The Academy Foundation of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences alerted the Port Townsend Film Festival today that it was selected as one of 28 U.S. film festivals to receive grants for calendar year 2007, Festival Grants Committee Chair Gale Anne Hurd announced today.
The Port Townsend Film Festival, which completed its seventh festival last month, will receive $5,000.
The fund will be used to bring filmmakers to the eighth annual festival next year, according to Peter Simpson, executive director. The details will depend on the films selected, a process that will begin around the first of the year.
“This is exciting news,” Simpson said in acknowledging the grant announcement. “We learned in August that we had made the first cut, but we were so busy getting the festival ready that we didn’t have time to let the possibility sink in. Now, we can soak in it.”
This was the first time the local festival had applied for a grant from the Academy Foundation. A festival must have produced five consecutive events in order to be considered for an award.
A total of $290,000 was allocated to the 28 successful grantees, among them the Seattle International Film Festival which was awarded $25,000. The Portland International Film Festival received $10,000. The amount of the awards are determined by festival budget size.
The 2007 allocations are as follows:

• $25,000 – Seattle International Film Festival
• $20,000 – the AFI Los Angeles International Film Festival and the Cinequest Film Festival (San Jose, CA)
• $15,000 – the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival (Durham, NC), the Palm Springs International Film Festival and the Sarasota Film Festival
• $10,000 – the Ann Arbor Film Festival, the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival, KidFilm (Dallas, TX), Miami International Film Festival, Mill Valley Film Festival, New Orleans Film Festival, New York International Children’s Film Festival, Portland International Film Festival (OR), Provincetown’s International Film Festival (MA), Roger Ebert’s Overlooked Film Festival (Urbana, IL), San Diego Latino Film Festival, San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival, Santa Barbara International Film Festival and the Woodstock Film Festival.
• $5,000 – the Aspen Shortsfest, the Green Mountain Film Festival (Montpelier, VT), ImageOut: The Rochester Lesbian & Gay Film & Video Festival (NY), Phoenix Film Festival, the Port Townsend Film Festival (WA), the Three Rivers Film Festival (Pittsburgh, PA), the VC FILMFEST: The Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival and the Vistas Film Festival (Dallas, TX)

Separately – and in addition to the 28 festivals named above – three festivals, the Los Angeles Film Festival, the San Francisco International Film Festival and the Telluride Film Festival, have received $50,000 each under a special multi-year grant program designed to give them funding assurance for long-term projects.
The Festival Grants Program was established by the Academy in 1999 and to date has made 151 grants to film festivals.