PORT TOWNSEND — Karen Allen has starred in some big box office movies, but it is the ones that are screened at small film festivals that she enjoys most.
“A lot of what you see at a film festival are films that people had to struggle to get made,” Allen said, speaking by telephone from New York City.
“There are a lot of fine films that you don’t have an opportunity to see, those that are more personal and have not been made for the purpose of making money.”
Allen, who will be the special guest at the 14th Port Townsend Film Festival from Sept. 20-22, is not wild about the blockbuster movies that are shown at the average cineplex.
“I’m not interested in the movies that have a lot of shooting and cars flying around, so the movies you see at a film festival are, for me, the real deal,” she said.
She currently is directing Lucy Thurber’s “Ashville,” an off-Broadway play that will end its run at the Cherry Lane Theatre in New York City at the time of the film festival.
The Port Townsend Film Festival annually invites a star of the screen to serve as its special guest.
Allen, 61, is the youngest special guest since Debra Winger came in 2005, when she was 50.
Allen has appeared in major hits, like “National Lampoon’s Animal House,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” “Starman” and “Scrooged” before pulling back in the 1990s to raise her son, Nicholas.
Since then, she has mostly appeared in smaller movies, aside from reprising her role as Marion Ravenwood in the fourth “Raiders” movie, 2008’s “Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull.”
On the first “Raiders,” Allen said, “There was a big learning curve.
“It’s one thing to do a film about relationships between people and another to work on a big movie where you become a more technical actor.”
Harrison Ford, who by then had done a pair of “Star Wars” movies, helped her through the transition.
“On ‘Crystal Skull,’ I was working with people that I already knew, so we didn’t have to get acquainted,” she said.
“Everyone was so excited to see Harrison and I were back together,” Allen said.
“We had already been through one movie, we were a lot more mature and were ready to have a good time.”
“Starman,” the 1984 film in which Allen starred with Jeff Bridges, in a story about an alien who visits Earth and takes the form of Allen’s character’s dead husband. It will be the featured outdoor movie on Taylor Street on Friday, Sept. 20.
At 6:30 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 21, Allen will introduce a screening of “The Glass Menagerie” at the Uptown Theatre, 1120 Lawrence St., to be followed by a discussion of the 1987 film which was directed by Paul Newman and stars Allen along with Joanne Woodward and a young John Malkovich.
On Sunday, Sept. 22, Allen will appear at the Bazaar Girls yarn shop, 126 Quincy St., for a fashion show that features some of Allen’s textile designs.
Surprisingly, Allen said acting was a second choice.
When she was a teenager, she was fascinated by fabrics and thought she’d be a designer.
“Textiles have always interested me,” she said.
“Some of the textiles you see in museums, such as Navajo weaving, are high art,” she said.
“When I got out of high school, I went to the Fashion Institute of Technology and it was what I always thought I’d do with my life,” Allen added.
“I went off on a different path and this interest was put on the back burner but I never stopped being fascinated and inspired by textiles.”
Allen formed her own textile company, Karen Allen Fiber Arts, located in Great Barrington, Mass., near her home in the Berkshire Mountains.
The scarves, sweaters and hats, many woven by Allen herself on a Japanese knitting machine are, in Allen’s words, “unorthodox designs that I have never seen before anywhere else.
“This is an expensive hobby, and we are lucky to break even,” she said, “although we do have a store and employ three people.”
While Allen has attended dozens of film festivals and sits on the board on one near her hometown, she had so far resisted attending one as an honoree.
She agreed this time after an invitation by John Considine, an actor and Port Townsend resident who sits on the Port Townsend Film Festival board.
“John told me that Port Townsend is a most amazing place, so I am looking forward to coming out and taking part,” Allen said.
For more information about the Port Townsend Film Festival go to www.ptfilmfest.com or call 360-379-1333.
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Jefferson County Editor Charlie Bermant can be reached at 360-385-2335 or cbermant@peninsuladailynews.com.
