Liberating the western wilderness, from deserts to rainforests. The Peter Simpson Free Cinema illuminates a PC student’s ecological perspective – PART 1, What’s the Deal? Port Townsend Film Festival’s got value

October 22, 2014 PC Buccaneer Online Editor Archive, Arts & Entertainment, Editorial | Opinion, Features, October 22 2

Viewpoint by Giovanni Roverso

Being a college student and a film enthusiast can be tough. Film festivals can burn a hole in your pocket if you want to get the most out of them. Take a look at Port Townsend Film Festival’s prices and you’ll see individual movie tickets costing $13, with most festival passes selling for upwards of $100. Not all is doom and gloom however.
One of the festival’s most valuable assets comes in the form of the Peter Simpson Free Cinema. The key word here is undoubtedly “FREE”. What is so remarkable about it is that throughout the festival’s three-day run this year, it featured a total of twelve different screenings that would have cost a ticket at any other theater. Sure, not every film at the festival played there, and you might not have been interested in every single movie it had to offer anyway, but for the low price of “free”, it’d be silly not to give it a chance, unless you had a problem with the long lines.
While most screenings will have tickets available as long as you get in line about an hour before show time, popular films are going to take a bit more dedication. Those films limited to a single projection for example, as well as pretty much everything at the Free Cinema, are going to be hard to get into if you don’t make the extra effort to show up fifteen minutes before tickets start going out.
Basically anything worthwhile will involve a lot of waiting in line. Just don’t sit on your laurels once you do have your hard-earned ticket though, especially at the Peter Simpson, where entering a little too late will get you stuck with one of those hard cold metal seats in the posterior half of the theater, or worse, with your posterior on the cold hard floor, along with a double dose of muscle cramps as you strain your neck to see what’s happening on screen.
The PTFF has been acting seriously upon the feedback it’s been given the last few years. With help from its sponsors, improvements have been made all round, including upgrading all of its projectors to digital high-definition, and giving the Free Cinema a much needed soundproofing.

PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3