Canadian Front 2013
March 13–18, 2013
The 10th annual edition of Canadian Front presents New York premieres of recent Canadian narrative and documentary feature films from both English- and French-speaking Canada.
This year's festival includes Filmmaker in Focus: Xavier Dolan, a three-film salute to the Québécois actor and filmmaker, including a weeklong run of his acclaimed 2009 film I Killed My Mother.
Krivina
2012. Canada/Bosnia/Herzegovina. Directed by Igor Drljača.
Krivina traces the journey of Miro, a Bosnian immigrant who fled to Toronto during the conflict in former Yugoslavia. Upon hearing that Dado, an old friend long gone missing, is wanted for war crimes, Miro returns to Sarajevo in search of him.
Neighbors and family provide conflicting clues about Dado's whereabouts—has it been 18 years or just a month since he was last seen?—but all speak to the way the man was deeply affected by the war.
While director Drljača draws on his own experience (he emigrated to Canada in 1993 because of the strife), Krivina takes on
a universal quality, as the disjointed narrative of Dado's fate mirrors a fractured nation in mourning.
Set against the vast, haunting landscape of the Bosnian countryside, Drljača's feature debut is a finely crafted, quietly poetic
meditation on collective trauma and the weight of memory. 70 min.
Wednesday, March 13, 2013, 4:30 p.m., Theater 1, T1 (Director and talent present)
Saturday, March 16, 2013, 5:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1
Molly Maxwell
2012. Canada. Directed by Sara St. Onge.
At Phoenix Progressive School, students take notes lying on parlor couches and are encouraged to explore their gifts through electives like break-dancing and graphic-novel writing. In the midst of all this liberal pedagogy and budding
talent, Molly Maxwell feels unexceptional, until she embarks on a photography independent study under the tutelage of her attractive English teacher, Ben.
Their relationship quickly evolves beyond the darkroom, introducing Molly to the throes of a first love, and putting Ben’s job in jeopardy.
With revelatory performances and a rousing indie-rock soundtrack, St Onge’s directorial debut pairs a classic coming-of-age story with a slyly comedic portrayal of alternative arts education. 91 min.
Wednesday, March 13, 2013, 7:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1 (Film team present)
Saturday, March 16, 2013, 8:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1
J'ai tué ma mère (I Killed My Mother)
2009. Canada. Directed by Xavier Dolan.
Dolan wrote, directed, and stars in this semi-autobiographical chronicle of the tumultuous rapport between 16-year-old Hubert and his mother (Anne Dorval). Hubert holds his mother in endless contempt—she is outdated and kitsch, she misunderstands him—and seeks refuge in art classes and his boyfriend, Antonin.
From slammed doors to embraces, Dolan and Dorval masterfully capture the raw, love-hate intensity of filial relationships that eats away at mother and son.
A hit at New Directors/New Films 2010, this never-released (in the USA) gem returns to MoMA for a weeklong run. 96 min.
Wednesday, March 13, 2013, 7:30 p.m., Theater 2, T2
Thursday, March 14, 2013, 7:00 p.m., Theater 2, T2
Friday, March 15, 2013, 4:00 p.m., Theater 2, T2
Saturday, March 16, 2013, 7:30 p.m., Theater 2, T2
Sunday, March 17, 2013, 5:00 p.m., Theater 2, T2
Monday, March 18, 2013, 4:00 p.m., Theater 2, T2
Avant que mon coeur bascule (Before My Heart Falls)
2012. Canada. Directed by Sébastien Rose.
Sixteen-year old Sarah is part of a petty crime circuit, robbing gas stations and duping good Samaritans who stop to pick up the young, distressed girl on the side of the highway—until one of her ploys results in the death of her victim.
Haunted by the accident, she seeks out the man's widow and clumsily forges a rapport with her, without ever revealing her role in his death. Meanwhile, Sarah's abusive handler doesn't look kindly on her revisiting the scene of the crime.
Rose's drama-filled fourth feature culminates in moments where empathy and love are manifest—even though communication, relationships, and youth itself are broken. In French; English subtitles. 96 min.
