BY TIM MOLLOY
June 20, 2023
For its 25th anniversary, the Provincetown International Film Festival perfected the art of putting on a film festival at a very hard time for festivals in general. All are bouncing back, or trying to bounce back, after years of COVID-induced darkness. Some were struggling even before COVID.
But from June 14 through 18, at the twisting tip of coastal Massachusetts where pilgrims and LGBTQ+ pride coincide, the theater seats were packed, the lines moved in an orderly fashion, and people actually talked about movies. PIFF succeeds by looking deeply at the many things that makes Provincetown special while also looking outward at its place in the world.
The first film of the festival was I Am a Town, PTown local Mischa Richter’s moving portrait of the place he loves, from its sand dunes to its beaches to its street musicians to its Portugese-American fishing families to its recent emigrees from Jamaica to gay couples who have found peace and fun in Provincetown for decades.
Opening-night film Cora Bora, on the other hand, had no obvious PTown connection — it’s set in Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon — but the uncomplicated sexual fluidity of its main character owes a debt to the long struggle, activism and achievement of gay-friendly communities like Provincetown.
It’s a sign of how much things have improved for festivals lately that when I Am a Town debuted, three years ago, it was at the Wellfleet Drive-In, near Provincetown, because people had to socially distance in their cars. When it played Thursday, it was in PTown’s majestic town hall, one of the picturesque locations featured in the doc.
Read the full article at moviemaker.com