BREMERTON — Olympic College, the Bremerton Arts Commission and Susan diRende are teaming up with one goal in mind: celebrating women in comedy.

The Broad Humor Festival, which began as a film festival more than 10 years ago, started with diRende’s “hopes of building a way of connecting professional women in comedy to their audience,” according to OC professor and Bremerton Arts commissioner Marie Wichman. “The need was obvious due to a lack of representation.”

Wichman said diRende spent 10 years developing the festival, which Movie Maker Magazine named as one of the top five festivals for women in 2013. Last year, Wichman and diRende met in New Zealand, where diRende “began to share her vision of growing the festival to celebrate all women in comedy, not just film, and wanted a town with a college and receptive audience environment that would support her efforts.”

“I realized Bremerton was exactly that town,” Wichman said, “so I wrote the mayor and the president of OC and they agreed. By August (2015), we had a Production Planning Team and we’ve all been working hard ever since.”

The festival started Wednesday, April 13, and lasts throughout the weekend. Events include diRende doing a reading from her new sci-fi novella “Unpronounceable” at Kitsap Regional Library; a public party at the Norm Dicks Government Center including entertainment, food, wine and laughs; and feature film presentations at SEEfilm throughout the weekend.

For a complete list of events, visit WEBSITE. Most events are free and open to the public, though advanced tickets must be purchased for the films.

The Broad Humor Festival is really about celebrating women who generate comedic works. This year’s Bremerton festival focuses on film, and the films shown meet the requirement of being either directed or written by women, to “encourage women’s unique ways of storytelling,” according to the Broad Humor Bremerton mission statement.

“Women are an underserved and underrepresented demographic in the entertainment industry, especially in comedy,” Wichman said. “There is a huge gap creating a situation in which the audience only gets half the story when they are only exposed to male-centered comedies.

“Because male humor is different than female humor, it is important that we not only create a network opportunity for the funny women in the industry, but also provide educational opportunities for the audience and budding creative students.”

This may be the first year Broad Humor Festival visits Bremerton, but Wichman said it’s the “Hello! Nice to meet you. Would you like to come back?” year.

“We hope to build the festival to an annual event here in Bremerton, and expand the format to other media each year,” she said.

Next year they hope to add performance/stage-based comedies, followed the next year by visual art, Wichman said.

Wichman said Tuesday that the community response has involved “lots of enthusiasm.”

“We have people tell us everywhere we go how great this is that we are doing this for the city and for OC’s female students,” she said. “People are hungry for laughter right now, and I think the response will be overwhelmingly positive when all is said and done.”

To learn more about about Bremerton’s Broad Humor festival, view the schedule of events or purchase advance tickets to the film, visit bit.ly/broadhumorbremerton.