Thursday, March 14, 2013, 4:30 p.m., Theater 1, T1 (Director present)
Sunday, March 17, 2013, 2:30 p.m., Theater 1, T1
Le météore (The Meteor)
2013. Canada. Directed by Francois Delisle.
The story begins with an accident and ends with a funeral. In between, the film follows Pierre, who is carrying out a jail sentence for a hit and run, his aging mother, and his ex-wife.
The characters’ confessional monologues are related via their disembodied voices over prolonged shots of the subjects, but also of anonymous condo buildings, shadows dancing on wooden floorboards, a treescape in the winter, and the tide breaking on the rocks.
This imagery at times affirms the words being said, and at others acts as an abstract backdrop for Pierre's descriptions of the drudgery of prison, or for the women's accounts of their attempts to restore normalcy to their lives since Pierre's incarceration.
The distance created is akin to the Plexiglass barriers in prison visiting rooms, and it heightens the sincere portrayal of difficult emotion. 85 min.
Thursday, March 14, 2013, 8:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1 (Director present)
Saturday, March 16, 2013, 2:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1
Blackbird
2012. Canada. Directed by Jason Buxton.
In his small-town high school, Sean Randall is a solitary goth with a bent for Kafka and heavy metal. His only friend is the popular Deanna, who rides the same school bus. At night, they secretly exchange instant messages—until Deanna’s
hockey-player boyfriend gets wind of the friendship and threateningly confronts Sean.
In retaliation, Sean posts a menacing message online. In the wake of Columbine, the blog post is sufficient grounds for a raid on his house, and his father’s collection of unregistered hunting rifles cement the narrative that Sean was plotting a mass murder.
The film follows Sean from handcuffs to courtroom to prison, through a nightmarish system that equates reprehensible yet
rash words with actual violent crimes, and teenage alienation with psychopathic premeditation.
Buxton’s thought-provoking feature debut resonates with current debates over gun control and juvenile justice, and paints an alarming picture of our culture of fear. 103 min.
Friday, March 15, 2013, 7:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1 (Director present)
Monday, March 18, 2013, 8:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1
Laurence Anyways
2012. Canada. Directed by Xavier Dolan.
Dolan's third feature is the vivid, highly orchestrated saga of Laurence and Fred, a bohemian couple living in Montreal. Their electric relationship is tested when Laurence confesses he is a woman trapped in a man's body.
While Fred initially supports her partner's transformation, she succumbs to family and societal pressures and ends the affair. What ensues is the decade-long drama of a couple that cannot live together or survive apart.
Laurence Anyways is the first of Dolan's films in which the director does not act. Rather, he focuses on guiding Melvil Poupaud, Suzanne Clément, Nathalie Baye, and Monia Chokri (some of whom appear in his first two films) in stunning performances that propel the gritty, textured storytelling that has become his signature.
This searing meditation on gender, love, and self-fulfillment establishes Dolan as one of today's most exciting young auteurs. 161 min.
Sunday, March 17, 2013, 5:30 p.m., Theater 1, T1
Les Amours Imaginaires (Heartbeats)
2010. Canada. Directed by Xavier Dolan.
Best friends Francis and Marie are inseparable—until they both fall for Nicholas, a handsome newcomer. As the trio spends their days and nights together, the two friends passive-aggressively vie for Nicholas’s attention and analyze his every gesture.
Heartbeats establishes Dolan’s visual lexicon, with highly stylized slow-motion scenes and riffs on a generation of classic cool; Marie is a doe-eyed, cigarette-poised Audrey Hepburn, and Francis, who keeps a stick-figure tally of his misfortunes in romance, is a melancholy James Dean.
Humorous and heartbreaking, the emotional three-way is a contemporary update on Jules and Jim, with all the neuroses of the 21st century. 101 min.
Monday, March 18, 2013, 4:30 p.m., Theater 1, T1
An Evening with Xavier Dolan
Since his 2009 feature debut, J’ai tué ma mere, which he wrote, directed, produced, and starred in, Xavier Dolan (Canadian, b. 1989) has been acclaimed as the wunderkind of Canadian cinema.
