PTFF News
Newsletter Archives
Feruary 21-25 2008
Contents- Oscar® Gala Cancelled
- Winner & Finalists - What If . . . contest
- 2007 PTFF Film Receives IFC Truer than Fiction Award
- Two PTFF Favorites Now Available on DVDs Formatted for US Audiences
The Port Townsend Film Festival is canceling the Oscar® Gala this Sunday, February 24th
We are so grateful for all the time, donations and effort everyone has put toward this major fundraiser and party.
Our decision is based on the following:
- We recognize that the Screen Writers’ Guild strike and the possible suspension of the Awards ceremony this year affected many peoples’ plans for this weekend. Ticket sales did not warrant the expense of the event.
- Our first concern is to honor our generous sponsors and donors; we do not want to have amazing auction items sold under value or not sold at all. Please see the list of sponsors and donors in the “This Week” section of the February 20 edition of the Port Townsend Leader.
- We acknowledge the financial impact that the ferry situation has had on our community since before Thanksgiving.
- We must re-evaluate how we celebrate the Academy Awards and raise money for the Festival. We do not want to contribute to Port Townsend auction fatigue!
We offer, with gratitude, to all those who purchased tickets:
- Conversion of your ticket purchase to a completely tax-deductible donation to the PTFF.
- Conversion of your ticket purchase to membership(s); please consult the website or call the office for membership categories and benefits.
- Complete refund of your ticket purchase;
Please email sherry@ptfilmfest.com or call the office, 360-379-1333 to indicate your preference.
The PTFF begins planning for our ninth annual festival today. Please join us in our plans: buy a membership, save the date (September 26 – 28), and volunteer. THAT show will go on.
Winner & Finalists - What If . . . contest
What if you stood where Daniel Day-Lewis, Marion Cotillard, Javier Bardem, or Tilda Swinton stood last night?
What would you have SAID to the (mostly) adoring audience?
Here’s what the winner and finalists of the Port Townsend Film Festival’s annual “What If . . . Contest” would have said. The contest was conducted earlier this month.
Winner: Sheila Khalov of Gardiner
Thank you. What an honor to receive Oscars for Documentary Short Subject, Original Music Score, Live Action Short Film, Sound Effects Editing, as well as The Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. I was just thrilled to be nominated.
I want to thank all the little people who helped me to ascend the ladder of fame and fortune. I love you guys. I really do. I’d especially like to thank my make-up artist, my hairdresser, my cloths designer, my personal shopper, my manicurist and pedicurist, my limousine driver, my personal trainer, my astrologer and my plastic surgeon without whom none of this would have truly been possible.
I also want to remember Pama Noshabagal Shanti Tencents Onzadolar Chosenpeeps Roshi for her insight into my true feelings and motivations. You are my beloved teacher Pama Noshabagal. I wish that you were here tonight to see the joy, loving kindness and mindfulness that I am experiencing in this very moment. I can’t begin to tell you how present I feel. Namaste.
And lastly I wish to thank my beloved mother and father. Thanks mother and father. I send you hugs and kisses. I can't tell you how much I appreciate your unconditional love and support and how grateful I am that you sent me to the youth correction facility.
Someone please show me off the stage.
No, stop. Don’t take any of these statues. I can carry them myself.
BACK OFF, BUSTER!
As winner of the “What If . . . Contest,” Sheila will receive a Producer Pass (value of $500) to the 2008 Port Townsend Film Festival, a PTFF membership which gives her film and book checkout privileges, an invitation to the 2008 PTFF VIP reception, and recognition in the 2008 Festival program.
Finalist Nan Toby Tyrell of Port Townsend
Oh are you sure you read the name right? Mom are you listening up there? This is some
unexpected pleasure, honor and joy for me to be chosen for my film.
As my friends know back on Port Townsend, writing poems and going to good movies keeps me busy and out of trouble.
When I decided to make a film about my passion for playing piano in nursing homes and hospitals I never realized the challenges, changes and stories which would evolve from this experience..
Making a film gave me an opportunity to be witness to many remarkable men and women. I hoped to reveal the extraordinary lives which sometimes appear like ordinary lives. When residents in the assisted living homes let music into their minds and hearts,I have observed the changes in their bodies and expressions. My own life becomes wider too.
