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August 13, 2008
Contents- Final Clue to New Guest
- Celluloid Bainbridge Offers Free Screening of a Documentary About Making a Documentary
- McDowell and Gould In NY Retrospectives
- We have things to hide....We need screens!
The second and final clue in the Port Townsend Film Festival's resuscitated "Guess-the-Guest" contest was announced today:
Shared a character with Elizabeth Taylor, Claudette Colbert, and Theda Bara
A visual clue is also offered:
The 9th annual festival will be held September 26-28, 2008.
The annual contest was suspended last month when the festival's special guest had to cancel because of a conflicting engagement, but a new guest has been secured and the contest was able to resume.
Only two clues are being offered in the revitalized contest. The winner will be announced on August 20, when the guest's identify will be revealed.
The first of the two clues was: "Noted for a notorious drag role."
Simpson noted that those who had correctly guessed the identity of the original special guest will be added to the pool of winning entries from which a winner will be drawn. The winner receives tickets for two to the special guest's featured screening and an invitation for two to attend a reception in the guest's honor.
The contest has been an annual event since 2002. Previous guests have included Tony Curtis, Eva Marie Saint, Patricia Neal, Shirley Knight, Debra Winger, Jane Powell, Malcolm McDowell, and Elliott Gould.
Entries may be submitted in three ways:
Online - info@ptfilmfest.com, type "Guess-the-Guest" in the subject line.
Mail - P.O. Box 594, Port Townsend, WA 98368.
In person - 211 Taylor St., Ste 32-A (third floor), Port Townsend, WA.
Celluloid Bainbridge Offers Free Screening of a Documentary About Making a Documentary
Celluloid Bainbridge offers Free Screen, a program of the Bainbridge Island Arts and Humanities Council, sponsors a free screening of the 2008 documentary Operation Filmmaker at The Lynwood Theatre on Sunday, August 31, beginning at 5 p.m. The film will be followed by a Q & A with documentary filmmakers Lucy Ostrander, John Jeffcoat, and John Sinno on the challenges of documentary filmmaking.
Operation Filmmaker is an engaging, blackly comical political parable that takes the viewer on a riveting ride from Baghdad to Hollywood. In the wake of "Operation Iraqi Freedom," American actor Liev Schreiber had an idealistic notion: to rescue an Iraqi film student from the rubble of his country and bring him to the West to intern on a Hollywood movie (Everything Is Illuminated). It promised to be a heartwarming tale, a small victory out of the troubled mission of the U.S. war in Iraq. But as in the war itself, "good" intentions yielded unintended consequences, and even this operation doesn't go according to plan: soon after Muthana Mohmed arrives on the film set in Prague, the contrasts between his life experience and everyone else's prove gaping. Hired to document what she thought would be a hopeful tale of wartime survival - something about the boundary-breaking triumphs of art, with the added bonus of being a behind-the-scenes movie about movies - director Nina Davenport soon finds herself personally embroiled in a complex moral quagmire and all-consuming power struggle between filmmaker and subject.
Photo: Operation Filmmaker director Nina Davenport with Muthana Mohmed. Photo by Kouross Esmaeli.
McDowell and Gould In NY Retrospectives
Port Townsend Film Festival's special guests the past two years, Malcolm McDowell and Elliott Gould, are enjoying retrospectives of their work in New York and Brooklyn this month.
A native of Brooklyn, Gould is being honored by BAMcinématek (Brooklyn Art Museum) with a 10-film retrospective of the actor's essential on-screen work titled "Elliott Gould: Star for an Uptight Age." According to the New York Sun, "the BAM retrospective, which begins with a weeklong run of Robert Altman's smash 1970 hit M*A*S*H, showcases Mr. Gould's exceptional facility for exploring the contested middle ground between the polarizing issues and themes that defined America and Hollywood during the 1970s. He wasn't a matinee idol, but in a heavily introspective era of cinema, he delivered to audiences a mirror to their own anxieties with a unique blend of gravity and humility." Somehow he didn't seem all that anxiety-driven last year.
Up and across the East River at Lincoln Center in Manhattan, McDowell is riding the coattails of his favorite director, Lindsay Anderson who is being honored in a week-long retrospective that includes two of Malcolm's favorite films: "If . . ." and "O! Lucky Man." Also screening will be a video recreation of McDowell's stage tribute to Anderson, "Never Apologize," directed another PTFF frequent visitor, Mike Kaplan.
We have things to hide....We need screens!
Filmmaking is an illusion. Storefronts are constructed as buildings. Computer graphics create armies of thousands. Vancouver serves as Seattle (and only the locals know—or care).
Illusion is also a mainstay of film festival creation. In order to give the impression that we're a tropical clime, we bring palm trees to Taylor Street. To provide the ambiance of an outdoor theatre, we offer straw bales and you bring lawn chairs and blankets, and suddenly up to a thousand people are braving September weather for open air presentations. We also need to isolate some activities, and screens are a wonderful temporary solution.
If you have one (or more) you're willing to loan the Port Townsend Film Festival, please contact Darlene Keefe, our festival designer, at dpkswtdrm@hotmail.com or by calling 379-4851 or 360/821-8320. Let's keep up the illusion.