Dolan’s films investigate the grit and passion of contemporary relationships against the backdrop of urban life, often in Dolan’s hometown of Montreal.
In conjunction with Canadian Front 2013, Dolan joins Rajendra Roy and Indiewire's Peter Knegt to discuss past work and filmic inspirations, and to present an excerpt from his current project, Tom à la ferme.
Monday, March 18, 2013, 7:00 p.m., Theater 2, T2
10th annual edition of Canadian Front Organized by Rajendra Roy, The Celeste Bartos Chief Curator of Film. Presented in association with Telefilm Canada, with thanks to Brigitte Hubmann, Principal Advisor, Telefilm Canada.
View related film screenings
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2012 ARCHIVES - Canadian Front @ MoMA-NYC
Press release
Canadian Front 2012
March 14 - 19, 2012
MoMA-NYC, Films presented @ The Roy and Niuta Titus Theaters
The ninth annual edition of Canadian Front presents the New York premieres of 11 recent Canadian features and one short.
In addition to Philippe Falardeau’s drama Monsieur Lazhar, Canada’s official Academy Award entry in the foreign-language category.
This year’s selection is distinguished by a larger number of comedies than usual—from Canada’s East (Andrew Bush’s Roller Town, from Nova Scotia) and West (Aaron Houston’s Sunflower Hour, from British Columbia) coasts, and from the more traditional filmmaking centers of Quebec (Ken Scott’s Starbuck) and Ontario (Ingrid Veninger’s I Am a Good person, I Am a Bad Person).
Minority communities are strongly represented as well, especially in Ivan Grbovic’s debut film, Romeo 11, about Montreal’s Lebanese community, and Yves Sioui Durand’s Mesnak, which was shot in part in the Innu language.
Among those making their return to MoMA are the Inuit filmmaker Zacharias Kanuk, with Sirmilik, a short film shot in Nanvit’s National Park; and Jean-Marc Vallee, whose melodrama Café de Flor stars Vanessa Paradis and was shot in both Canada and France.
Two unusual and compelling documentaries complete the selection: Brigitte Poupart’s Over My Dead Body examines the compromised life of Montreal choreographer David St-Pierre, and Carl Leblanc’s The Heart of Auschwitz investigates an extraordinary object in the Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre.
This exhibition is organized by Laurence Kardish, Senior, Curator, Department of Film. Presented in association with Telefilm Canada, with thanks to Brigitte Hubman, Principal Advisor, Telefilm Canada.
MoMA.org
Program titles/dates/times
Sunflower Hour
2011. Canada. Directed by Aaron Houston. With Amitai Marmorstein, Patrick Gilmore, and Ben Cotton.
A Canadian television children's program, produced by a pornographer and his hot-pants wife, needs a new puppeteer. Near the end of the audition process only four candidates are left standing, but all four—including a homophobic evangelical Christian and a teenage Goth who calls herself Satan's Spawn—are truly something to behold.
Huston's confident debut film is a raunchy, hilarious mockumentary about the trials and humiliations of entertainers in search of employment—and a biting satire on the business of making "reality" movies.
[Print Courtesy of Unpaved Productions. 85 min.]
Wednesday, March 14, 2012, 4:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1
Saturday, March 17, 2012, 8:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1
Monsieur Lazhar
2011. Canada. Written and directed by Philippe Falardeau, based on the play by Evelyne de la Chenelière.
With Mohamed Fellag, Sophie Nelisse, and Émilien Néron.
Falardeau, whose Congorama was a highlight of New Directors/New Films 2007, returns to MoMA with the New York premiere of Monsieur Lazhar, a 2012 Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Language Film.
One morning in a Montreal elementary school, a student finds his teacher dead of an apparent suicide. The teacher must be replaced quickly, and Bachir Lazhar, a political refugee from Algeria, believes himself up to the task.
Lazhar, who is seeking Canadian asylum himself, must deal not only deal with teaching methods that are significantly different from those in his homeland, but also with a classroom of traumatized youngsters.
In this tender and eloquent film both teacher and students learn from one another.
