Of the 34 or 35 films this year, I saw half of one – Yomeddine. The first half was great. It was a date four of us girls had planned weeks before, but on the night of, my son was sick and I felt like I needed to be home, so I left in the middle of it. The producer flew in from Cairo, Egypt, to receive an award and to field a question-and-answer session afterward; that must have been great too. Someday, when I’m 50 or 60, maybe I’ll get to buy a pass and enjoy more than 45 minutes of movie-watching. Ha!
Based on the Sea View Theatre and Orcas Center parking lots over those 4 or 5 days, lots of locals and visitors to Orcas saw a heck of a lot more than I did. Others I thought sounded interesting were Swimming with Men and Free Solo.
During last year’s festival, we took our kids to see Ai Wei Wei’s documentary, Human Flow, about the millions of refugees around the world. It was a deep experience, especially for our younger one.
I hear that this festival is viewed pretty highly these days. When I went to buy our tickets, all the films were selling out before the day they were showing. One of the wonderful things about this island is that if you see a niche needing to be filled, you can usually step up, work hard, make it happen, and see it through to its fruition. Good job Jared Lovejoy, Donna Laslo, Carl Spence, Jeanne Beck, Mieka Neenan, Sara Donnelly, Galen Forrest, Cheryl Kummer, The Isla Vida Group, and everyone who makes it happen. From an observer’s perspective, it’s been good since the very first one.
