Susie Purves, executive director of Bellingham’s Pickford Film Center, admittedly likes to blow things up.
Growing up in Detroit, she enjoyed visiting the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Diego Rivera Court, games with the Detroit Tigers, blues and jazz festivals, and markedly, the films series at Wayne State University and the nearby Unitarian fellowship.
Purves, now 66, said she “stumbled into” the ceramics program at the University of Washington, and received a BFA.
“One of the primary lessons that the UW faculty tried to impart was that it is important to be a part of your art community, and that it is paramount that you know how to throw a party,” Purves said. “That was enough to qualify me for a future in arts administration.”
Her life in arts management began as a volunteer at the Center on Contemporary Art (CoCA) in Seattle.
Even though she had no experience, she said she was offered a job based on the slim recommendation that she could be counted on to show up.
She said it was a massive undertaking, but in the late 1980s and well into the ’90s, CoCA presented cutting-edge visual, literary and performing artists including Nam Jun Paik, Survival Research Laboratories, William S. Burroughs, Lydia Lunch, Big Black and Einstürzende Neubauten.
Her job, she said, “consisted of managing the books, wearing black and convincing the fire department that we wouldn’t set anyone on fire … It was the job of a lifetime.”
Purves said the CoCA experience provided her with enough hubris to believe she could go on to work at On the Boards, run the Kirkland Arts Center, take on the job as the executive director of CoCA, produce documentaries for Northwest Designer Craftsmen, do a stint at Seattle International Children’s Festival, be managing director at Northwest Film Forum, and become the executive director at Spectrum Dance Theater. Yes, all that.
The jobs, she said, included lots of exciting experiences, working with artists, artistic risk-taking and striving in a very unsubdued fashion in all those places.
But, she said, “after decades of throwing lots of big parties with drill teams and marching bands, performance art, and blowing things up, it was time for recalibration.”
Purves applied for the job at the Pickford Film Center (PFC) when founder Alice Clark left. She had been to Bellingham once in the 1980s and had breakfast at the Old Town Café but had not been back since. So she took a leap, arriving in 2014.
The years between 2014–19 were booming for the Pickford, she said, and the film business in general.
“I have a tendency to push for more — because, why not? — and programming grew and marketing grew, and the staff that was in place was great and very capable,” Purves said.
During those years, the PFC began Rooftop Cinema, the outdoor film series on the upper deck of the Commercial Street Parkade (which this summer begins Friday, July 14, with the film “Legally Blonde”). It also started Doc-ED, which offers free tickets and bus transportation to every class in every public and tribal middle school in the county.
Among other accomplishments under Purves’ leadership are the Third Eye Cinema series — showing late-night cult films once a month on Saturdays — and the solidification of the PFC’s alliance and support of Bleedingham, the Treaty Day Film Festival, and the Cascadia International Women’s Film Festival.
Additional series include Cinema East (Pan-Asian cinema), Kid Pickford (kids classics), Rocket Sci-Fi (post-war sci-fi classics), IndieLens PopUp (free documentaries from PBS), and National Theatre Live (stage productions from the London stage). Doctober, the monthlong documentary festival that brings as many as 60 films from around the world to the PFC, screens every October.
Bellingham Children’s Film Festival, Storyteller’s Seasonal and the Guerrilla Film Project — a 62-hour film challenge for high schools in Western Washington — are ways locals get involved with the PFC, which also commemorates Pride Month, Women’s History Month and Black History Month with curated films. Partnerships with other nonprofits and the business community for film-based community events are also commonplace.
In the aforementioned years, the mortgage was paid off on the building at 1318 Bay St., nearly 100,000 tickets were sold annually, and the PFC grew to a staff of 20 — this is in addition to screening 52 weeks a year of first-run films.
Purves, like so many people in the arts, said the pandemic brought all this to a screeching halt.
“We lost the Limelight [on Cornwall Avenue], and the theater on Bay Street reopened after 15 months to a decimated film industry,” she said. “We bought a second building and have almost finished a capital campaign [to help pay for the project].”
Projectionist Steve Meyers, House Manager Meghan Schilling and Purves are the only pre-pandemic employees remaining.
“We currently have an impressive group of people both on a managerial level and on the floor staff,” she said.
Purves said it’s the volunteers who make the Pickford possible. Some have been around as long as 20 years.
Purves likes to see the lightbulb go on with the people she works with, several of whom are new to film exhibitions or nonprofits, as they get more solid in their positions.
“Everyone loves movies,” she said. “Everyone works hard and a lot of creativity will be let loose once we have five screens.”
“The Pickford audience is evolving,” Purves added.
It might be the effect of having a new program director, Melissa Tammiga, Purves said, but the percentage of audiences younger than 25 has ballooned, which is exciting.
But Purves admits a segment of their audience, many of who are longtime members, discovered streaming during the pandemic and haven’t come back to the theater yet.
“I don’t think they have died because their mail doesn’t get returned to us,” she said, laughing. “I don’t know if they are doing anything downtown.”
Luckily, Purves said, the Pickford board is a solid one.
“The pandemic wasn’t easy for them and they deserve a lot of credit for taking the steps necessary to purchase, fund and plan a new venue,” she said, referring to the building on Grand Avenue, which will be the site of the Pickford on Grand.
At home on South Hill, Purves enjoys hanging out with her bull terrier, Darla, puttering in the yard, walking around Bellingham and getting to know the city on the inside level.
Purves said that although she no longer gets to blow things up or set them on fire, she takes great pleasure in seeing something she instigated or participated in planning actually happen, whether it is a film series or a capital campaign.
“I get free tickets,” she said. “I get to talk about the movies every day. I get to meet filmmakers.”
For more details about the Pickford Film Center, go to pickfordfilmcenter.org.
A previous version of this story stated that Steve Meyers and Susie Purves were the only pre-pandemic employees remaining at the Pickford Film Center. House Manager Meghan Schilling is also a pre-pandemic employee. The story was updated to reflect this change on June 29, 2023 at 10:12 a.m. Cascadia Daily News regrets the error.