[Print courtesy of Music Box Films. In French; English subtitles. 94 min.]
Wednesday, March 14, 2012, 7:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1
Mesnak
2011. Canada. Directed by Yves Sioui Durand.
Screenplay by Durand, Robert Morin, Louis Hamelin, from Durand's play Hamlet-Malcité.
With Victor Andres Turgeon-Trelles, Eve Ringuette, Marco Collin.
In this melodrama from first-time director Durand, Dave, a twenty-something Montreal actor, returns to Kinogamish, the (fictional) First People's reservation in northern Quebec from which he was adopted at the age of three.
Was his mother unable to care for him, or did she simply not want him?
Dave learns the answer soon after his arrival. Mesnak is as much about ritual, landscape, and nature as it is about the Shakespearean tragedy of modern-day indigenous life in the Territories.
[Print courtesy of Les Films de l’Isle. In French, Innu; English subtitles. 96 min.]
Thursday, March 15, 2012, 4:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1
Saturday, March 17, 2012, 3:30 p.m., Theater 1, T1
I Am a Good Person, I Am a Bad Person
2011. Canada. Written and directed by Ingrid Veninger.
With Veninger, Hallie Switzer, Jacob Switzer.
Veninger—codirector of the micro-budget independent film Only, from Candian Front 2010—returns to MoMA with...a micro-budget independent film.
Ruby, an extroverted independent filmmaker, takes her 19-year-old daughter, Sara, on a tour of European film festivals where micro-budget independent films are shown. Sara (Veninger's real-life daughter) is quietly appalled by her mother's antics and tired of being her mother's enabler.
The two women's interactions make for charmingly subversive comedy, as does Europe's reactions to Ruby's brand of cinema.
[The film was partly shot on location Scotland, France, & Germany. Print courtesy of pUNK Films. 82 min.]
Thursday, March 15, 2012, 6:30 p.m., Theater 2, T2
Sunday, March 18, 2012, 2:00 p.m., Theater 2, T2
Café de Flore
2011. Canada/France. Written and directed by Jean Marc Vallée.
With Vanessa Paradis, Kevin Parent, Hélène Florent. Vallée, whose
C.R.A.Z.Y opened Canadian Front 2009 (and whose The Young Victoria enjoyed a theatrical run in the U.S. late that same year) premieres his new film at MoMA.
In this passionate melodrama, music, namely the eponymous song, ties together two stories: one set in Paris in 1969, and the other in contemporary Montreal.
At the heart of each narrative is love—a mother's love for a child with Down's Syndrome, and a once-divorced man's love for his new wife—and the stories intertwine in unexpected and exhilarating ways.
[Print courtesy of Film Distribution. In French; English subtitles. 120 min. ]
Thursday, March 15, 2012, 7:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1
Sunday, March 18, 2012, 1:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1
Starbuck
2011. Canada. Directed by Ken Scott. Screenplay by Scott, Martin Petit.
With Patrick Huard, Julie Le Breton, Antoine Bertrand.
For his feature debut, Scott, the screenwriter of Seducing Dr. Lewis and the Maurice Richard biopic The Rocket, presents a comedy about a middle-aged bachelor who discovers that he has a very extended family indeed.
The film's title refers to a famous Canadian bull who sired over 200,000 calves worldwide. But in this case, the "action" is confined to Montreal.
[Print courtesy of eOne International. In French; English subtitles. 109 min. ]
Thursday, March 15, 2012, 7:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1
Friday, March 16, 2012, 7:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1
Romeo Onze (Romeo Eleven)
2011. Canada. Directed by Ivan Grbovic. Screenplay by Grbovic, Sara Mishara.
With Ali Ammar, Joseph Bou Nassar, Sanda Bourenane.
Grbovic's debut feature is both an unsentimental tearjerker and a revealing and sympathetic portrait of Montreal's Lebanese community.
Amir, a young man struggling with a congenital physical disability, invents a cyber-idenitity for
himself, Romeo 11, an avatar who is as outgoing as Amir is introverted.
