UW News

April 29, 2016

Architecture professor Jeffrey Ochsner featured in young filmmaker’s Gum Wall documentary screening May 1

UW News

A still from Celia Jensen’s film “The Secret Life of a Gum Wall,” in which Jeffrey Ochsner, UW professor of architecture, appears.Celia Jensen

When 8-year-old filmmaker Celia Jensen decided to make a film about the demise of Seattle’s Gum Wall — with her father, Matt Jensen, capably assisting — she looked to the UW for an expert to interview and found Jeffrey Ochsner.

And though Ochsner is otherwise busy being a professor of architecture and associate dean for academic affairs in the UW College of Built Environments, he was happy to help.

In the short film, Ochsner is interviewed in his Architecture Hall office. He tells Celia he thinks people come to the Gum Wall “to get a chance to do something that in any other location would be forbidden – and so it is as if you left your mark.”

Celia’s film, “The Secret Life of a Gum Wall,” will be shown as part of the “Northwest is Best” group of films at the Seattle-based National Film Festival for Talented Youth.

Celia, now 9, has made and submitted other films, and in 2014 was the youngest filmmaker ever selected by the festival, which is for those under 21.

The screening will be at 1 p.m. Sunday, May 1, at the SIFF Uptown 2 theater, at 511 Queen Anne Ave. North. It’s open to the public and tickets are $10-$12.

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