This fall is shining a spotlight on Puget Sound filmmakers, one of whom is set to be featured at the Port Townsend Film Festival (PTFF) this month, and another of whom is seeing her film debut on a number of streaming platforms.

I interviewed Ben Wilson, founder of the nonprofit “Color of Sound,” in the spring about how he was serving as producer on a short documentary by Aaron Johnson, which was filming in Whidbey Island and Port Townsend.

More recently, I interviewed Johnson himself. While you can expect to see that article before this year’s PTFF commences, I was also treated to an opportunity to watch “Dark and Tender,” the film Johnson directed.

“Dark and Tender” is slated to screen during the PTFF forum on “Black Filmmakers and the Pacific Northwest,” set for 7 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 20, in the Pope Marine Building in downtown Port Townsend, as part of the four-day film festival.

Within a brisk yet empathetic 17 minutes, Johnson, Wilson and a number of other Black men speak their emotional truths, and share precious glimpses into their interior lives, which are inextricably tied to the broader sociopolitical treatment of Black masculinity.

As much as men, regardless of race, have begun to engage in necessary conversations about non-toxic masculinity, what Johnson highlights in “Dark and Tender” is how Black men are additionally bound by the constraints of the age-old onerous stereotype of “the Black brute,” whose masculinity is depicted as synonymous with violence and hypersexuality.

“Dark and Tender” doesn’t have to go far to find examples of how even modern media wallow in such racist portrayals. What is equally tragic is when Johnson points out how simple gestures of platonic physical affection between Black men are so rare that he couldn’t even find categorical examples of them through Google searches.

Johnson asks questions that other researchers should be asking — exactly how might a paucity of “tender, platonic touch” between Black men be affecting their relative rates of violence and incarceration, along with their mental health? — before he models some simple, collaborative coping strategies those men might adopt.

I was struck by the almost Zen profundity of Johnson’s statement that “listening is the first hug.”

“Dark and Tender” treats us to a succession of thoroughly wholesome and uplifting images of Black men holding hands, embracing and even tucking each other into blankets, during a retreat conducted by Johnson, but it also shows that trust, caring and hearing each other are an essential foundation for all the steps that might follow.

The degree to which Black men’s emotional isolation is compounded by their sociopolitical plight is explicitly called out by one white-haired retreat participant, who observed that James Baldwin had only three friends — Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and Medgar Evers — all of whom were lost to violence.

As documentaries go, “Dark and Tender” is a brief but vital conversation-starter, and I eagerly await the dialogues and insights that Johnson might yield by continuing to explore this vein.

‘Ingress’

From relationships grounded in reality, to a tale of fictional heartbreak spanning multiple potential timelines, Bainbridge Island filmmaker Rachel Noll James’ “Ingress” is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video, Vudu and Vimeo on demand, after screening in Port Townsend this spring, courtesy of PTFF.

I gave “Ingress” a positive review at the time, and I stand by it now that the film is more widely available.

Noll James explained that she signed a deal with Glass House Distribution for “Ingress” to start streaming in the United States last month, and she anticipates a broader release for the film this fall, both to other geographic territories and to other streaming services.

“We’ve continued to get some fantastic reviews from critics and audiences,” Noll James said. “I’ve had so many amazing conversations with people.”

Noll James described her “favorite moments” as when screening attendees have approached her to tell stories from their own lives “that they’ve never told anyone,” but which were evoked by seeing “Ingress,” and her own character’s journey in that film.

“I’ve had people come up to me and start crying, or tell me they’ve had experiences like the main character in my film, and never told anyone, or just say how the story stayed with them for days after, and they kept thinking about it,” said Noll James. “I really feel like this film is connecting with people, more than I ever hoped, and that’s been really incredible.”

Noll James is already rewriting a prospective second feature film, “a witchy Western set in the 1800s,” that she hopes might go into production by the spring.

She said she also hopes that film could help launch a program for emerging women filmmakers, by hosting them on set to shadow the production of the film, before mentoring them in making shorter films of their own.

“We’re still in the fundraising phase to make all of this a reality, but that’s the goal,” Noll James said.