In 2000, five movies were shown at a weekend “film festival” in the Community Room on Peaks Island.

That film festival became the Free Saturday Movies, a program of the Portland Public Library’s Peaks branch. Volunteer projectionists show a children’s movie and a feature for adults every Saturday night for free.

From the very beginning, Videoport was a supporter of the program, supplying the titles reflecting the wide-ranging tastes of the projectionists – titles not found in the PPL collection. In the early days, that was a fair number of films per month.

We volunteers would like to acknowledge and thank Bill Duggan and the friendly, helpful, knowledgeable staff of Videoport for 15 years of support. I don’t know that our program could have continued without them.

We, along with everyone else, will miss Videoport when it closes, but are surprised, ecstatic and grateful to know that 18,000 titles from the Videoport collection are being donated to the Portland Public Library!

Videoport has made a big difference to the Free Saturday Movies on Peaks and, through the PPL, will continue to make a difference to Portlanders who love movies.

Marty Braun

Peaks Island