologies to bring that to audiences,” says Owens. “So they’re really helpful in implementing the webpage system that we utilize now, continuing to basically let us build out the collection physically in a private space.”
Following instructions on the page, visitors can rent films to pick up at the Pickford lobby.
“We really based it on Scarecrow’s model of online rentals,” says Owens. “You have to have a card here at the Pickford. Our whole inventory is online for people to browse, and they request whatever rentals they would like, up to 10 rentals at a time.”
Preserving Physical Media in Bellingham
“Physical media” has become a watchword under discussion as people increasingly use online streaming for entertainment rather than own copies. Film Is Truth locally supports a larger project to spotlight film and TV that viewers might not find online, due to distribution rights, obscurity, or bans.
“People deserve to have the things that they love, and they deserve to have access to whatever it is that they want,” says Owens. “So, continuing to make the entire collection available to everybody is very important. But also, in this era where digital streaming rights are not ownership rights, there are all these legal loopholes where the streaming companies can effectively sell you temporary access to a file under the guise that that’s ownership. And then at any moment in time, strip that away from you because they no longer have the rights, or they just don’t want to continue hosting access to that.”
Owens notes that DVD and Blu-ray players are still made, including in video game consoles, for viewers curious about the collection.
“The support that we had in the past was immense in terms of the regular customers that we had and the people that were very much in tune with our own passion for physical media preservation,” says Owens. “The volunteer base, once they found out that Film Is Truth was going to open at the Pickford, were very excited and very happy to contribute their volunteer time and helping to get the system up and running, whether that was database input or just the day-to-day operations of the Pickford. It’s really helped just increase further community outreach, having Film Is Truth be part of the Pickford.”
Pickford Film Center
1318 Bay Street, Bellingham
