Set on the edge of a coastal rainforest, residents of a small, working-class town come together where fog blurs the boundaries of sea and land, story and reality, loss and redemption. Characters of Tillamook and Irish ancestry are transformed by this wild coastal place, creating a mysterious merging of the past with the present. The aerial perspective of Moses, the town’s omnipresent crow, is a continuous reminder that not just humans are part of this community.
Producer/Artist/Filmmaker, Eileen Olivieri (she/her) optioned the film/TV rights in 2015. In 2016, Eileen contacted the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians and applied for and received a research permit. During this process, Eileen met Robert Kentta, the Cultural Resources Director of the Tribe and invited him to join the Mink River team as an advisor. In 2018, Eileen traveled to Ireland with Lana Veeker on a research trip and visited the Conemarra region and Newgrange World Heritage Site.
During the pandemic, the feature script went into hibernation while artist B. Brown and Eileen Olivieri co-wrote a short script based on one of the various storylines in the novel. In the spring of 2022, the feature script woke up from its slumber and Salish author Sasha LaPointe joined the writing team. Today, Sasha is working with B. Brown and Eileen on a new draft of the feature script.
In August 2022, B. Brown and Eileen co-directed a mood/promo reel on the Oregon Coast. This reel is presently in the editing room and will be ready for private viewing in February 2023.
I grew up in Corvallis, Oregon, close to the Mink River world. As a child and adolescent, I spent significant time with my family camping on the coast, fishing on the nearby Siletz and Alsea rivers with my Irish-American father, and walking in the dense coastal forests. In my teens and early twenties the central coast and the surrounding natural environments became my refuge. Although I moved away from Oregon in my twenties, I still consider it my home and make regular visits to see my 93-year-old mother in Corvallis. Although the story is fictitious, the factual Indigenous and Irish histories in Oregon create the background from which the story emerges. Mink River will be filmed on the original land of the Tillamook People.
– Eileen Olivieri
