Filmmaker Audrey Daniel, right, worked on the Amos film project for eight years.

Screening as part of a short film collection Friday at the Astoria International Film Festival is the new film “Rex Amos: A Man of Many Hats,” directed by filmmaker Audrey Daniel.

Daniel started her career working at White Bird Gallery in Cannon Beach. The gallery was owned by her aunt, Evelyn Georges, for 50 years.

She met Amos, who was showing art there, and the two became friends. “He was the most interesting, out there, unusual person, witty, well-read and a natural performer,” Daniel said.

She found it engaging to be around someone connected with other artists, thinkers and writers. In the 1980s, she began filming artists creating their artwork, which she immediately found fascinating.

Daniel calls herself a guerilla filmmaker because she doesn’t approach the medium from a formal perspective. Instead, she just starts filming to see where things go.

She wants her films to offer up the spirit of the artist in a nonconformative, nonlinear way, much like a gesture drawing captures the essence of an artist in motion. Since then, she has made close to a dozen documentary shorts about artists.

Based in California, Daniel flew to Oregon to film at Cannon Beach and Willamette University. She worked on Amos’ piece for eight years until she decided the 24-minute film was finished.

Amos is prolific and passionate about creating art, philosophy, poetry, journals, pranks and protests. In Daniel’s documentary short, Amos recounts highlights of his adventures in conversations with friends Bud Clark, a former Portland mayor, and Graham P. Conroy, a philosopher.

In the film, Art historian Roger Hull and archivist Mary McRobinson delve into Amos’ art and unusual collection of letters, hats and journals.

While some collage artists such as Eunice Parsons tear their papers, Amos uses scissors intended for eye surgery. Able to trim and cut complex edges with great precision, he pieces the cut forms together into imagery that is historical, erotic and, at times, political.

Born in Wallace, Idaho, Amos moved with his parents to Portland as a child. Around 1960, he and his wife moved to a neighborhood in southwest Portland full of musicians, writers and artists. On 14th Avenue near Market Street, an area of affordable housing was in the process of being razed.

Using freeway demolition debris, Amos created what he referred to as “guerilla theater” in protest of the freeway and the neighborhood destruction. He and a fellow artist occupied the site by lounging on a couch, which led to the arrival of police cars along with a class of students from the Museum Art School. “The cops looked through their code books and the class gave us a round of applause,” Amos recalled.

A few years later, Amos moved to Big Sur, California, where he worked at the Big Sur Inn and lived in a shack under a bridge. Having little money for supplies, he began creating assemblages from found materials.

At the time, Amos considered his work more an expression of political and social critique than an aesthetic creation. On a trip to New York City in 1961, Amos visited the Museum of Modern Art and saw the exhibit “The Art of Assemblage,” where he was amazed to discover that he had been creating works similar to those on display.

Back in Portland, Amos obtained a dump license which made it possible for him to collect found materials for sculpture. He turned to paper when the city stopped issuing dump licenses.

A largely self-taught artist, Amos was inspired by meeting the painter Matt Glavin, who was teaching at the University of California, Berkeley, and introduced him to the process of chine collé. Amos has continued to work in assemblage as well as in various forms of collage.

His collages have been featured in galleries and museums such as the Portland Art Museum, Magnolia Editions, The Art Center in Corvallis, the 12×16 Gallery and the Hallie Ford Museum of Art. Many of these are in the style of chine collé, a combination of collage and printmaking techniques.

After more than 50 years in Portland, Amos and his wife, Diane, now live in Cannon Beach.

Amos’ work is on display at RiverSea Gallery in Astoria through Nov. 5, and will also be included in an upcoming show curated by Matthew Palmgren for the same gallery in January.