PORT TOWNSEND — Guests at Saturday’s Night Before the Oscars gala are likely to be rooting for a short documentary that won an award at last fall’s Port Townsend Film Festival and which is now up for an Oscar.
The celebration set for 5:30 p.m. at the Northwest Maritime Center has sold out, according to Janette Force, executive director of the film festival.
But she is excited about the possible Oscar for the highly-awarded documentary, “Period. End of Sentence” which lists among its 16 accolades an award for Best Short Documentary from the Port Townsend Film Festival in September.
The 26-minute documentary directed by Rayka Zehtabchi is among five short documentaries nominated for the Oscar.
Zehtabchi was among the directors who participated in the film festival last fall.
The film tells of a “quiet revolution” in the rural village of Hapur outside of Delhi, India. A stigma against menstruation meant that women did not have access to sanitary pads. That led to health problems and girls missing school or dropping out altogether.
A machine that makes sanitary pads is installed, and the women learn to manufacture their own pads.
They name their brand Fly because they want women to soar, according to a summary of the documentary, which also says that high school girls in California raised the initial money for the machine.
Guests at Saturday’s gala in Port Townsend will be encouraged to make their own predictions about the winners at the 91st Academy Awards — which will be televised at 5 p.m. Sunday Pacific Time — and perhaps win a $1,500 Patron Pass for the 2019 Port Townsend Film Festival set Sept. 20-22.
The gala — the film festival’s biggest party of the year, according to the website at www.ptfilmfest.com — will feature film trailers and a reveal of the 2019 festival poster with artist Max Grover.
Film critic Robert Horton will be present. The host will be auctioneer Larry Snyder.
An auction will offer hotel accommodations, short trips, Rose Theatre tickets, birthday parties, Bainbridge Organic Distillers’ award-winning spirits and other treats.