Meanwhile, Amir's father keeps him under close watch, his older sister has the family in a tizzy preparing for her traditional wedding, and his younger sister is thoroughly Canadian.
When Romeo 11 strikes up an Internet romance, Amir rents a hotel room and wonders how his new "girlfriend" will react to his true self.
In his first film role, Ammar delivers a natural and heartbreaking performance.
[Print courtesy of Métropole Films Distribution. In French, Arabic; English subtitles. 91 min.]
Friday, March 16, 2012, 4:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1
Saturday, March 17, 2012, 5:30 p.m., Theater 1, T1
Program: 1 SHORT with 1 Feature:
National Parks Project: Sirmilik
2011. Canada. Directed by Zacharias Kunuk.
Kanuck, whose Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner was featured in New Directors/New Films 2001, made this short film as part of the 2011 centenary of Canada's national parks system. Sirmlik is Inukitut for "place of the glaciers." [Print courtesy of FilmCAN. In Nunavit; English subtitles. 10 min.]
Bestiaire (Bestiary)
2012. Canada. Written and directed by Denis Côté.
Côté, a veteran of both Canadian Front (Drifiting States, 2006) and New Directors/New Films (Curling, 2011), has made a canny hybrid film that looks like a documentary but, true to the film's title, may not be about anything "real."
Bestiaire comprises a series of mesmerizing shots of animals, zoo attendants, visitors, and taxidermists, interacting (or not) with beasts that are alive, dead, and, perhaps, not even there.
[Print courtesy of FunFilm Distribution. 72 min.]
Friday, March 16, 2012, 6:30 p.m., Theater 2, T2
Saturday, March 17, 2012, 4:30 p.m., Theater 2, T2
Over My Dead Body
2011. Canada. Written and directed by Brigitte Poupart. With David St-Pierre.
St-Pierre, a Montreal dancer-turned-choreographer, has cystic fibrosis. When shootong began on this film he was 34, and had been told by his doctors that unless he underwent a lung transplant in the next several months he would probably be dead by 37.
His dances, informed by his illness, confront themes of physical frailness, vulnerability, and nakedness.
Poupart chronicles St-Pierre's struggle as he continues to work and waits—and waits some more—for the donor lung that could keep him alive.
[Print courtesy of Coop Video. In French; English subtitles. 80 min.]
Saturday, March 17, 2012, 2:30 p.m., Theater 2, T2
Sunday, March 18, 2012, 4:30 p.m., Theater 2, T2
Roller Town
2011. Canada. Directed by Andrew Bush. Screenplay by Bush, Mark Little, Scott Vrooman.
With Little, Vrooman, Kayla Lorette.
Canada, which has always given the U.S. a certain type of humor (from Ivan Reitman's Meatballs to Mike Meyers and several other Saturday Night Live alumni), turns up the comic heat with Roller Town, from director Bush and the Halifax comedy troupe Picnicface.
Set at the height of the fashion-conscious seventies, Roller Town tells the knowingly silly and slightly vulgar tale of a roller rink that refuses to turn into a video game parlor.
People are bribed and killed, families are split apart, a hero learns to stand (rather than roll) on his own two feet, and a good time is had by just about all. [Print courtesy of Idlewild Films. 76 min.]
Sunday, March 18, 2012, 3:30 p.m., Theater 1, T1
Monday, March 19, 2012, 7:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1
The Heart of Auschwitz
2011. Canada. Directed by Carl Leblanc. Screenplay by Leblanc, Luc Cyr.
With Fania Fainer, Sandy Fainer.
In Montreal's Holocaust Memorial Center a small object with an extraordinary history takes pride of place. The object in question is a birthday present for Fania, who turned 20 in 1944 while working as slave labor in the Auschwitz munitions factory.
The "heart of Auschwitz" is a tiny book whose origami-like interior contains the signatures and wishes of many of the young women who worked alongside Fania—in silence, under constant guard, and on the verge of annihilation.
Inspired by this remarkable object, Montreal journalist and filmmaker Leblanc interviewed Fania, now 85, and visited the Red Cross's International Tracing Service in Germany, the Auschwitz Deportation Union in Paris, and Vad Yashem in Jerusalem in an attempt to find other survivors from the courageous group of women who risked their lives to give their friend a gift.
