Jan Baross Film Collection, 1967-2001

Jan Baross was born in Oakland, CA in 1943 and raised in Bakersfield, CA. Her father was an orthopedic surgeon, her mother was a social worker and her brother eventually became an ER doc.

From an early age Baross’s mother took her across Asia, Africa and Europe. It was there Baross began her voluminous sketching of the many countries they visited, capturing the pre-T-shirt world of the post era.

At eighteen Baross left for San Francisco State University to major in art. It was the 1960s. She was living in the Haight, becoming a photographer and abandoned painting. She was the editor of the classic photo journal, “The Hippies,” published by the Idlewild Press. Her photos of The Free Speech Movement at University of California, Berkeley in 1964-5 were published.

In 1967 Baross married a marine microbiologist and moved to Seattle. She joined the Seattle Film Board and made award winning documentaries and animated films. She taught film making for Upward Bound at University of Washington.

By 1971 Baross and her husband had moved to Corvallis, Oregon for his post doc. At Oregon State, Baross taught filmmaking and got an MA in Communications. She worked for OSU making PSAs and was a film critic for The Corvallis Gazette Times.

After a divorce in 1985, Baross moved to Portland, Oregon and continued her filmmaking, joining the board of the NW Film Co-op. She became a film critic for The Business Journal. She also wrote magazine articles, features, made illustrations for The Jewish Review. She began writing screenplays, some of which were optioned.

In the latter 1980s, Baross joined the Artists Repertory Theater literary board. She also tried her hand at writing plays. During the 1990s, theatrical readings and productions followed in Portland, New York, Los Angeles, and Mexico. Some won awards and grants. One of her plays, “Mata Hari,” inspired a composer to write an opera of the same title for which Baross wrote the libretto. As winner of a national competition, the opera premiered at the Deep Ellum Opera Company in Dallas, Texas.