CANADIAN FILM DAY SINGS OUR NATION’S CINEMATIC PRAISES
Among the flicks on deck is a 20th-anniversary screening of Cube, co-presented by the Royal and NOW
SPECIAL TO THE STAR National Canadian Film Day: Of all of this year’s sesquicentennial celebrations, few can compete with the sheer scope of the Canada 150 movie event. On Wednesday, the busy team behind National Canadian Film Day will present more than 1,700 patriotic cinematic events taking place in venues across the country, plus on TV, online and quite possibly on the hides of caribou who’ve been marshalled for the occasion.
The slate at TIFF Bell Lightbox includes TIFF Kids screenings of Water
mark, Ballerina and The Legend of Sarila, plus 32 Short Films About Glenn Gould with Colm Feore and Don McKellar in attendance. The Royal and NOW magazine co-present a 20th anniversary showing of Cube.
Meanwhile, POV magazine invites luminaries like Hubert Davis and Anita Lee to the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema for a panel discussion on Canadian docs. Not to be outdone, the Carlton doubles down with a lineup that includes Sex After Kids, One Week, How Heavy This Hammer and Tower.
Among the dozens of other highly worthwhile options are Reel Injun at the ROM, Alan Zweig’s Vinyl at Sonic Boom, Angry Inuk at the Bata Shoe Museum, Edwin Boyd: Citizen Gangster at the Spadina Museum, Manufactured Landscapes at the Design Exchange and Cinefranco’s slate of francophone fare at the Ryerson School of Image Arts. After all that, surely the fireworks on Parliament Hill on July 1 can only be a letdown. Go to canadianfilmday.ca for details.
Black Code: A new documentary by Toronto’s Nicholas de Pencier that opens at the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema this weekend, Black Code peers deep into some of the murkiest corners of the digital world. This is where actors for repressive regimes and activists are using many of the same tools for very different purposes. Black Code shows how this new brand of digital warfare is having real-world impacts in Brazil, Tibet, Syria and many other places in between. De Pencier joins Ron Deibert — the director of the Munk School of Global Affairs’ Citizen Lab and the author of the book that inspired the film — for talks after select screenings on Friday and Saturday.
Perfume War: After her best friend Trevor Greene was badly injured in a Taliban attack while serving in Afghanistan in 2006, Barb Stegemann of Bedford, N.S., launched an unusual effort to further his efforts to help people in the country. Her idea — which she’d famously pitch on Drag
ons’ Den — was to make perfumes whose ingredients were sourced from the crops of farmers in striferidden nations. A documentary by Halifax director Michael Melski,
Perfume War charts her efforts to do the right thing while competing in the cutthroat world of fragrance companies.
The film plays Friday to Sunday at Cineplex Yonge-Dundas — Stegemann will be on hand for a Q&A after the screening on Saturdayat 4 p.m.
Ella Brennan: Commanding the
Table: The Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema’s arts-centric Sunday morning screening series aims for the hearts, minds and stomachs of the city’s film foodies with its latest selection, which profiles a legendary figure in New Orleans cuisine.
Part of the city’s most prestigious family of restaurateurs, Ella Brennan was instrumental in the success of both Brennan’s and Commander’s Palace, the latter of which became the launching pad for Paul Prudhomme and Emeril Lagasse.
Director Leslie Iwerks shares more about Brennan during a Skype Q&A after the showing on Sunday — Southern Accent will be there to sell cornbread, too.
In brief:
á Getting a jump on National Canadian Film Day, the Lightbox celebrates two landmarks of Québécois cinema with free screenings of Jean-Claude Lauzon’s Léolo on Friday and Gilles Carles’ La Vraie nature de Bernadette on Saturday.
á Signalling its preference for Jean Cocteau’s take on Beauty and the
Beast over Disney’s, the Royal’s Ladies of Burlesque program presents the French auteur’s 1948 version on Tuesday.
á A faith-based drama set in modern-day Toronto, Adam’s Testament plays its Canadian premiere at Cineplex Yonge-Dundas on Tuesday.
á Daniel Radcliffe stars in Tom Stoppard’s ever witty Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead in the latest National Theatre Live presentation at participating Cineplex locations on Thursday.