By Kelly Morgan,Staff Writer

PORTLAND – The Maine Jewish Film Festival has become one of the premier film events in the state, Executive Director Bess Welden said as people filed into Greenhut Galleries on Middle Street for the opening gala Saturday.

The world variety of feature, documentary and short films offered is one reason attendance has topped 2,000 each of the last two years, she said.”A lot of our fans, I think, are just film fans, and they love a film festival.”

The event also gives members of the Jewish community a way to connect through exploration of the films, and those outside the community are given a window into a culture with which they may not be familiar.

Welden laughed when recalling a conversation she had with a rabbi who, just a few weeks ago told her, “You guys of the film festival do more for the Jewish community than any of us do in the synagogue or at the community center.”

According to the festival’s mission, the hope is to “educate, enrich and entertain a diverse audience.” This is the ninth year of the festival, which has been expanded to include nine days of film and a closing party at the Portland Museum of Art on March 26.

The crowd at the gallery Saturday included a mixture of people, both Jewish and not, of all ages, and everyone seemed excited about the week’s films.

“I think it’s great that Portland – such a small community – has access to this,” said Amy Houran, who along with her husband, Jim, is part of the city’s Jewish community. “We really love film. I’m definitely a film buff.”

Houran was serving as an interpreter for the deaf during the opening gala and a talk with director Arthur Joff after the screening of his film, “Local Call.”

“Local Call,” a French comedy about a man who hears from his deceased father after getting rid of the man’s old coat, will air twice during the festival, as will some other films in the series.

Alex Greenhut, 17, nephew of gallery owner Peggy Greenhut Golden, was visiting from Albany, N.Y. The festival was his first foray into Jewish film. “I’m going in open-minded and, hopefully, seeing something I like,” he said.

Jennifer Halm-Perazone, Portland and state coordinator for the National Organization for Women, said she’d been to one of the films shown at the festival last year and realized NOW needed to become involved as a sponsor. “It was a no-brainer,” she said, speaking highly of the series’ Women Filmaker’s Forum, which will be held at 1:30 p.m. today at the Portland Museum of Art.

The festival also has drawn attention for its LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered) Film Project and is notable for hosting a free luncheon and matinee for seniors (Friday) and a free film for students under 18 (today). This film,”Paper Clips,” is a documentary about a group of middle-school students in Tennessee who aspire to understand the devastation of the Holocaust by collecting six million paper clips.

Other films shown during the week will include “Isn’t This a Time,” with performances by folk singers including Pete Seeger and Peter, Paul & Mary; “Gloomy Sunday, a romantic drama about “passion, food and music in 1940s Hungary”; and “Protocols of Zion,” which looks at the resurgence of anti-Semitism after 9/11.

Julie Krasne discovered the Jewish Film Festival shortly after moving to Portland eight years ago.

“I come every year – it’s one of the highlights of my year,” she said. “It’s once a year that you kind of get together, and it seems like a big family.”

Also, she said, speaking to the cosmopolitan flare of the festival, “I think it’s a real quality event. I was really surprised by it.”

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