FAVA Fest flaunts its grassroots glam
Celebration of independent film broadens horizons in third year
FAVA Fest isn’t just screening the best of Edmonton this year. It’s now bringing home the cream of the world.
Showing the full-length movie, Sundance Film Festival Short Film Tour, is a new capstone for the Film and Video Arts Society of Alberta’s festival, now in its third year. The screening is an unusual honour for a local film society, and unique in Canada. FAVA Fest is also showing the Cinema Eye Honors Shorts 2014, a selection of terrific shorts that have each played at least three A-list events, such as Sundance or the Toronto International Film Festival.
“The theme of this year’s FAVA Fest is grassroots glam — the idea that independent local filmmaking is glamorous and is internationally relevant,” says the society’s director of programming Trevor Anderson. “Sowe’re showing the best of FAVA along with the best in the world. We want to inspire our audiences and artists alike.”
Ultimately, all filmmakers are local somewhere, Anderson notes. As a director, his films have appeared and won awards internationally at film fests like Sundance and Berlinale, and some of these ongoing connections have secured this programming.
Like FAVA, the annual event has done nothing but grow, featuring toasts to established members, two best-of FAVA screenings and this year, an artist talk with Clearwater Documentary’s Niobe Thompson and aAron Munson about their travels shooting The Human Odyssey series for The Nature of Things.
That global exploration has hurled Munson into the middle of the most interesting Instagram account by an Edmontonian, full of frozen mountains, floating villages and a numbing number of machine guns. The filmmakers are both longtime FAVA members. “Currently they’re in Siberia,” notes Anderson, “and if they get out of Siberia, they’re coming back to show selections from what they’ve been shooting, show photos, tell stories and talk about their work-in-progress.”
The events begin Tuesday at 6 p.m. at the Ortona Armoury. “It kicks off with burgers, beer and gear on trade show Tuesday,” Anderson explains, noting you can see FAVA’s latest cameras, including a RED Epic — the likes of which Hollywood films are currently shot with — in a social, by-donation environment.
Thirty-nine-year FAVA member Rick Gustavsen is being honoured 8 p.m. Tuesday, having made hundreds of films over the years. Wednesday is Program One of the FAVA shorts and the Cinema Eye film, Thursday the Clearwater artist talk, Friday is Program Two and the Sundance shorts. The FAVA programs are shortlists, a sensible refining from last year’s screenings of every single film submitted. A full program is online at fava.ca.
And on Saturday, the FAVA Gala, with a special collaboration between local filmmaker Wes Miron and pianist Cameron Watson, as she plays Debussy over footage of the fascinating human landscape Miron has shot close up, in black and white.
Five, one-minute silent pieces supporting an upcoming announcement of film in the LRT stations will also be screened. Supported by grants, funders and their own fundraising schemes, FAVA is also giving away $17,000 worth of prizes for the best local films from the last year, as well as seeding funds for future projects.
“I’m proud of the fact you’re not paying a bunch of money to enter or to come to the event — we’re giving it away,” Anderson notes. The Wet Secrets, freshly returned from the South by Southwest Festival, will also be playing the gala. Anderson is the band’s drummer and co-founder.
“It’s a g reat ti me at FAVA ,”says the programmer. “Morale is high, membership ratings are up. There’s a sense of excitement and productivity.”