Max Grover Dedicated This Poster to Late Peter Simpson
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From The Director Of The Festival Himself!
PTFF NEWSLETTER
OCTOBER 2009
Strange that the festival has been over for more than a week. Warm weather, great films and wonderful audiences, filling the streets and theatres with a particular “buzz” that was infectious. Thanks to all who have made calls, sent mail or stopped me on the street to tell me how much they enjoyed the festival. I am humbled to be the front-man for so many wonderful, hard-working volunteers who put this show on.
Cloris had a great time here in PT. She and her son George, played music, visited the schools and generally held court in a way that only a “star” can, to the delight of many. While we didn’t break any records, the venues were more consistent and the outdoor and drop-in theatres well both very well attended.
I’ve already been getting call and mails about the balloting, so I guess it is time to reveal the winners.
AUDIENCE FAVORITE
PADDLE TO SEATTLE
Directed by JJ Kelly and Josh Thomas, the documentary is about their travels along the 1300 mile inside passage in Pygmy kayaks!
This film was followed closely by Oscar Busher’s
Waiting For A Train, the true tail of native Japanese Toshio Hirano, whose life has been transformed by a love of country music.
Each year the films are reviewed by a select jury, whose task is to make a choice as to the “best” of a given category. Never an easy thing to do.
Feature Length Narrative
LOVERS IN A DANGEROUS TIME
Produced and Directed by Mark Hug & May Charters.
Lovers in a Dangerous Time sneaks in powerful human themes. This unassuming film shows epic scope as love and sibling rivalry evolve against every known form of activity in Creston, Canada. Believable sequencing, dialogue and acting contrast beautifully the pull of plain living with the need to escape from it.
Documentary Feature
MARCH POINT
Produced and Directed by Annie Silverstein & Tracy Rector
With a strong sense of place and community, small scope on big issues, and direct, poignant honesty tempered with humor, March Point is one tough little film. “We told this story for us and our tribe.” Balancing between loss and hope, March Point tells their story in ways we cannot forget.
Short Narrative
ANIMATED AMERICAN
Directed by James Baker & Joe Haidar
This is a darkly comic, refreshingly adult combination live action / animation short film with an original story, well conceived. Great acting and directing combines with effective filming and skilled animation work plus nice use of black and white photography. The final scene is hilarious.
Short Documentary
WAITING FOR A TRAIN
Produced and Directed by Oscar Busher
Toshio Hirano found his passion in his music and caught the train!
Toshio left Tokyo a teenager with a passionate for American Bluegrass Music.
Lonesome train whistles and dusty back roads boogie drew him out of Japan on a 15 year bicycle guitar trek through rural American.
He found flat picking banjos, fiddlers and guitar players in Minnesota, Appalachia, Texarkana, and California.
Hirano’s inner musical spirit goes beyond words. He comes alive on camera excitement and joy on his life time musical journey.
His musical transition and brand of western music culture is an inspiring view into the real heart of country acoustic string music. It drew him here and gave him to us.
Animated Short
SEBASTIAN’S VOODOO
Produced and Directed by Joaquin Baldwin
Sebastian’s Voodoo was an enthralling, strange world for an animated short, but I believe accurate. It was difficult to determine which was more pleasing; the animation or the story. It possesses a wonderful rhythm and great meld of image to narrative.
These films, in addition to most of the other films in this year’s festival, will be in the PTFF library in about a month! One of the benefits of membership!
GLOBAL LENS RETURNS!
The popular international films from San Francisco’s Global Film Initiative returns to The Rosebud Cinema on October 17th!
Presented in association with The Rose Theatre and Peninsula College, the critically acclaimed series is free to students and only $5 for others. All screenings are at 10 am on Saturdays. Tickets available both at the Rose box office and at the door.
We will begin our Fall schedule with the reprise screening of GETTING HOME, recently seen at this year’s film festival. In this soulful and humane comedy from China, Zhao, a middle-aged construction worker, struggles to fulfil a dying co-worker’s last wish.
Other films and dates for this series are:
OCTOBER 31
SONG FROM THE SOUTHERN SEAS
MARAT SARULU, KAZAKHSTAN, 2008
NOVEMBER 14
THOSE THREE
NAGHI NEMATI, IRAN, 2007
NOVEMBER 21
WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD
FAOUZI BENSAIDI, MOROCCO, 2006
DECEMBER 5
MY TIME WILL COME
VICTOR ARREGUI, ECUADOR, 2009
…Were these your fav?
Are you of a different opinion?
With joy from Huber’s INN Port Townsend…www.StayInHubersINN.com
Posted 2 years, 4 months ago. Add a comment
PT’s Kinetic Sculpture Festival…All gone! : (…’Till next year! : )
In the Port Townsend Kinetic Sculpture Festival, some conditions are indispensable -to participate…
- Be Out of Your Mind…
- Delight in working way more than usual for 1 whole year (or so) preparing your contraption…
- Engineering unlimited talents…
- Totally open creativity…
- A taste for freezing your limbs and body in waters -average 50 degrees
Once complying with all that, you must conceive, create and “populate” -by your dear little self, or with your buddies; a “Kinetic Sculpture” that -with only human power- will run on land, float on water, and “hold” you graciously on mud!!!! (I tell you: It takes a true “funky” bone marrow (more difficult than “mere” blood, you see ; )… to actually participate ; )
No tricks here! … 
If you can…Come and enjoy! : )….
