8:32 AM
In the spring of 1980, Portland nature photographer Robert Landsburg began making regular trips to Mount St. Helens, which had awakened after more than a century of dormancy. He photographed the mountain through March and April as the eruptions intensified, setting up camp on the south fork of the Toutle River — legally, carefully, with his car facing away from the volcano. He saw it as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
On May 18th at 8:32 AM, the eruption came laterally, in a way nobody had predicted. Landsburg had seconds. He fired off four photos, rewound his film into the camera, knocked the camera off the tripod, put it in his bag, and fell on top of it with his body to shield it from the ash hurricane. He died there. Seventeen days later, recovery teams found him exactly as he had fallen — camera beneath him, film intact. His four photographs were published in the January 1981 issue of National Geographic, the dream he had been chasing his entire career, achieved after his death.
8:32 AM is a hybrid short documentary built around Landsburg's journals, the testimony of people who knew him or witnessed his story, and recreation footage shot on 16mm film at the mountain. It is a film about what a person believes their work is worth — and what they are willing to leave behind to prove it.
This is the sizzle reel for 8:32AM used to introduce story idea for further development into longer film project.
THE LAST PHOTOGRAPHS OF ROBERT LANDSBURG
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT
I first heard about Robert Landsburg through an article I came across in the Huckberry newsletter. I couldn’t stop thinking about the specificity of what he did. He didn't run. He rewound his film. That act — methodical, professional, completely in character — tells you everything about who Robert Landsburg was and what he believed his work was worth. The film asks what that means quietly, and without judgment.
The film is built around four people who knew him, saw him, or spent decades with his story: his niece Jill Dutchess, who holds his actual camera on camera; USGS geologist Dr. Richard Waitt, who possesses Landsburg's journals; Robert Rogers, the self-described Red Zone Rambler who was across the river from Landsburg's camp the morning of the eruption; and Joe Bongiovanni, curator of the Mount St. Helens Museum. Landsburg's journals are read in voiceover over 16mm recreation footage that degrades as the film moves toward the eruption.
Jill holds the bent camera body and says “he wanted to leave a kind of postcard: I was here, I took these, these are mine.”
Marq Evans is an award-winning filmmaker based in Washington state. His film CAPTURING BIGFOOT premiered at SXSW in 2026. THE DIAMOND KING won Best of Fest at the Palm Springs International Film Festival in 2025. CLAYDREAM premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2021 and was named one of the top 10 best documentaries of that year by A/V Club. His debut film, THE GLAMOUR & THE SQUALOR, premiered in 2016 and has been named one of the top 25 music documentaries of all time by American Songwriter.
BRAND OPPORTUNITIES
Production returns to Mount St. Helens this summer to shoot recreation sequences on 16mm film. A 1969 Dodge Coronet 500 wagon serves as the base vehicle — the same model Landsburg drove to the mountain. The subject is dressed in rugged, heritage-quality field garments. The mountain, the gear, the light, and the vehicle create a visual world that is cinematic, tactile, and entirely real.
The film's visual world is built around the things your customer already cares about: wilderness, analog craft, vintage vehicles, field cameras, camping gear, and the kind of person who goes to the mountain alone because they have to. The recreation footage is shot on 16mm film, which gives it a texture that no digital production can replicate. Every frame looks like a photograph worth keeping.
The right partner will shape what this looks like — wardrobe integration in the recreation shoot, co-branded content from the mountain, product placement woven into the film's visual world, or something else entirely. We’re open to collaboration and conversation.
