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Portland filmmaker Brian Lindstrom has died. His documentaries told the stories of people—almost all of them in Oregon—at society’s margins, many of them struggling with addiction, mental health diagnoses, or other forces beyond their control. He was 65.
Lindstrom’s wife, the author Cheryl Strayed, announced Lindstrom’s death Friday, May 15, on social media.
“The only thing more immense than our sorrow that progressive supranuclear palsy took our beloved Brian from us is the endless love we have for him,” Strayed wrote.
In late April, Strayed announced she would cancel some upcoming writing workshops and public appearances as her husband had been diagnosed with “a serious, fatal illness.”
Progressive supranuclear palsy is a rare brain disease that affects walking, balance, eye movements, and swallowing.
Lindstrom’s most recent film, Lost Angel: The Legend of Judee Sill (2022), was awarded Documentary of the Year by Docnroll Film Festival. It tells the story of the folk singer Judee Sill, from a troubled adolescence to her meteoric rise to folk stardom to her 1979 death of a drug overdose at the age of 35.
Most of Lindstrom’s other films focused on subjects closer to home—he grew up in Portland’s Parkrose neighborhood and attended Lewis & Clark College—but he maintained a keen interest in mental health and addiction issues and the lives of people at society’s margins.
“His work as a documentary filmmaker was dedicated to telling stories of people who, as he put it, ‘society puts an X through,’” Strayed wrote in Friday’s post. “He erased that X with his camera and his astonishing heart. He made films about incarcerated moms and their kids, about people with mental illness and substance use disorders, about teens living in homeless shelters, foster care, and detention centers, about people who were at the bottom and trying to climb up.”
Lindstrom is perhaps best known for Alien Boy: The Life and Death of James Chasse, a 2013 documentary detailing the 2006 death of James Chasse and its aftermath. Chasse was tackled by Portland police in the Pearl District and, hours later, died of his injuries while being transported to the hospital.
“What really hammers Alien Boy home is the Life part of its title,” AP Kryza wrote in a review for WW in 2013. “When Chasse was slain, the police falsely labeled him a transient junkie. Lindstrom’s film dives deeply into the life of a man who touched countless lives through his art and the pioneering position he held in Portland’s early punk-rock scene. Ex-girlfriends, family members, musicians, artists and parishioners from his church all tell of a deeply troubled but caring man whose mental despair robbed him of peace.” (Chasse was acquainted with members of the seminal Portland punk band The Wipers; the movie’s title comes from a song the band wrote about him.)
Reviewing 2007’s Finding Normal—which follows Recovery Mentors acting as peer support for people struggling to recover from addiction—for WW, David F. Walker wrote that Lindstrom was “as uncompromising in his study of recovery as are the mentors who have rebuilt their lives and are now committed to helping others.” The film won Best Documentary at the Oregon Independent and Ashland International Film Festivals in 2016.
Lindstrom’s filmography also includes a number of documentary shorts, Old Town Diary and To Pay My Way With Stories, as well as Mothering Inside, which tells the stories of incarcerated mothers and their children. Mothering Inside won Best Documentary at the Oregon Independent and Ashland International Film Festivals in 2016.
Jason Renaud, a longtime friend of Lindstrom’s and a producer of Alien Boy, told WW he believed Mothering Inside was Lindstrom’s favorite of his films. It follows the lives of incarcerated mothers and their children; according to Renaud, he continued to follow the story long after the film wrapped.
“I knew Brian for 40+ years…We worked on a variety of projects together, always kibitzing,” wrote Renaud. “We had different values—he was a Christian and believed in redemption. He was a genuinely nice person. He cared about strangers. He believed things could be made right. He was a good dad and a good son and a good husband. He was a listener. He was a watcher.”
