PORT TOWNSEND — Six of the 11 directors whose films will be screened at April’s Women &Film Festival will be present.
That’s huge for the small two-day festival, said Janette Force, director of the Port Townsend Film Festival, which is putting on the event.
“Now we’re getting directors approaching us that we never could’ve imagined, which is satisfying,” Force said.
The Port Townsend Film Festival’s lineup includes a presentation by Rita Coburn Whack, who is the co-director of the film “Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise.”
About 150 passes are available for the festival, which will be April 8-9 with screenings at the Rose and Rosebud theaters at 235 Taylor St. in Port Townsend.
Pass-holders will have 11 films to choose from. A $75 pass will allow patrons entrance to four films along with presentations with the filmmakers. Passes are on sale at www.ptfilmfest.com.
Ina Pinkey, the subject of “Breakfast at Ina’s,” which will show at the Rose Theatre on Sunday, also will be in attendance.
“When I wrote to her, she [Pinkey] said, ‘We’ve had our eye on your festival since we finished the film,’ ” Force said. “It’s a big deal.”
The Women &Film Festival was started three years ago by Port Townsend Film Festival staff after they were unable to program some of their favorite films into the annual September festival.
“We found that one year, we had more films than we could possibly program,” Force said.
“We had all these films that we really loved, and I realized they were almost all by women.”
Force said the staff decided it was worth creating a festival specifically for films by and/or about women.
All pass-holders are invited to the April 8 screening of “Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise” at 7 p.m. in the Wheeler Theater at Fort Worden.
Whack will be present for a pre-screening interview and for a question-and-answer period after the film.
On Saturday, the Rosebud Theatre will show “A Quiet Passion,” a film about Emily Dickinson; “Drawing the Tiger,” a Canadian film on Nepalese parents hoping to put their daughter through medical school; and a short film called “El Hara,” which follows one man’s break with the neighborhood of his youth, the Jewish quarter of Tunis.
The Rose Theatre will screen “Agnes Martin, Before the Grid” which offers stories about the artist by friends, and a short film, “Portraits in Creativity: Sheila Berger.” Both Berger and the director of the film, Gael Towey, will attend for a question-and-answer period.
A third film at the Rose will be “Big Sonia,” a film about a Holocaust survivor, filmed by her granddaughter.
Saturday night is a mixer with the directors in attendance.
Films will continue Sunday with “Equal Means Equal” and “In Between” — a story of three Tel Aviv women — at the Rosebud Theatre.
At the Rose on Sunday will be “Magnificent Burden,” a film about adoption — with the subject of the film, Taylor Stein, attending for a question-and-answer period after the movie — as well as “Breakfast at Ina’s.”
A full list of the film times and synopses can be found at the Port Townsend Film Festival website.
________
Jefferson County Editor/Reporter Cydney McFarland can be reached at 360-385-2335, ext. 55052, or at cmcfarland@peninsuladailynews.com.