If not…we’ll keep you posted…! : )
Article proudly presented by Huber’s INN Port Townsend… www.StayInHubersINN.com
Posted 2 years, 4 months ago. Add a comment
Cheers to the PTFF Volunteers!…..
Over the rose of “The Rose Theater”…and under the sunny festival rainbow…
The PTFF volunteers -Like Corey Fox, shine even brighter than a sunny rainbow -when it comes to service to others!
But volunteering for the PTFF involves every capacity…Like Mara here, interviewing one of the guests : )
Their excellency gives the PTFF the sweet, tangy flavor we all crave…and will be remembered -as part of the Port Townsend experience- for years to come…
Cheers to the PTFF Volunteers!
Article proudly presented by Huber’s INN Port Townsend… www.StayInHubersINN.com
Posted 2 years, 4 months ago. Add a comment
We Salute Y♥u, Peter Simps♥n!…
In the magic of the screen, we rejoice to see our dear late Peter Simpson, like in the past 9 of the 10 years of the PTFF we have been accustomed…
Jane Champion, championed the fit of composing a splendid film in few hours, to introduce the movies of the festival, remember past moments -and participants- of other years, AND…help us honor the memory of Peter Simpson…
It’s sooo easy to feel him smiling and inspiring. Enjoying our love, the warmth of our hearts for him, and the superb results of this Grand PTFF 10th year -just as he had wished for!
And all buildings are willing and ready, when it
comes to honor and participate in the PTFF…
Whether the Pope Marine building, The Rose, The Rose Bud, the UpStage, or the Up Town Theatre, all locations receive us all, into welcoming spaces -and with excellently organized reception for each of us…
Under the clever Direction of Terry Tennesen for the first time this year, each venue shows a movie comparable or even better in quality than the other ones! (it seems)
And in this magical town of Port Townsend, we get to enjoy the view of one or two white wind-swollen sails under the sun, even while we walk from cinema venue to cinema venue, and while the frame of all our joys,
shines blue and liquid under the infinite blue…
Not in vain, Peter Simpson reminded us in his book that this Port Townsend IS “The City of Dreams”…
Article proudly presented by Huber’s INN Port Townsend… www.StayInHubersINN.com
Posted 2 years, 4 months ago. Add a comment
A Movie Directed by Diego Rivera (!) -at The Rose Theatre!
In a full “Rose Bud” Victorian cinema venue – bright part of the Port Townsend Film Festival; we, the audience, gather to find the “gems” that come to its light.
For example, “A Portrait of Diego Rivera, The Revolutionary Gaze” (“Un retrato de Diego, la revolución de la mirada”)
This treasure documentary, was presented by Gabriel Figueroa Flores…
“Perfuming” this Rose Bud, the presence of “down-to-earth”clever intelligence…
With Robert Horton interviewing the Mexican Gabriel Figueroa Flores…
Who joined neurons with Diego Rivera’s grand-son, and Manuel Alvarez Bravo’s daughter to put together an extremely unique documentary, where, in the dawn of “personal” cinematography, the father of Gabriel -splendid and renowned Mexican Cinematographer, well known world-wise through movies like “Night of the Iguana”- lent his brand new personal camera to the extraordinary still photographer-poet Manuel Alvarez Bravo, to photograph “a movie” where Diego Rivera -meant to be the sole actor, becomes the director…
Fascinating to follow this history/story involving (and explaining) Mexican history reflected in arts so powerful as Diego’s, so awesome as Manuel Alvarez Bravo’s -I would dare to equate his importance in that culture with the importance of Ansel Adams in this culture.
Frieda Kahlo, turned into a poetess, brings in a concept of love so profound and generous, that it goes beyond the limiting humanity of us all and becomes liberating and seems to give birth to our colors and our songs…The most intimate, the most essentially ours…
And Guadalupe Rivera, daughter of Diego, and many others, intimate and open-hearted, ad to the weaving (or the clarifying) of the story -and the pieces of the history!
All this in the Port Townsend Film Festival the place of discovery; of re-encounter, of amazement across cultures. Well done celebration of the Spirit of our late dearest Port Townsend Friend: Peter Simpson…♥
AND…sincere celebrations -and amazement- as well to the extraordinary “good job” of Terry Tennesen, now Director of the lovely PTFF, for giving us not only the quality and vastness of cinematographic experiences we have grown accustomed to in this past 9 years… but also, in his first year as Director, manages to bring us even one step higher in our pursuit of art…
Congratulations and welcome, Terry!
Article proudly presented by Huber’s INN Port Townsend… www.StayInHubersINN.com
Posted 2 years, 4 months ago. Add a comment
Port Townsend…What a Town Full of Options!
Just in this coming week-end, Spt, 25 -27th, 2009…Do you wish to attend The West Coast SEA KAYAK Symposium -at Fort Worden (like this faun seems to have chosen ; )…or…
Attend the Grand 10th Port Townsend Film Festival official opening…
Taking place -very appropriately- at the grandiose new Port Townsend Maritime Center…
All this, of course, under a perfectly blue and sunny sky (that we hope and trust will last us through the week-end! ; )
And the good stuff is only starting -if you want to join! -for the town, for The Port Townsend Film Festival, AND for the lovely new Port Townsend Marine Center! …Yeeeeyyyyy!!!! : )
Article proudly presented by Huber’s INN Port Townsend… www.StayInHubersINN.com
