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Brian Lindstrom, a filmmaker whose documentaries shined a light on society\u2019s underdogs and inspired social change, has died. He was 65. <\/p>\n
Lindstrom\u2019s wife, author Cheryl Strayed<\/a>, confirmed the news on Instagram Friday. <\/p>\n \u201cBrian Lindstrom died this morning the way he lived \u2014 with gentleness and courage, grace and gratitude for his beautiful life,\u201d she wrote<\/a>. \u201cOur children, Carver and Bobbi, and I held him as he took his last breath and we will hold him forever in our hearts. 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.\u201d<\/p>\n According to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke<\/a>, PSP is caused by damage to nerve cells in areas of the brain that control thinking and body movements. The rare neurological disease progresses rapidly. <\/p>\n Strayed, who penned the bestselling memoir \u201cWild,<\/a>\u201d which was later adapted for the big screen and starred Reese Witherspoon, announced<\/a> just weeks ago that Lindstrom had been diagnosed \u201cwith a serious, fatal illness.\u201d <\/p>\n Lindstrom was born Feb. 12, 1961. The son of a bartender and a liquor salesman, he was raised in Portland, Ore. \u2014 which he and his family still called home.<\/p>\n He was the first member of his family to attend college, which he paid for by taking out student loans, landing work-study jobs and working summers in a salmon cannery in Cordova, Alaska. During a 2013 TEDx Talk<\/a>, Lindstrom said that after he\u2019d exhausted all the video production classes at Portland\u2019s Lewis & Clark College, his professor Stuart Kaplan<\/a> gave him a gift certificate to a class at the Northwest Film Center. There, Lindstrom made a short film about his grandpa that landed him a spot in the MFA program at Columbia University. <\/p>\n It was a train trip with his grandpa that inspired Lindstrom to tackle challenging topics with a lens that restored dignity to his subjects. His grandpa was a binge-drinker, and on day three of the trip, he woke up with a hangover and was missing his dentures. Lindstrom, only 5 at the time, noticed the way other passengers treated him and his grandpa differently. <\/p>\n \u201cI think what my films are about is that search for my grandfather\u2019s dentures, the humanizing narrative that bridges the gap between us and them and arrives at we,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Lindstrom said he returned to Portland after film school and \u201cdid several projects with the Northwest Film Center that had me putting a camera in the hands of kids on probation, homeless teens, newly recovering addicts, hard-hit people who had hard-hitting stories to share.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cThose projects taught me so much about the transformative power of art, and they gave me permission I felt in my personal films to ask people if I might follow them, so that an audience could better understand what they were going through, and by extension, better understand themselves,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Lindstrom\u2019s 2007 award-winning cin\u00e9ma-v\u00e9rit\u00e9-style film, \u201cFinding Normal,\u201d followed long-term drug addicts as they left prison or detox and tried to rebuild their lives with the help of a recovery mentor. <\/p>\n \u201cWhat I\u2019m most proud about is that \u2018Finding Normal\u2019 is the only film to ever be shown to inmates in solitary confinement at Oregon State Penitentiary, and not, I might add, as a punishment,\u201d Lindstrom said. <\/p>\n In 2013, he released \u201cAlien Boy: The Life and Death of James Chasse<\/a>,\u201d a documentary that illuminated the life of a man who grappled with schizophrenia and examined his death, which happened in police custody. Discussing the film with LA Progressive<\/a> in 2018, Lindstrom said that he doesn\u2019t make films for audiences. <\/p>\n \u201cI make them for the people in the film. It is my small way of honoring them,\u201d he told the outlet. \u201cThat doesn\u2019t mean I don\u2019t delve into dark areas or that I ignore that person\u2019s struggles. I\u2019m much more concerned with trying to achieve an honest depiction of that person\u2019s life than I am with any potential audience reaction.\u201d<\/p>\n Lindstrom\u2019s work aimed to inspire empathy and humanize those suffering in the margins of society, but it also catalyzed policy change. His acclaimed 2015 documentary, \u201cMothering Inside,\u201d followed participants in the Family Preservation Project (FPP), an initiative helping incarnated moms establish and maintain bonds with their children. <\/p>\n Midway through filming the documentary, the Oregon Department of Corrections announced it planned to nix funding for the FPP. Lindstrom hosted early screenings of the film, which inspired grassroots advocacy that reached then-Gov. Kate Brown, who subsequently signed legislation that restored funding. The film\u2019s release also helped make Oregon the first state in the U.S. to pass a bill of rights for children of incarcerated parents. <\/a> <\/p>\n Partnering with Strayed, Lindstrom made the documentary short, \u201cI Am Not Untouchable. I Just Have My Period,\u201d<\/a> for the New York Times in 2019. The film highlighted the experience of teen girls in Surkhet, Nepal, and the menstrual stigma they faced. Most recently, the filmmaker released, \u201cLost Angel: The Genius of Judee Sill,<\/a>\u201d which examined the folk-rock singer\u2019s life from her traumatic childhood and drug-addled adolescence through her rise in the Laurel Canyon music scene and untimely death. <\/p>\n