The Elk: Film Screening and Artist Talk

Date: September 10, 2026

Time: 6 - 7 p.m.

Location: Pine Meadow Ranch Center for Arts & Agriculture

Join us at Pine Meadow Ranch where Erika Bolstad will present her 30-minute short film, The Elk, and discuss the project and independent documentary filmmaking in Oregon.
The Elk opens during protests in Portland, Oregon in 2020, when the city removed a beloved elk sculpture for safekeeping. Six years later, the elk was the first of the city's damaged monuments to return, and the only sculpture without controversy. But in a city that never really stopped protesting, people remain divided over why the elk went away—and what it means for the dinged-up but refurbished symbol to finally return. Set in an American city reckoning with its symbols of westward expansion, the unfolding fate of the elk and other monuments tells the story of a nation divided over who and what belongs on a pedestal.

For ages 16 and older. Those under age 16 may attend accompanied by an adult.

About the Artist:

(She/Her) – Portland, OR

Erika Bolstad is a journalist and documentary filmmaker in Portland, and the author of Windfall, a finalist for the Oregon Book Award. She spent a decade in Washington, D.C., covering politics and environmental issues for Climatewire and the McClatchy Washington Bureau. In 2008, she was a Pulitzer finalist for work at the Idaho Statesman. To Be Rich, her companion short documentary to Windfall, was supported by an environmental art grant from the Anonymous Was a Woman Foundation. Her current film project, Monumental, explores an American city's reckoning with its toppled monuments to westward expansion. Erika was a 2025 Bend Film Basecamp fellow, and in 2026 was in the inaugural cohort of The Bridge, a Sundance Collab development program for Oregon filmmakers.

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