The Portland Art Museum is getting its largest single donation ever. Some of the money will support efforts to improve public access.

KETCHUM, Idaho — Kevin Smith was there. The writer-director-producer of “Clerks,” “Dogma” and numerous other cult movies was anything but “Silent Bob” (the character for whom he is best known) as he stood before a couple of hundred fans at the 2014 Sun Valley Film Festival. Smith spoke about his career, past and present, in very colorful language.

Veteran actors Scott Glenn and Mariel Hemingway, both Sun Valley residents, were in attendance. So, too, were many lesser-known but rising actors from a variety of popular TV series and movies — Peter Cambor (“NCIS: Los Angeles”), Pell James (“The Lincoln Lawyer”), Joshua Leonard (“The Blair Witch Project”), Alison Pill (“The Newsroom”), Michael Weaver (“Super Troopers”) and Jess Weixler (“The Good Wife”) among them.

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Melisa Wallack and Craig Borten were among those who mingled with the throngs of attendees. Screenwriters of 2014’s “The Dallas Buyers Club,” they talked about the experience of writing from the dark side: “It can be a really depressing, difficult thing to do,” Wallack said. But “it’s just so much more interesting to write about human flaws,” Borten injected.

Film festivals like this one — the Sun Valley Film Festival, held in March at the Northwest’s largest winter resort complex in Idaho — have a dual focus. On the one hand, they are opportunities for independent filmmakers (those whose projects are not funded by major studios) to place their work in front of a jury of their peers, to gain exposure for their movies and to network with other actors, writers, directors and cinematographers.

But festivals are also for the movie-going public, the folks whose dollars support the film industry. “Hollywood keeps pumping out the same stuff, and people who love film just need more,” explained BendFilm executive director Todd Looby. “They are looking for directors who are doing new and interesting things.”

They have plenty of opportunities around the Pacific Northwest. My research uncovered six dozen festivals around the region, at least one in every calendar month. While the current month of October boasts 17 of the regional fests in Oregon, Washington, Idaho and western Montana, film goers will find something even in mid-winter and during the dog days of summer.

Here in Bend

Bend is no slouch on that list of 72 festivals. The four-day BendFilm Festival, which launches its 11th season on Thursday, is consistently ranked nationally by Moviemaker magazine as one of the handful of festivals “worth the entry fee.” This year, the festival will present 94 narrative, documentary and short films

Outside of Seattle and Portland, the clear hubs of the Northwest film industry, such accolades are spare. Bend, Ashland, Sun Valley and Missoula are on the cutting edge.

“The Northwest is a national hotbed of independent filmmaking,” said Looby, who was himself a successful indie filmmaker from Chicago before he took the reins of BendFilm early this year. “Names of directors like Gus Van Sant (‘Good Will Hunting’), Todd Haynes (‘I’m Not There’), Lynn Shelton (‘Hump Day’), Megan Griffiths (‘Lucky Them’) and Kelly Reichardt (‘Meek’s Cutoff’) are world renowned, but they are all fiercely independent filmmakers who choose to live in Portland or Seattle.”

The 2014 BendFilm jury is something of a who’s who of Northwest film talent. Animator Mark Gustafson (“The Fantastic Mr. Fox”), cinematographer Ben Kasulke (“The Off Hours”) and producer Mel Eslyn (“The One I Love”) are among the half-dozen judges, while director Tony Kaye (“American History X”) will present his new film, “Detachment,” starring Oscar-winning actor Adrien Brody.

“The filmmaker presence is very important at a film festival,” Looby said. “There’s a different sort of relationship when the audience gets involved. They’re able to have an interchange with the filmmaker: Why did you make that choice? What did it mean?”

Just as movie lovers enjoy the opportunity to view new material — “I love it when directors working with absolutely nothing come up with something really provocative,” said Looby — it is the attendance of filmmakers that drives the quality of a festival.

“With so many festivals around the country, you can generally get your film screened somewhere,” Looby said. “But filmmakers want the exposure of major festivals.

“Sundance (Film Festival in Utah) got 12,000 submissions this year, and it showed only somewhere over 200 films, including shorts. For those who are chosen, it’s a good way to get marketing for your film.”

BendFilm fielded about 500 submissions, Looby said, every one previewed by a local selections committee who helped in narrowing the number to fewer than 20 percent of those offered.

Around the Northwest

Among other film festivals in the Pacific Northwest, none is more renowned than the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF). Established in 1975, SIFF extends for 25 days (May 14 to June 7, 2015), during which it presents an eclectic array of more than 250 features and 150 short films from at least 70 different countries.

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Annual attendance reaches more than 150,000, which makes it — according to organizers — the largest and most highly attended film festival in the United States.

