Orcas Microcinema was founded in 2024 as a community-powered microcinema that provides free filmmaking and cinema appreciation workshops for youth across Washington state. We partner with neighborhood venues and organizations to host public film screenings of local and international works to encourage intergenerational and intercultural exchange and understanding. Orcas Microcinema hopes to develop and inspire the next generation of film lovers and filmmakers, especially those who face barriers in accessing creative spaces and opportunities within the film industry.
Founded on Orcas Island and working across the Puget Sound, Orcas Microcinema acknowledges we work on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples, including the Lhaq’temish (Lummi), Samish, Muckleshoot, and Duwamish nations, who are still among us today and continue to lead our region’s vibrant cultural, social and environmental movements and communities.
A Microcinema is an independent, audience centric space that screens films that may otherwise not be played in mainstream cinemas. Microcinemas are usually in alternative or “underground” spaces with very limited equipment, just the basics: a projector, screen and chairs. Films are at the center, with the audience being able to engage with filmmakers, other audience members and the wider community in an intimate environment.
Being an itinerant cinema, the Orcas Microcinema can show films anywhere and everywhere, including indoors and outdoors. We are proud to partner with organizations who are actively working in the community to collaborate on film selections and workshops.
Hana Peoples is a film curator and programmer based in Seattle, WA. She has spent time in Los Angeles and Berlin, attending and researching film festivals, public versus private film funding, and audience receptions toward non-English language cinema. She founded Orcas Microcinema as a way to remove barriers to film appreciation and filmmaking, especially for communities without access to an arthouse cinema. Her favorite films include: Mississippi Masala (Mira Nair), Still Walking (Hirokazu Kore-eda), Fallen Leaves (Aki Kaurismäki) and The Quiet Migration (Malene Choi). If you are looking to incorporate film screenings or workshops into your work or organization, Hana is happy to consult, collaborate and share resources. Please contact her via the contact page.
The Orcas Microcinema Project is fiscally sponsored by Northwest Film Forum. Our organization is supported, in part, by a grant from the Washington State Arts Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts.
If you enjoy our programming, please consider making a donation.
