Beth Harrington

Personal life The daughter of an art teacher and an artist/advertising executive of Irish and Italian heritage, Harrington was born and grew up in greater Boston. She attended Catholic elementary and high school in suburban Boston, a subject she revisited in her film The Blinking Madonna and Other Miracles. She also played with Northwest-based band Spiricles from 2011 to 2017.

In 1991, Harrington began a long association with Boston's flagship PBS station WGBH, where she worked as associate producer and line producer on various nationally broadcast documentaries, including episodes of Nova, Frontline and The AIDS Quarterly (later called Health Quarterly). She was a line producer for the Peabody Award-winning show Dating in the Age of AIDS, an episode of Health Quarterly,

After relocating to the Pacific Northwest in October 1996, Harrington became a frequent contributor to Oregon Public Broadcasting, working as a freelance filmmaker as well as doing development work on other projects for that station. Harrington's work for OPB includes producing episodes of the PBS series History Detectives and several specials, including Digital Television: A Cringely Crash Course, one of PBS's first High Definition productions.

Harrington also won acclaim for her 1996 feature The Blinking Madonna and Other Miracles, a "creative nonfiction" film telling the story of a miracle Harrington may have witnessed through a combination of documentary footage and scripted scenes performed by actors and real-life participants.

Harrington's 2001 independent production Welcome to the Club: The Women of Rockabilly, a documentary about the pioneering women of early rock 'n' roll, was broadcast nationally on public television stations, and was nominated for a Grammy in the category of Best Long Form Video.

Two other programs produced, directed and written by Harrington—ZigZag: Real Stories, New Angles, an innovative 2004 environmental public affairs show and Beervana, a 2007 look at Oregon's beer culture and history, also received Northwest Emmy nominations, for Best Public Affairs Special and Best Historical/Cultural Program, respectively.

Harrington's documentary The Winding Stream: The Carters, the Cashes and the Course of Country Music tells the story of country music's influential Carter family, and includes one of Johnny Cash's last interviews. The Winding Stream premiered at 2014's SXSW Film Festival, and went on to appear at over 30 other festivals. It was released in theaters across North America, and later had its digital and DVD launch on Netflix, Amazon, iTunes, Vudu and other platforms, and was well-reviewed in a number of national publications, including Variety, Rolling Stone, and The Hollywood Reporter. Harrington was also co-producer of The Winding Stream'''s soundtrack album, released by Omnivore Recordings. In 2021, the New York Daily News named The Winding Stream No. 56 on a list of the 100 best documentaries of all time.

In 2019, Harrington's film Fort Vancouver, the story of the Hudson's Bay Company in the Pacific Northwest, won a Northwest Regional Emmy as Best Historical/Cultural Program. Her 2020 film Once Upon a Time in the Northwest: The Music of Federale also won a Northwest Emmy. Another project, Beyond the Duplex Planet, is a feature-length documentary about artist David Greenberger and his work turning interviews with senior citizens into art. Yet another, Our Mr. Matsura, is a historical non-fiction film about a Japanese photographer's unconventional work documenting the people of Washington state in the early 1900s. The project received development funding in April 2021 from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Other work Harrington is active in various film and arts organizations, having served on the board of the Hollywood Theatre in Portland, Oregon, as well as the Oregon Media Production Association. She is currently a commissioner on the Vancouver, Washington, Culture, Arts and Heritage Commission.

Harrington is also a past president of Women in Film/New England and a former vice president of Women in Film/Seattle. She is a voting member of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. She has been a media instructor at Washington State University, Lewis & Clark College, Bunker Hill Community College, New England School of Photography, Boston Film/Video Foundation, the Northwest Film Center and the Olympia Film Society, as well as an artist-in-residence at the Vancouver School of Arts and Academics.

Awards and nominations Harrington's films have won and been nominated for multiple awards; a complete list can be found in the filmography section below. In addition to her individual films, Harrington has also been honored with the following awards for her overall career: I Migliori Award, Pirandello Lyceum, Dante Aligheri Society, Boston, 1986 Artist Fellow, Playa Art and Science Residency Program, 2018 Clark County Arts Commission Lifetime Achievement Award, 2019 1986 Firepower| Associate producer Gold Award, Chicago International Film Festival 1993 Frontline: The Health Care Gamble| Associate producer 1994 Apollo 13: To the Edge and Back| Associate producer National Emmy nomination Paris Adventure Film Award Best of Fest Critics' Award, Northampton Film FestivalWorldfest Houston, Gold Award for Experimental ComedySelection, Southern Circuit Tour of Independent Filmmakers 2001 Welcome to the Club: The Women of Rockabilly| Grammy nomination, Best Long Form Video 2005 Gates of the Arctic| Co-producer 2007 Beervana| Northwest Emmy nomination, Best Historical/Cultural Program 2018 Fort Vancouver| Northwest Emmy Award, Best Historical/Cultural Program Special 2020 Once Upon a Time in the Northwest: The Music of Federale| Northwest Emmy Award, Arts & Entertainment - Long Form Content In progress Beyond the Duplex Planet| In progress Our Mr. Matsura''