Each spring, CASCADIA International Film Festival showcases films directed by women from around the world! Beyond this, CASCADIA also offers educational opportunities related to the viewing, making, and distribution of films while promoting Bellingham and the surrounding Pacific Northwest as a destination for filmmakers and enthusiasts.
The festival is held at the Pickford Film Center in Bellingham, WA with additional offsite events and celebrations! Enjoy panel discussions, special screenings, director Q&As, and parties.
Each year, CASCADIA hosts around 15 directors, several guest panelists, and an assorted entourage of editors, actors, and writers from around the world. In the past they’ve traveled from as far as Italy, Brazil, Russia and Australia to be part of this inspiring long weekend of films and fun.
2024 Honored Guest Director - Catherine Hardwicke
2023 Honored Guest Director - Barbara Kopple
2022 Honored Guest Director - Martha Coolidge
Each year, CASCADIA partners with local hotels to offer discounted room block rates during the festival. Book your room now with a festival hotel partner:
CASCADIA is expanding its programming this year to include women in the visual arts in an exhibition entitled: Women Rising: Expanding Visions/Diverse Perspectives.
The exhibit, in collaboration with Allied Arts, will highlight the multiplicity of women’s voices, styles, and interpretive approaches of artists living in the Pacific Northwest. Women artists are invited to submit artworks addressing a broad range of themes, issues, and ideas.
Selected art will be on exhibit in the Dakota Art Store gallery from April 5 until May 31, to coincide with the in-person film festival April 25-28.
CASCADIA got its start in 2015 when it collaborated with Toronto’s Female Eye Film Festival (FeFF) to bring eight documentary films directed by women to Pickford Film Center’s (PFC) Doctober, a month-long film festival held every October in downtown Bellingham.
This April they’ll again host a full-scale festival with pre-festival panel discussions and workshops, a live script studio, and four days of film screening, many of which will be followed by Question & Answer sessions with the directors attending from around the world.
Although too numerous to mention them all here, CASCADIA’s Board members are impressive in both the expertise they’ve brought from other areas of the country and their service within the community. Most have served on numerous boards of other area organizations as well as CASCADIA and all have a deep connection to filmmaking and the support of female filmmakers.
Executive Director Cheryl Crooks started as a journalist and arts critic in Phoenix. She wrote for TIME Magazine, becoming the magazine’s West Coast medical reporter. Cheryl later moved to Bellingham with her husband Michael Petryni, a successful screenwriter. He’s been a writer and story editor for many popular television movies and shows including Knots Landing, Spencer for Hire, and Moonlighting.
Board Member Sheila Goodwin (Larken) has been a professional actress for 40 years in theater and television. She may be best known as Margaret Scully in The X-Files. She now lives in Bellingham and her husband Bob Goodwin, a TV producer of many shows like the X-Files and The Fugitive, also serves on CASCADIA’s Advisory Board.
Other Board and Advisory Board members have experience in New York, L.A., and Pacific Northwest-based film and television, film history, arts education and finance. This festival is run by professionals who sincerely believe in the cause.
