O Canada on film
With 1,700 screenings nationwide on Wednesday, Canadian Film Day shows off the country’s best
It will be a one-day film festival worthy of a special occasion: Canada’s 150th birthday.
On Wednesday, Reel Canada will unleash Canadian Film Day, which it bills as “the world’s largest film festival”: more than 1,700 screenings of 150 beloved Canadian films in a single day, in an effort to reach viewers across the country (and beyond its borders) who may not normally get a chance to see them.
“We’re trying to reach people who are not necessarily film-savvy (who) wanted to see some Canadian films but knew almost nothing,” said Reel Canada artistic director Sharon Corder.
Screenings take place at libraries, museums, community centres, Legion halls, outdoor squares and, yes, even movie theatres.
“So many Canadians just have no idea that these movies even exist. For those people, if you like movies, this is a place to start,” added executive director Jack Blum.
The fest includes an impressive mix of pop- ular titles ( Fubar, Corner Gas: The Movie, Goon); old favourites ( Goin’ Down the Road, Mon Oncle Antoine); award winners ( Away from Her, C.R.A.Z.Y.); documentaries ( Manufactured Landscapes, Sharkwater) and cult classics ( Strange Brew, Meatballs).
In anticipation of the country’s sesquicentennial, the team of programmers at the nonprofit group began narrowing down the list of films more than two years ago to ensure they “reflect every background, every region, every genre . . . great examples in Canadian film,” Blum said.
“The films are incredibly diverse,” he added, but many of them are not as well known as they ought to be.
“When you talk to people about Canadian film, they (often) have an assumption that maybe they’re not very good. When people look at this list, one of the reactions we get is, ‘Oh, I didn’t realize that was a Canadian film,’ ” Corder said.
From Black Christmas to Black Robe, from Crash to Cube, from Stories We Tell to Starbuck, if you have a fond memory of a Canadian film, it’s probably on the roster.
There are 153 screenings across the GTA alone on Wednesday, some of them featuring special appearances by creative Canadians. Roncesvalles’s Revue Cinema screens Don McKellar’s quietly apocalyptic 1998 film Last Night, along with a Q&A with McKellar himself; at the Royal, director Vincenzo Natali will Skype in for a chat after a screening of his 1997 film Cube.
The reaction so far to Reel Canada’s program, which was founded in 2005 with a mission to reach out to young people through screenings at high schools and then to new Canadians through English-as-a-secondlanguage programs, has been largely positive.
“We get thousands of written remarks from the students we work with every year and they’re just wonderful because they talk about the revelation that Canadian films are really great,” Blum said.
“They sometimes say things like, ‘I think Canadian films are smarter than American films’ or ‘They spend more time on the script.’ They often say, ‘ They’re different because there’s no CGI, they’re more real.’ They notice these real qualities that Canadian films share that they relate to.”
This is the group’s fourth year holding a national event and the most ambitious by far, with intentions to reach every region of the country.
Compiling the films also proved a major challenge since many were exceedingly difficult to locate.
It took six months to get a usable version of John and the Missus, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary, despite the support of director/ star Gordon Pinsent, Corder said.
“There are lots of great Canadian films that are gone, they’ve vanished; you can’t find them or they exist in the National Archives and nowhere else,” Blum said.
“It’s been quite an adventure just dealing with getting some of the films. It is heartbreaking to find out that something you think is a classic film is almost impossible to find,” Corder agreed.
“So many Canadians just have no idea that these movies even exist.” JACK BLUM REEL CANADA