# The Columbia River

1948, 21:10 minutes Produced by the US Dept. of the Interior Filmed by the Bonneville Power Administration Produced and Written by Stephen B. Kahn Songs by Woody Guthrie Congress had passed the Bonneville Project Act in 1937 to distribute the electricity generated at Bonneville and Grand Coulee dams on the Columbia River. The law said publicly-created utilities had preference, or first choice, on that power; investor-owned utilities could buy any surplus. The law also provided a block of power to new heavy industries that bolstered the region’s contributions during World War II. A new power agency, the Bonneville Power Project, set up an office in Portland to sell the electricity as prescribed. The project was renamed the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) in 1940. In 1938, the BPA had made a motion picture, Hydro, to inform the public about the new electricity and ways to obtain it. The agency’s first public information officer, Stephen B. Kahn (1911-2007), had produced Hydro, and he wanted a second movie to illuminate the advantages of public power. He believed that having a folk singer involved would help give the movie a "common touch," and he wrote a job description for an actor, narrator, and songwriter to work for a year on the project. In early 1941, Kahn contacted Allen Lomax, head of the Archive of Folk Song at the Library of Congress. Lomax and Guthrie were friends, and Lomax recommended him for the job. In late March, BPA representatives went to Los Angeles…

- Kind: Film
- Year: 1948
- By: U.S. Department of the Interior
- Genres: Music, Industrial and advertising
- Archive: [Internet Archive](https://archive.org/details/TheColumbiaRiver)
- Licence or status: [Public Domain Mark 1.0](http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/) (as the archive states it)
- Who can watch: Teens profiles and older (the archive gives no rating; placed by Invisible Network from its collection and subjects)

[Watch now](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/watch/archive/ia/TheColumbiaRiver?play=1)