PORT TOWNSEND — Let’s start in Africa’s southwest. Then we can head right over to Brooklyn, N.Y.
“Into the Okavango,” one of 23 feature-length documentaries in this weekend’s Port Townsend Film Festival, brings the viewer down the Cuito River of Angola, wild creatures all around. As we make our way to Botswana’s Okavango Delta, we encounter newly discovered animal species, land mines and a fierce hippopotamus.
This journey happens inside the film’s 90 minutes.
Keep moving: Another trip awaits, this one to a high school in New York City where the students work as peer counselors. They’re determined to help their classmates get into college regardless of how broke their families are.
This is “Personal Statement,” another documentary and one of the films showing free on Sunday.
“Welcome to the circus,” festival executive director Janette Force is fond of saying. This year’s crop, along with special guest Danny Glover, has her keyed up.
“We have 17 first-time directors. That’s amazing to me,” she added.
The 19th annual Port Townsend Film Festival starts lighting up the screens downtown today.
All told, the fest screens eight dozen movies from all over the world: documentaries, shorts and narrative features, paired with discussions with directors and performers. With eight venues the event turns downtown into a place teeming with stories.
Passes range from the $40 One Pass and $100 Six-Pack to the $220 Festival Pass and $650 Concierge Pass. All come with benefits such as free transport on downtown’s PT Rider shuttle this weekend and year-round access to the festival library of more than 1,000 films. For those who want to take their chances at the theater door, rush tickets, sold 10 minutes before showtime, are $15 apiece.
But just a minute now. The festival also promises an array of free-admission flicks. The 66-seat Key City Playhouse turns into the Peter Simpson Free Cinema, named after the late cofounder. Twelve free screenings happen there, starting at 9:30 this morning and wrapping at 6:30 Sunday night.
As is traditional, the festival presents three free family classics on a wide, white screen erected outdoors on Taylor Street. Tonight it’s “The Lion King” from 1994; Saturday brings 1987’s “The Princess Bride” and Sunday the Beatles cut loose in “A Hard Day’s Night” from ’64. All three start at 7:30 p.m. with straw-bale seating provided.
Meanwhile, the Jefferson County Library is a festival outpost in Port Hadlock. In the PTFF Road Show today through Sunday, 16 films will screen there free of charge.
“We did this last year,” said Force, “but we didn’t promote it a lot,” since the library and festival crew just wanted to try it out.
“They’re ready for us now,” she said; the library will show, among other films, “Satan and Adam,” the story of a young white harmonica player’s journey into Harlem, and “Madhattan,” about hat maker Flic Brown’s trip from the Australian outback to New York Fashion Week. At 2:30 p.m. Saturday, the library will also show the Reviewers’ Choice shorts program, a mix of six short films from the United States, Australia, Spain and Italy. For details see www.JCLibrary.info and use the Events menu.
Back in Port Townsend, a pair of free filmmaker panels are set for 10 a.m. Saturday and Sunday. The 90-minute discussions moved to downtown’s Jefferson County Museum of Art & History, 540 Water St., this year, nearly doubling the capacity of previous panels at the Pope Marine Building.
Saturday’s panel focuses on the ins and outs of producing a movie; Sunday will be given over to tales from the real lives of filmmakers.
This is going to be juicy, Force said, as “filmmakers are most incredible storytellers you’ll ever meet.”
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Diane Urbani de la Paz, a former features editor for the Peninsula Daily News, is a freelance writer living in Port Townsend.
“Return to Mount Kennedy” is among the documentaries screening during the Port Townsend Film Festival this weekend.
