PORT TOWNSEND — The Port Townsend Film Festival announced that actor and writer Andrew Perez has received a film fellowship to work on a new screenplay in Port Townsend.
The Port Townsend Film Festival has been running this unofficial film festival for roughly three years at the request of filmmakers.
“We offer fellowships to filmmakers who just need some space to work on what they’re doing,” said Janette Force, the executive director of the film festival.
“We don’t really have a sound stage or anything like that, but what we do have is hospitality.”
Force said Perez, who attended the 2016 film festival to screen his 2015 movie asked her about space in Port Townsend to work on a screenplay.
“He put on a play at the Key City Theater, which was a stretch off of what we usually offer at the festival,” Force said.
“People at the theater really helped him, got him set up with a props guy and set up the theater for him. He really got to experience what the community here is all about.”
Perez will be in Port Townsend from Monday through Jan. 17 and will have a public event where he will read some of the project he will be working on.
“Who knows what it is,” Force said. “Writers live in this beautiful place where things can change at a moment’s notice.”
Perez will be the first fellow of 2017.
The fellowship itself depends on what the filmmaker needs, according to Jan Halliday, the director of operations for the film festival.
In Perez’s case, Halliday said he asked for a quiet place to work and two film festival donors stepped up to make that happen for him.
One offered Perez a private home outside of Port Townsend to work from, and the other offered the use of a car so Perez can get to and from town during his stay.
Halliday said the donors asked that their names not be released.
Perez’ other films are “My Scientology Movie” (2015) and “The Reluctant Good Knight” (2011).
Born in Los Angeles, he grew up in the San Francisco Bay area before moving to Chicago to study acting at Northwestern University and The School at Steppenwolf.
He moved back to Los Angeles in 2007, where he has continued to act onscreen and onstage.
Force said the film festival will post an application in January so more filmmakers can come to Port Townsend to work.
“Right now we’ve really only worked with filmmakers we know or filmmakers who know those filmmakers,” Force said.
“We want to expand that. As a film festival we know we’re showing films that the filmmakers have really struggled to put together. This is our way of giving back.”
Force said the film festival has offered the fellowship for about three years. It started when filmmakers Alexandria Bombach and Mo Scarpelli asked for a place to work on their documentary “Frame by Frame,” which follows four Afghani photojournalists attempting to cover the war.
The movie was released in March. It won awards at film festivals across the county, Force said.
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Jefferson County Editor/Reporter Cydney McFarland can be reached at 360-385-2335, ext. 55052, or at cmcfarland@peninsuladailynews.com.
