Fundraising via Serenity is happening again. Tonight wasn't near a sellout -- the Hollywood was about half-full -- but I hope other numbers make up for that: Friday night's raffle netted $715, including $10 of my funds. (I won two prizes! First was a framed Serenity trading card of Mr. Universe and Lenore his love-bot, signed by the actress who played Lenore; second was a Inara gift-pack with a candle, head decoration and incense. Really neat other raffle prizes were given out tonight, too, including original Serenity comic book art, a signed photo of the mind-meltingly gorgeous Summer Glau, and the Mal gift-pack including -- of course -- a little pony and a plastic rocket! Inside joke, for those of you not Firefly/Serenity fans.)
We watched the movie again, appreciatively -- I'm very fond of it -- and cheered the mission of Equality Now, which is benefitting from CSTS. It wasn't as elaborate a presentation as before -- there was no pre-film video, as there'd been last year -- but there was a good energy to the show. We were glad to be there, we somewhat raggedly sang "The Hero of Canton," we got caught up in the drama of the flick, and afterwards we enjoyed fire dancers who performed outside the theater. ("They're poised with poi," I said.)
Two more showings happen Saturday: a 1 p.m. matinee and a 7 p.m. screening. In between at 5:15 is a presentation of two short films partly funded by the Women's Film Institute (the other charity benefitting from Portland's CSTS): those are the films Person, Place or Thing and Sentence For Two. And after Serenity will be Raffle Part Last in the theater, and a costume party back at the Moon & Sixpence. I'll be there, for the 7 p.m. film, the raffle and the party.