[Print courtesy of Filmoption International. In English, French, Portuguese, Polish, Hebrew; English subtitles. 85 min.]
Sunday, March 18, 2012, 6:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1
Monday, March 19, 2012, 4:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1
MoMA.org Webpage-http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/films/1254
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Canadian Front 2012
March 14 - 19, 2012
MoMA-NYC, Films presented @ The Roy and Niuta Titus Theaters
The ninth annual edition of Canadian Front presents the New York premieres of 11 recent Canadian features and one short.
In addition to Philippe Falardeau’s drama Monsieur Lazhar, Canada’s official Academy Award entry in the foreign-language category.
This year’s selection is distinguished by a larger number of comedies than usual—from Canada’s East (Andrew Bush’s Roller Town, from Nova Scotia) and West (Aaron Houston’s Sunflower Hour, from British Columbia) coasts, and from the more traditional filmmaking centers of Quebec (Ken Scott’s Starbuck) and Ontario (Ingrid Veninger’s I Am a Good person, I Am a Bad Person).
Minority communities are strongly represented as well, especially in Ivan Grbovic’s debut film, Romeo 11, about Montreal’s Lebanese community, and Yves Sioui Durand’s Mesnak, which was shot in part in the Innu language.
Among those making their return to MoMA are the Inuit filmmaker Zacharias Kanuk, with Sirmilik, a short film shot in Nanvit’s National Park; and Jean-Marc Vallee, whose melodrama Café de Flor stars Vanessa Paradis and was shot in both Canada and France.
Two unusual and compelling documentaries complete the selection: Brigitte Poupart’s Over My Dead Body examines the compromised life of Montreal choreographer David St-Pierre, and Carl Leblanc’s The Heart of Auschwitz investigates an extraordinary object in the Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre.
This exhibition is organized by Laurence Kardish, Senior, Curator, Department of Film. Presented in association with Telefilm Canada, with thanks to Brigitte Hubman, Principal Advisor, Telefilm Canada.
MoMA.org
Program titles/dates/times
Sunflower Hour
2011. Canada. Directed by Aaron Houston. With Amitai Marmorstein, Patrick Gilmore, and Ben Cotton.
A Canadian television children's program, produced by a pornographer and his hot-pants wife, needs a new puppeteer. Near the end of the audition process only four candidates are left standing, but all four—including a homophobic evangelical Christian and a teenage Goth who calls herself Satan's Spawn—are truly something to behold.
Huston's confident debut film is a raunchy, hilarious mockumentary about the trials and humiliations of entertainers in search of employment—and a biting satire on the business of making "reality" movies.
[Print Courtesy of Unpaved Productions. 85 min.]
Wednesday, March 14, 2012, 4:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1
Saturday, March 17, 2012, 8:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1
Monsieur Lazhar
2011. Canada. Written and directed by Philippe Falardeau, based on the play by Evelyne de la Chenelière.
With Mohamed Fellag, Sophie Nelisse, and Émilien Néron.
Falardeau, whose Congorama was a highlight of New Directors/New Films 2007, returns to MoMA with the New York premiere of Monsieur Lazhar, a 2012 Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Language Film.
One morning in a Montreal elementary school, a student finds his teacher dead of an apparent suicide. The teacher must be replaced quickly, and Bachir Lazhar, a political refugee from Algeria, believes himself up to the task.
Lazhar, who is seeking Canadian asylum himself, must deal not only deal with teaching methods that are significantly different from those in his homeland, but also with a classroom of traumatized youngsters.
In this tender and eloquent film both teacher and students learn from one another.
[Print courtesy of Music Box Films. In French; English subtitles. 94 min.]
Wednesday, March 14, 2012, 7:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1
Mesnak
2011. Canada. Directed by Yves Sioui Durand.
Screenplay by Durand, Robert Morin, Louis Hamelin, from Durand's play Hamlet-Malcité.
With Victor Andres Turgeon-Trelles, Eve Ringuette, Marco Collin.
