The Port Townsend Film Festival is teaming up with a freshly minted nonprofit in an effort to afford emotional healing to Black men.

Ben Wilson, who’s lived in Port Townsend for the past four years, has filled his recent retirement from a career in healthcare technology by serving on three nonprofit boards — for the Jefferson Land Trust, the Jefferson County Farmers’ Markets, and the Olympic Housing Trust — and he’s also started his own nonprofit, the Color of Sound (at colorofsound.org online) to improve the lives of people of color, in the Pacific Northwest and beyond.

The Color of Sound’s first project is a short film about Aaron Johnson and the Chronically UnderTouched (CUT) Project.

Johnson, who’s co-founded both Holistic Resistance and Grief to Action, has sought to address Black people’s experiences involving homophobia, transphobia and internalized racism, while the Chronically UnderTouched Project (at cutproject.org online) strives to recover the access of Black people, and in particular Black men, to “healthy, nourishing touch,” through education, support groups and nature.

Johnson leads a full-day workshop, open to the public, at the Whidbey Institute in Clinton on Friday, April 12, where he’s set to return from Friday, April 19, through Sunday, April 21, to lead a more private Black men’s retreat.

But in between, on Monday, April 15, the Balcony Theatre and Port Townsend Film Festival offices, at Suite 401A on 211 Taylor St. in Port Townsend, will be hosting a fundraiser for a film about the Chronically UnderTouched Project, part of which is slated to be filmed at Johnson’s workshop for Black men that following weekend, at the Whidbey Institute.

Wilson estimated the film’s original production budget to be around $15,000, and considers it likely that the film’s budget for post-production editing and submission to film festivals will run upwards of $52,000.

Wilson elaborated that the film itself is intended to raise awareness about the work Johnson is doing through the Chronically UnderTouched Project to help empower those efforts toward healing and increased sensitivity.

“All too often, Black men are told by society that the only way we’re allowed to engage is through violent confrontation, even when it’s through games or sports,” Wilson said. “And yet, when we see European athletes at play, they feel free to demonstrate levels of physical affection that our athletes don’t feel as free to emulate. It’s about countering the oppression and inflicted traumas of systems such as toxic masculinity, so we can build bonds with each other and heal collectively.”

For more information on the Color of Sound, you may email Wilson at ben@colorofsound.org.