"Fishermen's Terminal," a documentary about the home of the North Pacific Fishing Fleet, is part of this year's Seattle International Film Festival. Directed by prolific film-maker and Ph.D. author B.J. Bullert, the one-hour film marks the end of a four-year project that started when the Port of Seattle decided to allow pleasure boats to moor for the first time at the working-man marina.
Depending on who's talking in the documentary, the decision in 2001 was an example of class warfare and the gradual gentrification of Seattle, or it was a move to bring in extra money to a Port property that's seen better days since it was built at the northeastern edge of Magnolia nearly a century ago.
"It's clear this issue of yachts touched a raw nerve down there," Bullert said, adding that she wasn't really surprised at the reaction. "Seattle has a very long history about issues of class, and the haves and have-nots," she said.
It's an issue Bullert is familiar with. Her last film was "Chief Seattle," which traced the life of the much-abused American Indian, and she also produced a trio of half-hour KUOW-FM radio shows about "Skid Road," a term that originated in Seattle.
And Bullert ran into the perfect anchor source for the story about Fishermen's Terminal. Pete Knutson is a commercial fisherman at the marina, an anthropology professor and - many would say - a rabble rouser who accused the Port of "declaring war on the working class."
Knutson is featured in much of the film as he birddogs Port officials, though other interview subjects include - to name a few - British author and yachtsman Jonathan Rabin, former Washington State Supreme Court Justice Phil Talmadge, Port CEO Mic Dinsmore, numerous Port Commissioners and Annu Mangat, a business reporter from the Daily Journal of Commerce.
The media, including this publication, covered the marina controversy extensively, and Bullert said she picked up on the fact that journalists were seeing the issue as about more than just pleasure boats. "So in many ways, I was taking my lead from the press."
Scrutiny on her part wasn't always welcome, according to Bullert, who said a Port document referred to her filming as "borderline harassment from the video lady." That reference was whited out, however, in a public-disclosure copy of the document she obtained later, Bullert added.
To be sure, at one point in the documentary, Port staff tried to prevent Bullert from filming an encounter in the Port's Fishermen's Terminal office between Knutson and staff.
Nor was Knutson's presence always welcome, a fact made especially clear in a segment of the film when a clearly irked Port Commissioner, Paige Miller, tells Knutson she didn't know anything about a $50,000 Port study that recommended opening up Fishermen's Terminal to office, retail and industrial uses.
The Heartland LLC study was commissioned by lower-level Port staff, Miller insisted in the documentary. "It's not on the radar screen," she said of the recommended changes.
Bullert said the fact the study was commissioned at all made her wonder what's really important to the Port of Seattle. "This business about priorities, that's basically what my film is about," she said.
It was also a question of priorities that led to Knutson getting kicked out of Fishermen's Terminal for selling processed seafood such as smoked or canned salmon, products reserved exclusively for sale at the Wild Salmon seafood store at the terminal.
Fishermen had been allowed to sell whole frozen fish from their boats, and the rule was softened later to allow the sales of cut-up fish. But Knutson was booted out after he was caught on Port surveillance footage selling the processed food.
Knutson - who is now back at the terminal in his boat - got the footage through a public-disclosure request, Bullert said. Still, the documentary quotes a Port official saying Knutson wasn't specifically targeted for surveillance, that the camera was only a safety measure.
The furor over pleasure boats mooring at Fishermen's Terminal has largely died down now, but Bullert said her documentary wasn't really about yachts, anyway. "I think the story is really more about the Port," she said. "The Port ended up taking over the film in a way."
But Bullert hopes her documentary helps point out that nostalgic, romanticized stereotypes about rugged fishermen make it easier to ignore the real issues facing a shrinking fishing fleet and the men and women who work in it.
Bullert said she expects the film will be picked up by KCTS-TV, which has aired her work before. And if thing go right, she said she hopes HBO also might pick it up.
In the meantime, Bullert's documentary "Fishermen's Terminal" will have its world-premiere film-festival showing at the Egyptian Theatre at 6:30 p.m. on Memorial Day, May 30.
Staff reporter Russ Zabel can be reached at rzabel@nwlink.com or 461-1309.[[In-content Ad]]
