PORT TOWNSEND — The Port Townsend Film Festival audience is affluent, mature and — unsurprisingly — filled with film fans, the annual event’s executive director said.
The Sept. 24-26 festival, heading into its 12th season, showed 74 films in 2009, and Janette Force said, “There is a very broad variety that comes to us” from all over the world.
The festival in Port Townsend promotes independent works over major blockbusters, Force said.
The event draws about 34 percent of its attendees from outside Jefferson County and fills more than 6,000 theater seats during the three-day fall festival.
Force, addressing the Jefferson County Chamber of Commerce weekly luncheon Monday at the Elks Lodge, delivered other survey findings to give a better business portrait of the festival’s audience:
• 52 percent have incomes greater than $50,000. And of that, 16 percent have incomes greater than $100,000.
• 84 percent are at least 45 or older.
• 71 percent have college or advanced degrees.
• 54 percent eat at restaurants one or two times per week and 31 percent vacation or travel one to two times a year.
• Of those attending, 66 percent who filled out the survey forms were women.
• 55 percent of visitors stayed three or more nights during the 2009 event, up 13 percent over 2008.
• 76 percent have attended the festival in the past, and 27 percent attended all 10 years.
• 80 percent are more likely to support festival sponsors.
• 96 percent said they plan on returning to the 2010 event.
And film fans don’t have to wait until the formal festival, held Sept. 24-26.
The organization will present “The Cats of Mirikitani,” by filmmaker Linda Hattendorf, at 1 p.m. May 9 at Rose Theatre.
Following the film, Hattendorf will answer questions and talk about how her life and the life of documentary subject Jimmy Mirikitani changed since she created her film.
Port Townsend artist Max Grover has created a print signed by Mirikitani that the festival will sell as a benefit to support its Story Makers educational outreach.
As the launch of the Story Maker program, Hattendorf will be jumping into a Pane D’Amore bread van and heading south to Quilcene, where she and the film festival are hoping to extend media literacy to schools.
“Film is the message of a person that has a unique point of view,” Force said.
There she will introduce herself and the documentary film to Quilcene students and attend a screening of her movie that evening at the Quilcene Community Center.
“The Cats of Mirikitani” showing will be the first in a series of films the festival will be curating in conjunction with Quilcene Community Center Director Bob Rosen, a former film producer.
The festival’s goal, she said, is to expand its media literacy efforts to Sequim and Port Angeles.
Force said ticket and pass sales cover about 35 percent of the festival’s expenses, with the balance coming from foundation grants, sponsorships and donations.
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Port Townsend-Jefferson County Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-385-2335 or at jeff.chew@ peninsuladailynews.com.
