Films, conversation worth checking out on Monday
One of the most beautiful films ever animated, something that makes Hayao Miyazaki’s 1997 classic extra brilliant is how every conflicting party in the film has an absolutely justifiable position, simultaneous, contradictory truths of survival.
Set in the late Muromachi period of Japan — approximately 1336 to 1573 — with jaw-dropping fantasy elements, the story follows the young Emishi prince Ashitaka’s involvement in a struggle between the gods of a forest and the humans who consume its resources.
The term Mononoke is not a name, but a Japanese word for a spirit or monster: supernatural, shape-shifting beings. Its version of animal gods is simply brilliant. If you’ve never seen this, with subtitles on the big screen is the truly perfect way.
Details: 9 p.m. at Metro Cinema (8712 109 St.), $8 child, $13 adult
ANGIE ABDOU
Join acclaimed author Angie Abdou in conversation with local literary talent Thomas Trofimuk as they discuss her new memoir Home Ice: Reflections of a Reluctant Hockey Mom.
This entertaining piece of narrative non-fiction charts a full season of life as an atom-level hockey mom, from summer hockey camp to the end-of-season tournament.
Her revealing stories and careful research on issues such as cost, gender bias, concussion and family pressures offer a compellingly honest and complex insider’s view of parenting today ’s young athlete in a competitive and high-pressure culture.
Details: 7 p.m. at St. Albert Public Library (5 St. Anne St., St. Albert), free but please register at Eventbrite.
THAT NEVER HAPPENED
If neither of those quite strikes your fancy, how about some dark history?
That Never Happened reveals the story of Canada’s first national internment operations between 1914 and 1920, when more than 88,000 Ukrainian-Canadians were forced to register and more than 8,500 were wrongfully imprisoned in camps across Canada because of where they came from.
In 1954, the public records were destroyed and in the 1980s a few brave people worked to reclaim this chapter in history and ensure future generations would know about it. Directed by Ryan Boyko. Details: 7 p.m. at Metro Cinema (8712 109 St.), $13.