Seattle also is home to a great many festivals specializing in ethnic films, including movies shot in the Spanish, Polish, Irish, Hindi and Bengali languages. It has an Asian festival, an African American festival, a Jewish festival, a lesbian and gay film festival.

Portland, too, has a sizeable share of fests, headed by the Portland International Film Festival over the first two full weeks in February (Feb. 5-21, 2015). More than 140 films from around the world are screened at this event; Whitsell Auditorium, in the Portland Art Museum, is the No. 1 venue, but theaters throughout the city get in on the act. Last year, more than 38,000 film lovers attended the festival.

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A favorite of Northwest festival goers, and an event of similar size to Bend’s, is the Ashland Independent Film Festival on the second full weekend of April. (It is next scheduled April 9-13, 2015.) Ashland has the benefit of being home to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, an eight-month-long party that has conditioned this town of 20,000 to be acutely culturally aware. Founded in 2001, three years before BendFilm, the Ashland festival offers more than 90 films and parties in numerous locations around town.

Montana’s Big Sky Documentary Film Festival in Missoula (Feb. 6-16, 2015) has become known as the leading festival for non-fiction filmmakers in the Western United States. More than 20,000 people descend upon the city of 70,000 to watch 125 movies, chosen from nearly 1,000 annual entries.

Mark Rabinowitz, who co-founded indieWire.com magazine in 1996, said that he finds a devotion to films and filmmakers to be a common thread among these and other festivals.

“More and more festivals are paying screening fees, even for films without sales agents,” said Rabinowitz, who has attended more than 150 film festivals around the world. “While filmmakers aren’t making a real living at festival play, it does mean they can afford to hit the circuit, which is super important for filmmakers.

“It’s where they meet other filmmakers, potential producers, investors, actors. A book could be written recounting the chance film festival meetings that resulted in wonderful collaborations.”

Sun Valley serenade

My favorite regional festival — besides Bend, of course — is Sun Valley. Launched in 2012, the festival isn’t as large as others (64 films, four screens in 2014) with an attendance of fewer than 3,000 people. But the cachet of Sun Valley, famed as a magnet for celebrities since the resort was founded in the 1930s, draws a lot of bigger-name filmmakers.

While there seems to be less emphasis here on viewing films (how many can a person realistically watch in one weekend, anyway?) and more on networking, the resort area, including the gateway towns of Ketchum and Hailey, is a great place to talk about the movies.

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Two producers nominated for 2014 Best Picture Oscars — Ron Yerxa (“Nebraska”) and Jim Burke (“The Descendants”) — held center stage at one “coffee talk.” Jason Tanz, executive editor of “Wired,” led a panel on digital entertainment. Nat Geo WILD’s Kristin Montalbano presented a series of films and TV documentaries. A panel on works in progress allowed filmmakers to share portions of their almost-completed films for audience feedback.

Most memorable, though, were the presentations by writers Wallack and Borten, followed on the final day by Kevin Smith’s diatribe.

“The Dallas Buyers Club” was the first collaboration for Wallack and Borten, who both said their other work has often been in the better-paying realms of action or comedy. “It would be great to always make these $3 million movies,” said Wallack. “We’re both attracted to these kinds of movies, but at the same time, you have to work. If you’re going to do this, you have to find characters that you really love and you want to inhabit.”

Smith, who arrived at the nexStage Theatre in Ketchum wearing an XXL-sized hockey jersey that bore the name “Fat Man,” held court for more than an hour. He discussed his start in movies, his career evolution and his newest projects. And in keeping with his off-color image, he sprinkled his talk liberally with “F bombs.”

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As a young New Jersey convenience and video store clerk, Smith made “Clerks” on a shoestring in the early 1990s, casting himself as “Silent Bob.” Released in 1994, “Clerks” won acclaim at the Sundance Film Festival and was entered into general distribution by Miramax — which then offered Smith $75,000 to write the sequel, “Mallrats.” “Suddenly, I’m a paid professional,” Smith said. “I hit the … lottery of life.” He spent 12 years working for Miramax, “getting paid an obscene amount of money,” he said.

In the mid-2000s, he set out on his own. He produced documentaries and podcasts, wrote and directed a movie called “Red State.” His newest work is “Tusk,” a “horror thriller” made for $3 million, starring Justin Long and Haley Joel Osment. “Oddly enough,” said Smith, “it is the most personal and the best movie I’ve ever made. It is absurdity that is played earnestly straight.”

Then Silent Bob gave advice. “We have great ideas all the time,” Smith said. “They don’t get executed. But why not you? Nobody’s ever going to hand you things, so just go try. Take one year of your life for yourself, and say, I’m going to try anything I want to try. Take the chance and go for it.”

I think I’ll start by finding inspiration at a few more Northwest film festivals.

— Reporter: janderson@bendbulletin.com