The Royal Chinook

At the heart of the Pacific Northwest, where the Columbia River carves its ancient path through basalt cliffs and verdant forests, 'The Royal Chinook' emerges as a profound visual document of a vanished epoch. The film eschews traditional melodrama to focus its lens on the Herculean labor and rhythmic machinery of the early 20th-century salmon industry. It captures the silver-scaled majesty of the Chinook salmon—the titular royalty—as they navigate the treacherous, foaming cascades of the river, only to meet the ingenious traps and nets of human industry. This is not merely a record of commerce but a cinematic ode to the topographical grandeur of the Oregon and Washington borderlands, where the relentless flow of water mirrors the inexorable march of industrial progress. The narrative arc is defined by the migration of the fish and the corresponding mobilization of the canneries, creating a tapestry of ecological struggle and mercantile ambition that feels both primordial and modern.