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Films | Playing This Week
| I KILLED MY MOTHER (J'ai tué ma mere) March 5 - 12 |
| PRODIGAL SONS March 12, 14-16, 18 |
| SPECIAL PRESENTATION: TALES FROM THE SCRIPT March 13 |
| SPECIAL PRESENTATION: TIME BEING March 14 |
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I KILLED MY MOTHER (J'ai tuE ma mere) |
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Related Links: View Trailer | Read "Film by Quebec phenom Xavier Dolan debuts in English" on CTV.ca | Read "Canada’s Golden Boy: Introducing Xavier Dolan" in IndieWIRE
Xavier Dolan's debut feature may be the Canadian film success story of the year. It received a triumvirate of prizes at the Cannes Festival's Quinzaine and has proved a box office smash in Quebec. At just 17, Dolan penned the script for this semi-autobiographical story of a stormy relationship between a mother and her son. Call it therapy.
Hubert (Dolan, now 21) is a precocious, opinionated and just-out-of-the-closet teenager whose contempt for his mother (Anne Dorval in an equally wonderful performance) consumes him. He fosters animalistic disdain for everything about her: the way she eats, her Ft. Lauderdale shopping finds, and her kitschy décor. Every idiosyncrasy is magnified in his eyes, and he's less than shy about expressing his derision. Hubert’s mother is an old-school master of manipulation and guilt (every parent's specialty!), who is her son’s match in tongue-lashing. Their exasperation is mutual, and when she’s finally had it and sends Hubert to the aptly titled Our Lady of Sorrows boarding school, it seems that their strained relationship will fall irreparably apart. Between the violent outbursts are countless moments of truth and tenderness. 'It's a paradox having a mother that you are incapable of loving, but incapable not to love,' Hubert confesses. Sit up and take note of this poignant, scorching, utterly hilarious film: Dolan is a force to be reckoned with.
Xavier Dolan was born in Montreal and began acting in commercials at the age of four. He has performed in the films J'en suis! (97), Le Marchand de sable (99), La Forteresse suspendue (01) and Martyrs (08). His directorial debut, J'ai tué ma mère (09), which he also wrote and stars in, earned three prizes in the 2009 Directors' Fortnight at Cannes: the Art Cinema Award, the Regards Jeunes and the SACD Prize.
Screening will be preceded with short: Five Hole: Tales of Hockey Erotica (Dir. Cam Christiansen // Canada // 6 min // G) |
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| PRODIGAL SONS |
| "Sometimes a movie does the simplest thing film has to offer: it shows us something we have never quite seen or felt before..." - David Thomson, The Guardian |
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Related Links: Website + Trailer | Kimberly Reed interviewed on Oprah, "The High School Quarterback Who Became a Lesbian"
How much of what we think of as "myself" is pre-determined by genetic inheritance? To what extent are we able to re-invent or even recreate ourselves - and if we can pull it off, how does that affect those who love and know us best: our family?
Kimberly Reed's astonishing and courageous documentary begins as if it's going to be one kind of film, and then veers off somewhere entirely. Reed is an apparently self-assured, confident New York filmmaker, albeit anxious about returning to Montana for a high school reunion. It will be her first homecoming since she left, and she's by no means sure of the kind of reception she will receive - because back then, "she" was a "he", the star quarterback on the football team. That's shocker number one. But the film's second turn is enough to push Kim's story into the background. It involves her adopted brother Marc, who is also struggling with identity issues, with psychiatric illness, and with a legacy linking him with maybe the greatest movie ever made...
"Superb. No one could make this believable if it were fiction." - San Francisco Chronicle
"Amazing." - Todd McCarthy, Variety
"Among the best documentaries I've seen in years" - Rick Moody (The Ice Storm) |
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| SPECIAL PRESENTATION: TALES FROM THE SCRIPT |
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What is the write stuff? Whether you're an industry pro, an aspiring screenwriter and filmmaker or just a typical movie fan, this fascinating documentary is a must-see for its insights, anecdotes and back-stories. The dazzling list of interviewees includes John August (Big Fish), Shane Black (Lethal Weapon), John Carpenter (Halloween), Frank Darabont (Shawshank Redemption), William Goldman (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid), Paul Schrader (Taxi Driver), Ron Shelton (Bull Durham) and Guinevere Turner (American Psycho), to name but a few.
This screening will be introduced by Vancouver screenwriter David Scearce (A Single Man), who will take questions afterwards.
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| SPECIAL PRESENTATION: TIME BEING |
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Canadian premiere of an extraordinary non-fiction feature from Vancouver filmmaker Chris Gallagher. We all have an intimate relationship with time, but when you try to picture it, what does time look like? Our efforts to gauge and measure time's physical properties reveal the limits of science and the reaches of creativity. Essentially 88 one-minute movies, Gallagher's philosophically and formally adventurous Time Being fits in the tradition of essay films by European masters Chris Marker and Joris Ivens.
Associate Professor in the UBC Department of Theatre and Film, Chris Gallagher will be in attendance to discuss the perception and representation of time in film and in life.
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