Port Townsend Film Festival Part 2
Text courtesy of the Port Townsend Film Festival
Deirdre Timmons (A Wink and A Smile) (Director)
The headmistress of Seattle’s
Academy of burlesque, Miss Indigo Blue, guides ten women
through six intense weeks as they study the artful
striptease of burlesque. As the women learn to shed their
inhibitions along with their clothes, their journey shifts
from the glamour of feathers and rhinestones and takes a
sharp look at how they feel about their bodies and their
sexuality. They are aided in this process by such renowned
Northwest burle-y divas as The Shanghai Pear, Lily Verlaine,
and The Swedish Housewife and many others who perform
throughout the film to illustrate Miss Indigo’s lectures. A
romping collection of bump-and-grind musicians accompany the
film in this toe-tapping musical documentary. (Yes, it’s the
real thing.)
Bryan Skinner (Tumbling After) (Director)
An improvised mockumentary about a
burlesque dance troupe that begins to self-destruct with the
addition of a fading neo-burlesque star.
Dennis Hauck (AL's Beef)
(Writer and Director)
Bloodied, barefoot, and branded like
cattle, a mysterious woman comes to town with an aim to kill
the man that done her wrong.
Marc Turtletaub (Sunshine Cleaning) (Producer)
The makers of the 2006 sleeper hit,
LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE, have borrowed a word and the Academy
Award-winning actor, Alan Arkin from that film, but that’s
about the only similarity between the two. SUNSHINE CLEANING
is a much darker comedy.
Rose Lorkowski, a former high school
cheerleader and now a thirty-something maid, is trying to
create a better life for herself and her eccentric
eight-year-old son Oscar. Her burnt-out younger sister Norah
still lives at home with their father, who's on the latest
of a life-long string of get-rich-quick schemes. When Rose
learns of the big money to be made in the crime scene
cleaning and bio-hazard removal business, she and Norah
partner to create their own company, Sunshine Cleaning. The
venture proves useful in helping the girls clean up their
own lives as well as what's left of the lives of others.
“A better film than Little Miss
Sunshine, in which it may be inevitably compared because
of its name, the same producers … and the appearance of
Arkin, Sunshine Cleaning … is best when low-key--a
conversation in a local supermarket, or, Amy Adams,
crouching down in long shot to comfort another grieving
soul.”
— Anthony Kaufman, IndieWire
Did you attend the Port Townsend Film Festival
2008? If so, we
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