The 35 annual Seattle Arts Festival known as ‘Bumbershoot’ wrapped here on Labor Day with fire drums, dancers and fireworks exploding out of the Great Volcano. Attendee’s and artists at this years festival raised over $30,000 for the victims of Hurricane Katrina over the holiday weekend. The festival combines visual art, the Flatstock poster exhibition, comedy, dance and musical artists ranging from local buskers to headlining acts like Elvis Costello or the New York Dolls. Most events are presented outdoors in the Seattle Center park beneath the landmark Space Needle.

One of the highlights of the annual event is is curator and local film impresario Warren Etheredge’s One Reel Film Festival. Now in its 10th year, the festival screens over 1500 American short films produced in the last 18 months to create it’s annual presentation. Patrons line up around the block outside the 900 seat Intiman theater over the course of the 4 day event. The result is wide variety of the very best live-action, animated, experimental and documentary films carefully arranged into programs with names like ‘Mating Rituals’ “War Torn’ and “Freak Your Melon”. Warren has a great eye for talent and as a result many of the films featured here have introduced festival audiences to emerging directors. Others have gone on to Academy Awards including several shorts that premiered at One Reel.

This years program ‘Undertow’ featured the festival premier of Theresa Wingert’s short film ‘Stray’ . The cast include Channon Roe (“Boogie Nights” “Deadwood” ) and newcomer Kimberlee Peterson and after the screening Theresa and producer Dane Allan Smith joined Warren and others on stage for a Q+A. Dane is a familiar face at the North West festival having won best animation awards for ‘The Freak’ and “Terra’ and serves as an animation juror. Theresa is a Seattle native and the event was a perfect venue to premier her latest work for festival audiences. After One Reel , ‘Stray’ heads to Hollywood for The Los Angeles International Short Film Festival. More information on ‘Stray’ and an online trailer are available at http://www.strayshortfilm.com/

Audience awards are decided by an ‘applause-o-meter’ and winners are inducted into The Short Order, in a knighting ceremony, replete with pomp, circumstance and the One Reel fanfare (composed by Emmy-winner Hummie Mann).This years winners included Shane Ackers ‘9’ for best animation, Talmadge Cooley's live action short “Dimmer’ and Audience favorite ‘The Double’ starring Shannyn Sossamon (Rules Of Attraction) and Eric Roberts (L.A. Confidential).

More info at www.bumbershoot.org

|Dane Allan Smith
|MeniThings.com