In this melodrama from first-time director Durand, Dave, a twenty-something Montreal actor, returns to Kinogamish, the (fictional) First People's reservation in northern Quebec from which he was adopted at the age of three.
Was his mother unable to care for him, or did she simply not want him?
Dave learns the answer soon after his arrival. Mesnak is as much about ritual, landscape, and nature as it is about the Shakespearean tragedy of modern-day indigenous life in the Territories.
[Print courtesy of Les Films de l’Isle. In French, Innu; English subtitles. 96 min.]
Thursday, March 15, 2012, 4:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1
Saturday, March 17, 2012, 3:30 p.m., Theater 1, T1
I Am a Good Person, I Am a Bad Person
2011. Canada. Written and directed by Ingrid Veninger.
With Veninger, Hallie Switzer, Jacob Switzer.
Veninger—codirector of the micro-budget independent film Only, from Candian Front 2010—returns to MoMA with...a micro-budget independent film.
Ruby, an extroverted independent filmmaker, takes her 19-year-old daughter, Sara, on a tour of European film festivals where micro-budget independent films are shown. Sara (Veninger's real-life daughter) is quietly appalled by her mother's antics and tired of being her mother's enabler.
The two women's interactions make for charmingly subversive comedy, as does Europe's reactions to Ruby's brand of cinema.
[The film was partly shot on location Scotland, France, & Germany. Print courtesy of pUNK Films. 82 min.]
Thursday, March 15, 2012, 6:30 p.m., Theater 2, T2
Sunday, March 18, 2012, 2:00 p.m., Theater 2, T2
Café de Flore
2011. Canada/France. Written and directed by Jean Marc Vallée.
With Vanessa Paradis, Kevin Parent, Hélène Florent. Vallée, whose
C.R.A.Z.Y opened Canadian Front 2009 (and whose The Young Victoria enjoyed a theatrical run in the U.S. late that same year) premieres his new film at MoMA.
In this passionate melodrama, music, namely the eponymous song, ties together two stories: one set in Paris in 1969, and the other in contemporary Montreal.
At the heart of each narrative is love—a mother's love for a child with Down's Syndrome, and a once-divorced man's love for his new wife—and the stories intertwine in unexpected and exhilarating ways.
[Print courtesy of Film Distribution. In French; English subtitles. 120 min. ]
Thursday, March 15, 2012, 7:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1
Sunday, March 18, 2012, 1:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1
Starbuck
2011. Canada. Directed by Ken Scott. Screenplay by Scott, Martin Petit.
With Patrick Huard, Julie Le Breton, Antoine Bertrand.
For his feature debut, Scott, the screenwriter of Seducing Dr. Lewis and the Maurice Richard biopic The Rocket, presents a comedy about a middle-aged bachelor who discovers that he has a very extended family indeed.
The film's title refers to a famous Canadian bull who sired over 200,000 calves worldwide. But in this case, the "action" is confined to Montreal.
[Print courtesy of eOne International. In French; English subtitles. 109 min. ]
Thursday, March 15, 2012, 7:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1
Friday, March 16, 2012, 7:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1
Romeo Onze (Romeo Eleven)
2011. Canada. Directed by Ivan Grbovic. Screenplay by Grbovic, Sara Mishara.
With Ali Ammar, Joseph Bou Nassar, Sanda Bourenane.
Grbovic's debut feature is both an unsentimental tearjerker and a revealing and sympathetic portrait of Montreal's Lebanese community.
Amir, a young man struggling with a congenital physical disability, invents a cyber-idenitity for
himself, Romeo 11, an avatar who is as outgoing as Amir is introverted.
Meanwhile, Amir's father keeps him under close watch, his older sister has the family in a tizzy preparing for her traditional wedding, and his younger sister is thoroughly Canadian.
When Romeo 11 strikes up an Internet romance, Amir rents a hotel room and wonders how his new "girlfriend" will react to his true self.
In his first film role, Ammar delivers a natural and heartbreaking performance.
[Print courtesy of Métropole Films Distribution. In French, Arabic; English subtitles. 91 min.]
