UPPING THE ANTE IN ITS 27TH YEAR >>>

For now let's forget about ballots and House seats and propositions.

Governor Gregoire, please start us off: "A film festival is such a great tribute to democracy because it features a broad spectrum of voices and perspectives from around the world. ..." She included these words in a letter addressed to our state capitol's 27^th annual film festival, which begins Friday Nov. 12, and stretches for eight movie-packed days until the following Saturday's wee hours.

As calm eye of this cinematic hurricane, first-time Olympia Film Festival Director Sarah Adams packs plenty of passion and experience. She moved to the city from Wyoming in 1998 and soon plugged herself into a bustling arts community. In particular, the Festival "is just one of the things that has made me fall in love with Olympia," Adams says. She's hosted several cabaret acts at the Capitol Theater in recent years, and even found time beyond her duties as director to finish her own film. Her Chapter 11: Valencia plays alongside other shorts on Nov. 17at the We Make It Rad program.         

Adams' incorporation of grander live events into the lineup separates this festival from its predecessors. By merging two disparate forms - the "now" art of stage performance with the "past" art of mechanical cinema - audiences will understand and appreciate both more fully. With an Opening Night Gala of bearded ladies and soaring aerialists, visitors can witness the human form at its most eccentric, then watch that same form recast as robot in an extended cut of Fritz Lang's haunting Metropolis.

"I'm really upping the ante on Opening Night," says Adams, adding jokingly, "I'm trying to squeeze every ounce of majestic I can out of it."

Artists of many disciplines have contributed to the festival. Adams employed local filmmakers to design short videos for the event's many sponsors, which will run before the main screenings. A "mixed medium" presentation on Nov. 20 called "This Ballet Is Making You Smarter and More Attractive" features live dancers and musicians building an on-the-spot soundtrack to projected images. And close to the Capitol stands the Northern space, host to several workshops given by photographers and animators.

Films themselves borrow liberally from all the other arts; in a way Adams has adopted this strategy, inviting and uniting different talents to bring a festival of film to life. As she sees it, "There's just a really incredible performing arts community in Olympia ... [whose members] don't really have a space for their work." OFF may come closer than other events like it to that egalitarian vision Gregoire had in mind.

Whittling more than 200 film entries - some made across the street, others a continent or two away - down to a few dozen was a task left mainly in Festival Programmer Ivan Peycheff's able hands. He decides the weekly schedule at Seattle's oldest moviehouse, the Grand Illusion Cinema, and has now brought his knowledge south and loves it.

"The funniest thing," Peycheff says, "is just being able to ... go after [the films] I want, what I think would be really great."

Muslim punks and rappin' cowpokes. Live Skype chats with famous directors. Evil nympho mermaids and seriously pissed she-demons.

All this and much more under a single roof.

Ain't democracy grand?

2010 Olympia Film Festival

Friday, Nov. 12-Saturday, Nov. 20
Full schedule here
Capitol Theater, 205 Fifth Ave. E., Olympia
360.754.6670

LINK: Tickets!