As a child I would spend forty-five cents to attend the Saturday matinee at the Strand Theatre in my small hometown, Lakewood, New Jersey.
Up in the mezzanine I would sit with my best friends, eating juju candies and popcorn. I can still remember the aubergine velvet drapes adorning the front stage. Movies brought magic into my childhood. Through movies like Johnny Belinda, Song of the South, A Place in the Sun, Mary Poppins and Little Women I learned how fragile and fleeting love and life can be. So now I can finally thank my cousin Marc and son Todd for believing in my vision. For what is this life, without a desire to create a new story, with a different ending. Bless each of you for believing in that spark.
Finalist Gary Farris, Bellevue
Wow… I can’t believe this… It’s like some fantasy a group of my film-buff friends and I would have made up in those years before I got into serious screenwriting. So, in a way, the first thanks I have to give is to everyone who ever sat with me in my home theater watching some new movie we’d rented who tolerated my saying the lines just before the actors did, ending the night with the declaration, “I could have written that…”
My second shout-out goes to the Port Townsend film festival, its supporters, and the quality films I watched there, where I learned that screenwriting wasn’t quite as easy as I thought it was when I was watching “Chopper-Chicks from Zombie Town.” I should also thank the Seattle International Film Festival organizers for showing me I didn’t have to write in English or even coherently to make my Oscar dreams come true; I just had to write while depressed or suicidal.
I should also thank my scriptwriting coach, who taught me everything she knew, promising me success if I paid close attention to her advice. Fortunately, I paid attention enough to do exactly the opposite of what she said, so I am up here while she is still (fingers up in quotation marks) “coaching.”
Finally, I’d like to thank my parents, wife and children. Without having to support them, I might have been here decades earlier… I mean, without their support, I wouldn’t be here today.
Thank you, all.
2007 PTFF Film Receives IFC Truer than Fiction Award
Producer/Director Laura Dunn, whose documentary, The Unforeseen, screened at the 2007 Port Townsend Film Festival last September was honored Saturday with a $25,000 unrestricted grant from Independent Film announced at the Independent Spirit Awards.
Dunn, whose hometown of Austin, Texas, is featured in The Unforeseen, tells the story of an ambitious west Texas farm boy with grandiose plans. Tired of living at the mercy of nature he sets out to find a life with more control. He heads to Austin where he becomes a real estate developer and skillfully capitalizes on the growth of this 1970s boomtown. At the peak of his powers, he transforms 4,000 acres of pristine Hill Country into one of the state’s largest and fastest selling subdivisions.
When the development threatens a local treasured landmark, a fragile limestone aquifer and a naturally spring-fed swimming hole, the community fights back. In the conflict that ensues, The Unforeseen demonstrates in miniature a struggle that today plays out in communities across the country.
Featuring interviews with Robert Redford, Willie Nelson, the iconic Texas Governor Ann Richards, environmentalist Wendell Berry and many others, The Unforeseen is a powerful meditation on the American dream – on the destruction of the natural world as it falls victim to the cannibalizing forces of unchecked development. It is an intricate tale of personal hopes, victories and failures; and of debates over land, water and the public good.
Two PTFF Favorites Now Available on DVDs Formatted for US Audiences
Before there was an official “Audience Favorite” award at the Port Townsend Film Festival, an unofficial audience favorite almost always emerged by acclamation each year. Two of those favorites, 2002’s The Man Who Sued God from Australia and 2003’s El Ultimo Tren (The Last Train), from Uruguay, have recently been issued by US distributors on DVD, Previously, they had been available in formats compatible only with Australia and Hungary. The Man Who Sued God, starring Billy Connolly and Judy Davis, tells the story of a man infuriated by his insurance company’s refusal to pay a claim for his boat which was struck by lightening. Declaring it an “act of God” and therefore exempt from reimbursement, the man teams up with a reporter to flush the insurance agents out.
The Last Train tells the tale of three men who hijack the country’s last operating locomotive before it can be purchased by Hollywood interests.
Both films are now available in the PTFF film library and are available for check out by PTFF members.