PTFF News
Newsletter ArchivesNovember 2005 Newsletter
Contents1. Scribe to Screen November 6: The Last Picture Show
Larry McMurtry's famed novel, The Last Picture Show, written in 1966 and transformed into an Oscar®-winning film in 1971, will return to the big screen Sunday, November 6, when the Port Townsend Friends of the Library and the Port Townsend Film Festival offer their second annual Scribe to Screen presentation. The film will be shown at 12 noon Sunday at the Rose Theatre. Tickets at $12 are available at the Port Townsend Library, Quimper Sound, and Sunday only at the box office.
The story explores the lives of two generations of citizens of a small Texas town in the 1950s with the plot revolving around the closure of the town's only picture show. The film stars Jeff Bridges, Cybill Sheppard, Ellen Burstyn, Cloris Leachman and Ben Johnson (the latter two winning best supporting actor awards). It was directed by Peter Bogdanovich.
NPR film critic and PT Film Festival host Robert Horton and Peninsula College Adjunct Faculty Member Wesley Cecil will discuss the film with the audience immediately following the screening. A reception will follow at the Upstage Theatre and Restaurant featuring fifties-style appetizers. (Remember those?) The Scribe to Screen series was developed to explore the creative differences between literature and film. Established last year, the first title explored was The Year of Living Dangerously.
2. Where Are They Now? 2005 PTFF Films Reel On
Is there life after a film festival? That's what many independent filmmakers ask themselves as they struggle, very often unsuccessfully, to find distribution. Four films from the 2005 Port Townsend Film Festival are now surfacing and others will no doubt follow. Sadly, a few won't get far beyond the festival circuit.
Taken alphabetically, those now out and about include:
BALLETS RUSSES has taken New York by storm. Following its Port Townsend screening it moved next to The Hamptons International Film Festival on Long Island in October where it captured the Audience Award for Best Documentary. National Book Award-winner Andrew Solomon wrote in the magazine, Art Forum: "It is a film about people who lived dreams that could not last, and survived, Tithonus-like, long beyond those dream...this film (has) enormous depth." Then, on October 26, it opened in Manhattan to an ecstatic review in the New York Times. Film reviewer A.O. Scott wrote: "(Dan) Geller and (Dayna) Goldfine, in putting together this impeccable memorial to a perishable art form, have also composed a moving, invigorating elegy to the civilization that sustained it." Then, the Sunday New York Times, as if they hadn't read their Wednesday edition, presented another long piece on the ballet companies and the film. The film opens its regular run in Seattle on November 18 at the Harvard Exit. We have not heard the last of this film.
Unfortunately, EMMANUEL'S GIFT, the inspirational documentary about Emmanuel Ofosu Yeboah, a disabled Ghanan youth, did not fare so well. After being featured on ABC World News Tonight, with barely a mention of the film, the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and the San Francisco Bay Guardian found the filmmakers heavy-handed and each took exception to the use of Oprah Winfrey as narrator one mockingly referred to her as "God." Said Jeannette Catsoulis in the Times: "But beneath the weight of Oprah Winfrey's pushy narration and a succession of overly posed images, `Emmanuel's Gift' becomes a powerful story of political change that is almost smothered by contrivance."
Two other 2005 PTFF documentaries have picked up some honors since appearing here:
LIBERACE OF BAGHDAD has been nominated by The British Independent Film Awards in the category Best British Documentary. Closer to home, at the first annual Ellensburg Film Festival, PTFF's Best Short Documentary, TROUT GRASS, received the new fest's Best Feature-Length Film. (No, the filmmakers didn't screen a longer version in Ellensburg; the two fests just have differing definitions of what's a feature, what's a short.)
Nothing yet about the feature-length narrative films in the local 2005 fest. But if you want to go back a few years--PTFF's first eventin 2000--the audience favorite, SORDID LIVES, never found a distributor, but it is now available on DVD and the PTFF Members' Library has it! So come on in, become a member, check it out.
This eNewsletter is sponsored by
GOODING & O'HARA, CPAs