Shorts shine in Canadian cinema event
Pandemic-themed Light(s) at the End of the Tunnel part of National Canadian Film Day
Canadian film takes centre stage once again as National Canadian Film Day (NCFD) returns April 21 for its eighth year.
The NCFD, founded by REEL CANADA a charitable organization that celebrates and promotes Canadian film, is online for the second year in a row due to the pandemic.
More than 40 film festivals from across Canada, including the Vancouver International Film Festival, will be hosting special screenings and events with filmmakers. Also slated are 150 community watch parties and 25-plus international events. Film fans can also gain access to great Canadian films through numerous broadcasters and streaming services. To access programming and information for this event, go to canfilmday.ca.
A highlight of this year's event is the Light(s) at the End of the Tunnel short film series.
A mix of live-action, animation and documentary, the 11 shorts commissioned by REEL CANADA and Netflix Canada, are between one and six minutes long and offer a look at what we have been living through since the pandemic began.
“By the time we got to January we had to figure out something,” said REEL CANADA's executive director and co-founder Jack Blum about creating new content for this year's day.
“We thought, well the vaccine is out (and) the weather is going to be getting nicer. There's a sense ... that we are going to get through this and we thought let's try to find a light at the end of the tunnel. Now of course you can't go a day without someone talking about Light at the End of the Tunnel. We caught the moment.”
The chosen filmmakers were given $10,000 and some equipment and told to have at it.
“Keep in mind this project didn't exist 16 weeks ago. We put out a call to about 40 young filmmakers and we got that many proposals back and it was very, very tight. Young, new and very diverse voices,” added the Toronto-based Blum.
One of the 15 filmmakers producing work for the shorts series is Vancouver's Andrew Huculiak. At the centre of his four-and-half-minute film SARS-COV-2 is a person reflecting on the year that has passed.
“I feel honoured to be selected. I'm really excited to be a part of this conversation,” said Huculiak.
The film had not yet been completed at press time, so Huculiak offered up the elevator pitch description of the live-action, narrative offering with Emily Schoen in the lead role.
“It's a short narrative about an individual who is sitting in a chair, you only see their eyes at the beginning. Showing you just a window to the soul that we've all gotten used to reading people's emotion by. Nothing else. Then some thoughts start to come in and some different visions and vignettes from the year passed,” said Huculiak, who previously made the award-winning feature films Violent and Ash.
“It's mostly rapid fire and disjointed much like the human brain, going on these tangents of memories that may connect or may not connect and they are representative of her last year and at the end of the story she gets the vaccine and kind of just sits there for a moment.”
Huculiak, who wrote and edited the film, says the overarching theme is how the vaccine is going to change the course of things, but we shouldn't forget that many new normals now exist.
“There is this sort of meditative mantra through it: when things get back to normal. That is such a cliché,” says Huculiak.
“Everyone has heard that and everyone is talking about when things get back to normal. When things open up. You know I think the effects are going to stick with us for a lot longer.”
In the end for Huculiak, the making of his first short film was a way to make a little more sense of the pandemic for him.
“Yeah, in a way it is a bit therapeutic. For me anyway to be able to get out of my system a lot of the anxieties I felt in this last year. Hopefully when people watch it they also have a therapeutic reaction to it by also being witnessed. Somebody realizes that somebody else is feeling these feelings.”
As for his film's laboratorial name SARS-COV-2, well, Huculiak laughs when asked and then offers up this explanation:
“It's kind of a technical categorical title, but I was thinking how this film will exist mostly on the internet and I guess it is a little bit toying with the idea that we don't really need to pronounce things anymore.
“We can just copy paste,” said Huculiak.
The Light(s) at the End of the Tunnel shorts series is just one of the interesting programming streams being offered on NCFD.
Others include the streaming of the classic Canadian comedy Meatballs with a live Q&A after with director Ivan Reitman.
The late great Christopher Plummer's career will be highlighted with the Canadian films 1978's Silent Partner and Remember from 2015. There will also be conversations with people who worked with him, including award-winning Victoria-raised director Atom Egoyan.
There is a packed Indigenous-made film slate including a screening of the feature Rustic Oracle, including an appearance by the film's director Sonia Bonspille Boileau.
Also to mark the 20th anniversary of 9/11, the film You Are Here: A Come from Away Story will play and be followed by a Q&A with director Moze Mossanen.
Thousands of high school students will participate in an anti-racism live stream event that will look at the realities of being Black and Indigenous in Canada and will feature filmmakers Charles Officer and Boileau.
Other filmmakers taking part in this year's event include: Patricia Rozema, Phillippe Falardeau, Don McKellar, Bruce MacDonald, Anne Emond, Michael Kirby, Jason Eisner and Kate Lynch.