Maud Lewis movie to premiere in Toronto
“Maudie” will premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival this September.
The Canadian-Irish production, with Sally Hawkins as Digby folk artist Maud Lewis and Ethan Hawke as her husband Everett, was filmed in Newfoundland last summer.
It is the only Canadian production to be shown as a special presentation at TIFF.
“We have an evening screening on a Monday night which is prestigious, this is the same time slot where Brooklyn premiered last year, there is a red carpet and the whole nine yards,” says co-producer Mary Young Leckie. “The Elgin is a great theatre on Yonge Street, one of the oldest most beautiful theatres.”
Maud Lewis, who was born in Yarmouth County, suffered from the effects of juvenile rheumatoid arthritis and yet made a living by creating bright simple folk paintings.
In 1938 she married Everett and moved into his house in Marshalltown just outside Digby.
Leckie says this big-screen version of the Maud Lewis story shows two people that society felt shouldn’t be or couldn’t be loved and yet they find love with each other.
“Maud herself, her story, she must have been in so much pain, taunted by kids when she was young, she had it tough and yet she found so much joy,” says Leckie. “We live in a complex world – I thought it was complex when I started this project in 2003 – but now boy, the world is insane, and I just think we all need to find a way to find joy.”
Leckie enlisted Sherry White of Newfoundland to write the screenplay. White visited Digby and spoke with people who knew Maud, she watched videos of interviews with Everett and Maud and she referred often to Lance Woolaver’s book, “The Illuminated Life of Maud Lewis.”
Leckie says they built a replica of Maud’s house in Newfoundland, then created sets to give the feel of the time period but couldn’t afford to recreate the town of Digby.
Characters in the film include Maud’s Aunt Ida, her brother Charles, various townspeople and a fictional collector named Sandra from the States who summers in Digby and then befriends Maud.
Maud Lewis died July 30, 1970.