Friday, March 16, 2012, 4:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1
Saturday, March 17, 2012, 5:30 p.m., Theater 1, T1
Program: 1 SHORT with 1 Feature:
National Parks Project: Sirmilik
2011. Canada. Directed by Zacharias Kunuk.
Kanuck, whose Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner was featured in New Directors/New Films 2001, made this short film as part of the 2011 centenary of Canada's national parks system. Sirmlik is Inukitut for "place of the glaciers." [Print courtesy of FilmCAN. In Nunavit; English subtitles. 10 min.]
Bestiaire (Bestiary)
2012. Canada. Written and directed by Denis Côté.
Côté, a veteran of both Canadian Front (Drifiting States, 2006) and New Directors/New Films (Curling, 2011), has made a canny hybrid film that looks like a documentary but, true to the film's title, may not be about anything "real."
Bestiaire comprises a series of mesmerizing shots of animals, zoo attendants, visitors, and taxidermists, interacting (or not) with beasts that are alive, dead, and, perhaps, not even there.
[Print courtesy of FunFilm Distribution. 72 min.]
Friday, March 16, 2012, 6:30 p.m., Theater 2, T2
Saturday, March 17, 2012, 4:30 p.m., Theater 2, T2
Over My Dead Body
2011. Canada. Written and directed by Brigitte Poupart. With David St-Pierre.
St-Pierre, a Montreal dancer-turned-choreographer, has cystic fibrosis. When shootong began on this film he was 34, and had been told by his doctors that unless he underwent a lung transplant in the next several months he would probably be dead by 37.
His dances, informed by his illness, confront themes of physical frailness, vulnerability, and nakedness.
Poupart chronicles St-Pierre's struggle as he continues to work and waits—and waits some more—for the donor lung that could keep him alive.
[Print courtesy of Coop Video. In French; English subtitles. 80 min.]
Saturday, March 17, 2012, 2:30 p.m., Theater 2, T2
Sunday, March 18, 2012, 4:30 p.m., Theater 2, T2
Roller Town
2011. Canada. Directed by Andrew Bush. Screenplay by Bush, Mark Little, Scott Vrooman.
With Little, Vrooman, Kayla Lorette.
Canada, which has always given the U.S. a certain type of humor (from Ivan Reitman's Meatballs to Mike Meyers and several other Saturday Night Live alumni), turns up the comic heat with Roller Town, from director Bush and the Halifax comedy troupe Picnicface.
Set at the height of the fashion-conscious seventies, Roller Town tells the knowingly silly and slightly vulgar tale of a roller rink that refuses to turn into a video game parlor.
People are bribed and killed, families are split apart, a hero learns to stand (rather than roll) on his own two feet, and a good time is had by just about all. [Print courtesy of Idlewild Films. 76 min.]
Sunday, March 18, 2012, 3:30 p.m., Theater 1, T1
Monday, March 19, 2012, 7:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1
The Heart of Auschwitz
2011. Canada. Directed by Carl Leblanc. Screenplay by Leblanc, Luc Cyr.
With Fania Fainer, Sandy Fainer.
In Montreal's Holocaust Memorial Center a small object with an extraordinary history takes pride of place. The object in question is a birthday present for Fania, who turned 20 in 1944 while working as slave labor in the Auschwitz munitions factory.
The "heart of Auschwitz" is a tiny book whose origami-like interior contains the signatures and wishes of many of the young women who worked alongside Fania—in silence, under constant guard, and on the verge of annihilation.
Inspired by this remarkable object, Montreal journalist and filmmaker Leblanc interviewed Fania, now 85, and visited the Red Cross's International Tracing Service in Germany, the Auschwitz Deportation Union in Paris, and Vad Yashem in Jerusalem in an attempt to find other survivors from the courageous group of women who risked their lives to give their friend a gift.
[Print courtesy of Filmoption International. In English, French, Portuguese, Polish, Hebrew; English subtitles. 85 min.]
Sunday, March 18, 2012, 6:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1
Monday, March 19, 2012, 4:00 p.m., Theater 1, T1
MoMA.org Webpage-http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/films/1254
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