Port Townsend Film Festival 2008

Introducing a lover to one’s grandmother unless you’re “a queer Jew in the disapora,” according to the filmmaker. This biographical short is about creating a home and hope, about reconciliation, about finding peace. Print Source: lchaimherbal@hotmail.com

Christian Keller has always tried to do the right thing. He got a girl pregnant in high school so married her. He joined the Marine Corps for the benefits it would provide his new family. The only problem is that he graduated high school in June 2001 and signed up for the military. 9/11 happened three months later and that dedication to 'do the right thing' suddenly meant something more. In his final moments at home in June 2003, Christian becomes haunted by the possibility that he may die. His wife feels like he is abandoning her. His daughter clings to him. As his three best friends try to show him a good time, they realize that adulthood isn't all it's cracked up to be. Then one of his old girl friends from high school shows up to reminds Christian of the chances he lost when he got his wife pregnant. In the next three days, Christian is put to the test. Northwest Premiere Awards: 2008 International Film Festival of England: nominated Best First Film Print Source: Running On Faith Productions Email: kdotti27@yahoo.com

Have you experienced the bittersweet feeling of leaving an exotic place and returning to the more mundane, familiar world of home? Le Retour explores a girl’s difficulty re-adjusting to her Orange County existence after life-changing months studying in France. Print Source: earne100@yahoo.com

Leaving behind his office with no windows, Canadian Gwendal Castellan dreams up an adventure to travel halfway across the planet at a human pace to experience the story of the road. Seen from the handlebars of a bicycle, the world is a lot smaller than he ever thought. Beginning at the southern tip of Argentina, he takes us on a modern day journey through eighteen countries on the longest road in the world. Joined from location to location by family, friends, and even strangers, Castellan biked the mountains of Patagonia, through Latin American mega-cities and small-town America, to the sparse reaches of the Canadian Arctic. Through his journey we get a glimpse of what it would be like to drop everything and hit the open road. Although he did not make the actual trip, Port Townsend resident Ian Hinkle became a virtual traveller when he joined Castellan to co-direct and edit the resulting film. Email: ian@longroadnorth.com

Long before Antonio Banderas, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Anthony Hopkins banded together in 1998 to embellish the legend of the California vigilante known as Zorro, Tyrone Power, Linda Darnell, and Basil Rathbone created in 1940 what is now considered the definitive entry of more than a dozen versions (including George Hamilton’s campy satire, “Zorro, the Gay Blade.”) Based on Johnston McCulley’s 1919 novella, “The Curse of Capistrano,” the son of a California nobleman comes home from Spain in 1820 to find his native land under a villainous dictatorship. Disguising himself as a useless fop, the young nobleman is really the masked avenger, Zorro. In DC comic lore, this version of Zorro is the movie that a young Bruce Wayne goes to see the night his parents are mugged and shot. Out of this trauma Wayne is led to create the avenger, Batman. Print Source: Criterion Pictures Email: cary@criterionpictures.com

Struggling filmmaker Lee Kazimir read advice from Werner Herzog that filmmakers should skip film school and instead “make a journey alone, on foot, for a distance of 5,000 kilometers, let's say from Madrid to Kiev.” Kazimir took the advice literally, walking for six months through seven countries from Madrid to Kiev while documenting the journey with a video camera. Along the way he confronted physical struggles and met a varied cast of characters on the road. He learned some essential lessons, realizing ultimately that 'before Art, comes Life.' More Shoes is a diary picture that serves both as an account of an artistic coming-of-age and as a snail's-eye portrait of Europe in the early 21st century. Northwest Premiere Print Source: Bend Sinister Pictures Email: leekazimir@gmail.com

A morning on Maple Street in a quiet suburban neighborhood where nothing exceptional ever happens, residents begin their daily routine only to find things are just slightly amiss. A little excitement enters Maple Street. Print Source: rboylief@aol.com

One hundred of your favorite celebrity mug shots morph from one to the next. A minimalist trance-like soundtrack adds to the hypnotic pleasure of identifying these notable culprits. Print Source: Scorched Earth Productions Email: Ronnie@cramer.org

An ordinary day. Dad is experimenting in the lab. Mom is at home in the kitchen, while their six-year-old son, Alex, is playing around her. But this day is different. This day Dad brings something home from the lab. And the next morning, Alex is invisible. Print Source: szasz@extremefilm.com