Ryan Geoffrey Walker

Ryan Geoffrey Walker is a nonfiction filmmaker and freelance videographer. His middle name is a reference to Geoffrey Fermin from Under the Volcano (1984). He was born in Victoria, Texas to Ronald and Leslie Walker, who are both natives of southern California. Ronald was a Professor of English for 22 years, first at University of Houston-Victoria, then at Western Illinois University. Ronald is the author of Infernal Paradise: Mexico and the Modern English Novel, as well as dozens of short works of literary criticism. Leslie is a trilingual college graduate who was a stay-at-home mom and later the manager of an independent bookstore. When Ryan was 7 years old, the family moved to Macomb, Illinois. In grade school and junior high, he began developing skills in drawing, creative writing, and music. After seeing Get Shorty (1995) at the Illinois Theater and reading his first Elmore Leonard novel, he started experimenting with screenwriting and filmmaking. After graduating from high school in 1997, Ryan wrote and directed a comedy short called "One Saturday," using friends as actors and shooting with the family camcorder. He spent the bulk of his freshman year at Truman State University (Kirksville, Missouri) blowing off classes and making a feature film called Lookers. Heavily influenced by Swingers (1996) and Seinfeld (1989), it was shot with a borrowed VHS camera and edited on a tape-to-tape rack at the campus library. In the summer of 1998, Ryan was accepted into film school at Columbia College (Chicago), but at the eleventh hour he decided not to go-for several reasons, none of which make sense in hindsight. Instead he enrolled at WIU back in Macomb. He became a Sociology major and played in the drumline for the Marching Leathernecks. His writing veered from screenplays to poetry. He played in a blues rock cover band with his older brother Matt. He grew out his hair. Filmmaking was on the back burner. Three and a half years into his college education, Ryan dropped out of school and moved to Columbia, Missouri with Eli Gay, an old buddy from Truman. Ryan worked on the University of Missouri campus as a dishwasher. He recorded two LPs as the drummer of a "slamgrass" band called Viletto, which had a strong DIY/outsider/econo identity. He compiled five years worth of poetry into a book called For You, which he-self published at the local Kinko's. Ryan returned to school in 2002, graduating from Mizzou in 2003 with a BA in Interdisciplinary Studies (English, Sociology, History). Then he moved to Los Angeles for 18 months. He bounced around the underground music scene, playing everything from art rock to acid rock to punk rock to reggae. He abandoned the idea of making a living as a musician. And yet he was totally committed to making music. Back in Columbia by 2005, Ryan teamed up with Eli Gay to form an anti-busking band called Total Amateurs and the Gift Shop, which mixed punk rock with jazz. He made lo-fi recordings of all their performances and spent countless hours editing and distributing CD copies-for free. A 2006 disc called "Brown Baggins" caught the attention of Chase Thompson, who asked to feature the band on an episode of his public access TV show, Das Karnival. This was Ryan's introduction to Columbia Access Television and the beginning of his close friendship with Chase. Ryan went on to become Station Co-Manager and then Program Director of CAT. Over more than four years, he produced hundreds of shows, taught classes in studio and field production as well as editing, created an online archive of shows, scheduled and programmed the channel, all while providing customer service to the public and performing administrative tasks as needed. During his tenure, CAT became a nationally recognized community media center. With Chase Thompson, Ryan co-directed and co-edited Zielinski (2011), a nonfiction feature film. They met John Zielinski at CAT in 2007, when he walked into the office holding a muddy VHS camera and said, "There's a tape stuck in here that will bring down the U.S. government. Can you help me?" This kick-started an investigation that went much deeper than they expected. Zielinski (2011) was an official selection of Slamdance, True/False, Kansas City, Philadelphia Independent, Radar Hamburg, and Cornfed film festivals. It has been distributed digitally by The Orchard since 2012. In 2011, Ryan optioned the film & TV rights to The Bootlegger (2016), which is set in Colchester, Illinois, just 6 miles from his parents' house. The film took two years to shoot and three years to edit. He lived in Macomb for ten months during production, before moving to Olympia, Washington in 2013. From 2014-2015, Ryan was the Volunteer Coordinator at Olympia Film Society. During his time at OFS, he gave the volunteer program a much-needed overhaul, from instituting an online management system to writing a volunteer handbook. He also took an active role in training and supervising volunteers. In November 2015, Ryan moved with his wife Kate Walker to Bellevue, Washington, where they co-own Fountain Green Films. FGF has worked with clients such as HeavyBit, WSECU, Seattle Hempfest, Citizen Jane Film Festival, Olympia Film Festival, Coleman Violin Studio, Seattle Music, Mighty Media, O Bee Credit Union, Tenacious Ventures, One Man Band Seattle, LyonPride Music, Darby's Cafe, Old School Pizzeria, and Cafe Berlin. Ryan has been a programmer for Slamdance Film Festival since 2012 and Portland Film Festival since 2016.