Columbia Gorge International film festival the reel deal

• What: Columbia Gorge International Film Festival, featuring world premieres and film screenings, screenplay readings and workshops, conversation with filmmakers, live music and regional outings.

• When: Now through Aug. 16 (began Thursday), early afternoon through evening; check website for full schedule.

• Where: Vancouver Community Library, 901 C St.; Camas Public Library, 625 N.E. Fourth Ave.; Washougal High School, 1201 39th St.; Angaelica Farms in Washougal (details online).

• Cost: Screenings are free, donations requested for Gorge outings.

• Information: www.angaelica.com

Approximately 250 films from places as far-flung as Brazil, China, Israel, Russia, Iran, Bangladesh, South Korea and the Marshall Islands — as well as every corner of the U.S. — will be screened during the Columbia Gorge International Film Festival. That means a truly vast diversity of styles and subject matters.

Even this grab-bag of festival offerings by Northwest filmmakers should give you a sense of the diversity on tap:

• “Coffee and a Bagel,” by Gavin Brown (4 minutes, Portland). A widower tries an online dating website, with unexpected results, in this animated short.

• “Cold Cereal,” by Ray Nomoto Robison (5 minutes, Medford, Ore.) Two hunters reminisce about their first kill and its emotional impact.

• “The Fred Effect,” by Aaron Kish (53 minutes, Olympia). Student documentary from The Evergreen State College about Olympia businessman, art collector and philanthropist Fred Goldberg.

• “Fungiphilia Rising,” by Madison McClintock (13 minutes, Bozeman, Mont.). The secret life of mushrooms and their admirers, as revealed via mushroom forays, fungus festivals and interviews with mycologists, artists, businessmen and chefs.

• “The Gift,” by Mardig Sheridan (26 minutes, Seattle). A career Army officer faces a crisis as his son faces the Vietnam War draft.

• “Jessica Walking,” by Maria Sanders, (29 minutes, Ellensburg). Recovering from a drunken night in an unfamiliar town, Jessica learns more than she expected about herself.

• “Mayhem in Mosier,” by John Worsley, (6 minutes, Mosier, Ore.). A comic mashup of hashtag and throwback, complete with a victim tied to railroad tracks.

• “Rodeo Dog,” by Rebecca Hynes, (14 minutes, Portland). A documentary look at Jake, an extraordinary bull-wrangling dog in Central Oregon.

• “The Somnambulists,” by Mark Andres, (92 minutes, Portland). Animated tale about a future when a new drug has done away with the need for sleep.

• “Tomgirl,” by Stephen Przybylowski (14 minutes, Seattle). Jake, a gender nonconforming 7-year-old, lives in a world where children are accepted for who they really are.

Most of the year you’ll find Breven Angaelica Warren living in Los Angeles and other big cities, where she and her husband have built a life working for major film-industry gatherings like Sundance, Scriptapalooza and the San Francisco International Film Festival.

But the festival Warren launched in humble Washougal, her own quasi-hometown, is her real “passion project,” she said.

Thanks to its welcoming format and fantastic natural setting, hundreds of industry professionals and wannabes — directors, actors, writers, you name it — now share Warren’s passion for the Columbia Gorge International Film Festival, which has grown beyond Washougal since launching in 2008. They come annually to camp up on Warren’s Washougal farm and enjoy outings in the area as well as screen their work and make career connections. More than 500 came last year, she said.

Warren only wishes that Clark County would get passionate about it, too. The whole thing is free, and the artists are eager to share their art with the public, she said. Imagine going to a great art gallery, she said, where you can chitchat onsite with the painters themselves — who are grateful for an appreciative, interested audience. Warren said she doesn’t know any other festival that’s so low-key, friendly and accessible.

“If you haven’t had the experience of meeting the artist, it’s really extraordinary,” she said.

Just to clear up any confusion, she added, you don’t have to venture anyplace unusual to sample the festival, since most screenings are in familiar local venues: Washougal High School and the main downtown libraries in Vancouver and Camas. You don’t have to be a serious film buff with a serious time commitment; Warren encourages everyone to just wander on in and sample some cinema you’ve never tasted before.

Upwards of 250 films from 30 different countries will be shown this year: short and long, documentary and narrative, amateur and sophisticated, timeless and topical, silly and dead serious. There’s an exhaustive schedule and lots of information available at www.angaelica.com.

Plus, three of the days in the 11-day festival are set aside for real life, not art. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday are “adventure days,” when filmmakers and fans all are invited to worship nature in true Pacific Northwest fashion. Register online ahead of time, make a donation and join groups that’ll be hiking, boating and tasting local wines in spots like Maryhill, Goldendale, and the Oregon towns of Eagle Creek and Hood River.

“We’ve got filmmakers from every continent — except Antarctica — coming this year. We want to get them out and show them this beautiful place,” Warren said. “So many of them have never been here before.”

‘Modern bards’

Warren, 36, lived, studied and made her own films all over the world before coming back to her parents’ home base, Mt. Norway near Washougal, and falling deeply in love with the place.

She knew she wanted to launch a festival of her own, she said — one that would be a positive, encouraging, productive experience for ambitious starters like herself — and was glad to get early support from the city of Washougal for what was first billed as the Washougal Film Festival.

The event was an instant success — drawing far more film-industry people to the area than could be accommodated by local hotels, Warren said. That’s one reason why she decided to make camping out on the Mt. Norway acreage an option for attendees, she said; plus, filmmakers living together in their own little campground for a few days — and going hiking and kayaking and wine tasting — only increases their friendly sense of something like an extended-family vacation, she said.

It’s a family that’s always growing, Warren added. There’s a ton of talent out there, and thanks to everything from video technology to online fundraising venues, moviemaking is more widely available to the public than ever before.

So it’s interesting to track trends in storytelling and subject matter, said Warren, who’s exposed to new and independent films all year long; right now, she said, she’s very aware of an increasingly international sensibility on the part of many young filmmakers.

“These are modern bards. I feel really blessed to be able to get a sense of the zeitgeist from the stories that people are telling.”