Marily Woodhouse

Marily Woodhouse is directing her first film "Clearcut Nation" later in life, although in some respects, it is her life coming full circle. Born in San Francisco in 1956, she made her television debut in 1960 on the news when she graduated from the first integrated preschool in the Bay Area. (Preschools were new then too, along with anti-segregation laws.) She began modern ballet and art classes at Younghaven Studios in San Francisco as a child. By the time she was 10 years old she had begun to write plays, which she would costume and direct and round up other neighborhood children to act in. Later, in junior high school in San Mateo, her drama teacher staged one of Marily's plays with the 7th grade class. At San Mateo High School, Marily took drama, choir, and dance classes and appeared in both musical and dramatic productions. Upon graduation, she moved to Los Angeles where she did some extra work and appeared in a revival of "Stage Door" at the Greenhouse Theatre in Pasadena, although more of her time was spent waitressing. In her mid-20s, she married and moved back to northern California. She began riding in horse endurance races and rode thousands of miles over the western states. After moving to a small rural area in the late '80s, she became involved in the Theatre Department of Shasta College where she acted, danced, and sang in diverse plays including "Six Characters in Search of an Author", "Don Juan", "As You Like It", and "Rikki Tiki Tavi" as well as writing scripts, choreographing, costuming shows, and working on set construction. By 2005, Marily began seeing drastic changes in the rural area she had lived in for many years. The mainly uninhabited, forested land began being clearcut by the wealthy, giant timber company that had taken over the land in the late '90s. Unable to stand idly by without fighting the irreparable destruction, she became an activist. She enlarged skills from other parts of her life, such as writing, photography, research, and mapping, to document what was occurring in the world around her. And this led to making her first documentary.