Five reasons to take in the Boulder International Film Festival

Nothing classes up a film festival like Chevy Chase.

For details on this week's Boulder International Film Festival, go to bouldertheater.com, and check westword.com/slideshow next week for photos from the event.

Our Boulder International Film Festival top five:

1. Be less poor. If you're like everyone else in America -- broke -- Recession Proof Friday is your night. For the cost of roughly three Lincolns, you can hang out at the Official Filmmaker Lounge, also know as the Boulder Draft House. There, you can stalk chat up your favorite directors from the festival, who are probably broke themselves. So you'll have that in common.

2. Let your knees rest. Since it's a restricted weekend for Colorado Pass holders, take a weekend off from skiing or boarding. Instead, give back to the nature from which you take every weekend by screening Pirate for the Sea, a documentary about Greenpeace founder Paul Watson.

3. Be first. Kimberly Reed, apparently the first transgendered filmmaker in the country, gives a first look at her documentary Prodigal Sons on Friday. The film tracks her return to Helena, Montana, 20 years after her gender reassignment surgery, where she attends a class reunion.

4. Brush elbows with royalty. Burma Princess Inge Sargent will attend and speak at a closing-night screening of Burma VJ, which chronicles human-rights abuses through the lenses of video journalists in Burma. The film captured the grand prize at the International Documentary Federation of Amsterdam and is fresh off an appearance at Sundance.

5. Chevy f*#king Chase. Chase, in town to accept an Award of Excellence in Comedy, mingles with locals at the Valentine's Day Gala on Saturday, and takes part in an onstage Q&A session. There will also be a retrospective of his career, which means there will be scenes from Christmas Vacation, which pretty much makes it worth the drive to Boulder.