Our Programmers

Dr. Pete Porter teaches filmic arts history and theory/criticism at Eastern Washington University. Before joining the Electronic Media and Film faculty in 2004, Porter earned a Ph.D. from Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan and degrees from Indiana State and Grand Valley State. His dissertation argues that the ancient literary form Menippean satire, a travesty of The Odyssey, the work of Plato, and Old comedy, has taken shape in movies from Duck Soup (1934) to The Big Lebowski (1998). Dr. Porter's recent work studies media representations of non-human animals from a cognitive-ethical perspective. He has work forthcoming in Society & Animals. Dr. Porter serves as faculty advisor to the EWU Film Society and on the boards of The Spokane International Film Festival, and The Friends of Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge.

Irv Broughton has been making films for over 30 years. His films have shown at numerous festivals, including Ann Arbor, Bumbershoot, and the Northwest Film and Video Festival, where he is a three-time winner. As a writer, he is author of eleven books, including Producers on Producing and The Art of Interviewing in Television, Radio and Film. He also has written screenplays, two of which are currently under consideration for production. Irv holds an M.A. in Creative Writing from the distinguished writing program at Hollins (College) University, as well as M.A. and B.A. degrees from Florida State University. He makes his home in Spokane, where he teaches film and writing courses at Spokane Falls Community College.

Vaughn Overlie is an avid storyteller and a member of the Spokane Storytelling League, but his first love and passion is films. Overlie says, "I fell in love with cinema in 1953 when I saw Shane. In 1960 I entered the world of foreign films when I visited the Dishman Theater to view Bergman's The Virgin Spring. I remember when you could not find a book on films in Spokane, but there were two independent film theaters. Now we have aisles of books, but no venue for foreign films, but we do have our own film festival which I hope will live forever." Vaughn  was born in Prosser, Washington in 1941. He is a retired school teacher who taught in Idaho for 32 years as well as one year in Washington. He was the school librarian as well as the world history teacher.