Canadian Front: New Films
March 4–8, 2004
The inaugural season
of this annual series features eight of the strongest, most imaginative
feature films to emerge from Canada over the past eighteen months.
Canadian cinema is distinctive in that it embraces two separate
cultures, Anglophone and Francophone, unified by a system of federal
support. In this year’s selection are works by such celebrated
filmmakers as John Greyson, Allan King, Robert Lepage, and Guy Maddin
(whose new film, The Saddest Music in the World, premieres
on the opening night of the series and opens in New York theaters
on April 30). Also appearing are works by debut feature filmmakers
Keith Behrman and Federico Hidalgo, and by emerging writer/directors
Louis Bélanger and Bernard Emond.
Organized by Laurence Kardish, Senior Curator,
and presented in cooperation with Telefilm Canada. MoMA’s
Department of Film and Media thanks Richard Stursberg, Executive
Director, Telefilm
Canada; Lise Corriveau, Manager, Festivals and Markets; and Brigitte
Hubmann, International Festival Specialist. This exhibition
is presented with the support of the Canadian Consulate General,
New York, and its Senior Cultural Affairs Officer, Lilie
Zendel.
. 2003. Canada. Written and
directed by Louis Bélanger.
With Serge Thériault, Gilles Renaud, Sébastien Delorme.
Bélanger’s second feature is both a bittersweet portrait
of a lively Montreal neighborhood and an affecting drama about a
family business. Despite repeated robberies, local competition, and
sons who want a different life, a father is determined to hold on
to his corner gas station. In French, English subtitles. 115 min.
. 2003. Canada.
Directed by Guy Maddin. Adapted by Maddin and George Toles from
an original screenplay by Kazuo Ishiguro. With Isabella Rossellini,
Mark McKinney, Maria de Medeiros. This dazzling enchantment about
a special music competition held in Winnipeg, Manitoba, during the
Great Depression is master prestidigitator Maddin’s most melodic
and layered work. Courtesy IFC Films, New York. 100 min. Introduced
by the filmmaker.
. 2002. Canada. Written
and directed by Keith Behrman. With Jane McGregor, Colin Roberts.
Berhman’s first feature
film, shot in British Columbia, describes with psychological precision
and sympathy the troubled relationship between Garnet, an eight-year-old
boy whose mother died at his birth; Flower, his nurturing adolescent
sister; and their emotionally distant father. 103 min.
.
2003. Canada. Written and directed by Bernard Emond. With Luc Picard,
Guylaine Tremblay, Diane Lavallée. An anthropologist turned
filmmaker, Emond helped develop Inuit television in Canada’s
north before returning to Montreal to make films. This, his second
feature, is about a recovering alcoholic who returns home just seconds
after an explosion destroys his apartment building. In French, English
subtitles. 113 min.
. 2003.
Canada. Written and directed by Robert Lepage. With Lepage, Anne-Marie
Cadieux, Marco Pulin. One of Canada’s leading theatrical figures,
Lepage is also a noted filmmaker. His fifth feature is a vivid and
large-cast adaptation of what was once a one-man show, in which the
artist plays estranged brothers with differing interests in the cosmos—an
astonishing work about the planetary distances between even the closest
of relatives. In French, English subtitles. 105 min.
. 2003. Canada. Written and
directed by Federico Hidalgo. With Vanessa Bauche, Noel Burton.
First-time filmmaker Hidalgo fashions
a love story in which Cupid plays a trickster. Having courted his
fiancée on the Internet, a man travels from Canada to Mexico
to meet and marry his bride. She in turn asks her mother to come
live with them in Montreal. In English, Spanish, and French, English
subtitles. 100 min.
. 2003. Canada. Directed by
Allan King. Known for his seminal documentaries Warrendale (1967)
and A Married Couple (1970), King returns with a film about dignity in the face of death. “This
work is about the experience of dying. Five patients in a palliative
care ward for the terminally ill agreed to share their experience
in the hope it would be useful to the living” (King). 147 min.
.
2003. Canada/South Africa. Directed by John Greyson, Jack Lewis.
With Rouxnet Brown, Shaun Smyth, Neil Sandilands. Known for the
exuberantly polemical queer films Urinal (1988), Zero
Patience (1993), and Lilies (1996), Greyson here investigates
the true story of two convicts in Dutch colonial Africa who were
executed in 1735 for sodomy, presenting a bawdy history play on
sex and race, arrogance and deference, and desire and violence.
In English, Afrikaans, and Nama, English subtitles. 105 min.
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