REEL CANADA Blog

Above: RC's Winnipeg representative Terri Cherniack (left) and executive director Jack Blum (right) flank guest filmmaker and Eco-warrior Emily Hunter.

After something of a “soft opening” last week in Stonewall, we blew into Manitoba with a more robust event at River East Collegiate:  six films, six hundred kids.  Organized almost entirely by a couple of great teachers, Pat Chellack and Anita Kumar, the films were chosen along certain thematic lines – social justice, sustainability, global poverty.

This was because River East is a “UNESCO School”, which is something I didn’t know existed until I went there.  Apparently there are some 9,000 UNESCO schools in 180 countries around the world, from primary to high school, vocational and teachers colleges.  They are all especially dedicated to promoting peace, democracy, human rights, sustainable development, and intercultural learning.

 Anita Kumar and Pat Chellack

Anita Kumar is relatively new at River East, but she’s been a UNESCO teacher from day one, at the middle school that preceded this posting and as an organizer of conferences and other extra-curricular projects.  She was eager to have REEL CANADA return to Winnipeg for a special conference that is happening there next December, involving teachers and students from across Canada, Israel and Germany.  (Really.)

River East partners with Free the Children and Habitat for Humanity, and, to name just one of its many initiatives, its students have raised $14,000 to build a school in Sierra Leone.

It was great to plug Canadian film into the mix. 

Social-issue docs like SHARKWATER, THE CORPORATION, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL, and PROM NIGHT IN MISSISSIPPI made for great jumping-off points for discussions of sustainability, capitalism, genocide and racism.  Eco-warrior and REEL CANADA superstar Emily Hunter came in person to get the kids fired up about what they themselves could do to change the world for the better.  And Peter Raymont joined us via Skype to talk about the challenges of accompanying General Romeo Dallaire on his return to Rwanda ten years after the genocide shocked the world.

Equally exciting was to witness the creativity of these teachers as they got their students looking beneath the surface of films like THE ROCKET and MAMBO ITALIANO to explore the themes of social justice around which each of those films revolve.  For THE ROCKET they were helped by the Skype appearance of Dan Diamond, Canada’s foremost hockey authority, who speaks with such insight into the meaning of the Richard Riots of the 50’s.

All in all it was a perfect blend of film fun and serious purpose and we were pleased to support River East in its association with UNESCO.

REEL CANADA festivals come in all shapes and sizes.  Sometimes we take over an entire high school for a whole day and show six films to 1,000 kids in three different venues, sometimes it’s just a few classes in the auditorium on a given afternoon.

REEL CANADA snuck quietly into Manitoba for the first time yesterday, with a pocket-sized event in the town of Stonewall, about 45 minutes outside of Winnipeg.  At the request of teacher Cathy Redman-Chalmers, and with the help of our new Manitoba coordinator Terri Cherniack, we arranged for a local filmmaker to come and speak to her media class about filmmaking.

Filmmaker Janelle Wookey and her grandmother

The director was the incredibly charming Janelle Wookey who brought her documentary MÉMÉRE MÉTISSE.  The film chronicles her playful but determined efforts to persuade her grandmother to acknowledge and embrace their Metis ancestry.  With its combination of sincerity, simplicity and do-it-yourself inventiveness, it was a perfect film to show a class of young aspirants to the film industry.  As an added treat, Janelle actually brought along Memere, her beloved grandmother!

Janelle was impressed with the number and quality of the questions:  Why did she choose her grandmother as a subject?  How did she get started as a filmmaker?  What has happened with the film since its premier?  How did the film change her and how did it change her grandmother?  As an added surprise, there was a CBC crew on hand making a film about Janelle!  They were drawn into the encounter when the students started asking them questions as well.

One screening, one classroom, one dynamic interaction with some young Canadian storytellers.  The REEL CANADA First National Tour marches on.

 Guest filmmaker and Eco-warrior Emily Hunter.

One of the interesting ways in which REEL CANADA introduces itself to a school board is by offering a board-wide event to which every school in a community can come, on a field trip. Usually these are held at theatres – and most frequently theatres provided by our Premiere Corporate Sponsor, Cineplex Entertainment.

In the Peel District, we’ve been putting on “Cineplex Days”, as we call them, for three years. In 2010, the inaugural Peel Cineplex day drew hundreds of high school students to the SilverCity in Mississauga. Last year, an equally large number of middle school kids attended a similar event. This year, we’re back to the high school group, this time at the SilverCity in Brampton (giving another community in the Peel District a chance to host).

Nadia Litz, a longtime supporter of our program, came out as a guest for the short film EVELYN: THE CUTEST EVIL DEAD GIRL, and Nadia was surprised when students mobbed her for her autograph. Nadia’s officially the latest inductee in the REEL CANADA heartthrobs hall of fame!

Nadia wasn’t the only short film guest that wowed the group from Peel. Comedians Adam and Dave, regulars on the “REEL CANADA circuit”, showed some of the short films from their Unreel Sports Series and took questions from a very excited crowd. REEL CANADA veterans Emily Hunter and Dan Diamond rounded out the day, talking to students about SHARKWATER and THE ROCKET, respectively. Both Emily and Dan have shown real dedication to the REEL CANADA cause this year, coming out to an incredible number of events in person and via Skype.

Because of a generous sponsorship from Pizza Pizza, we were able to provide a free pizza lunch to all participating students – something which they definitely appreciated (some came back not just for seconds, but even thirds). There’s no happier sight than a bunch of smiling, well fed kids, and the afternoon screenings were packed and animated. Students had lots of questions for PROM NIGHT IN MISSISSIPPI producer Patricia Aquino, who said afterwards that it was one of the most engaged groups she’s ever spoken with, in dozens of screenings of the film to thousands of students.

On April 18th we did it all again at the Cineplex Sheppard Grande for a group of nearly 1,000 students from the Toronto District School Board. This event kicked off the Ontario portion of our National Tour.

On April 23rd, the students of Bloor CI in Toronto's west end will be treated to two special screenings. In the morning, the entire school population (nearly 600 students) will watch the film HOW SHE MOVE, with stars Dwain Murphy, Kevin Duhaney and Daniel Keith Morrison in attendance. In the afternoon, grade 11s and 12s will be watching THE RED VIOLIN, which will be followed by a Q&A via Skype with writer and star Don McKellar. 

The school, which had never hosted a REEL CANADA event before, originally contacted us about doing a small, single-venue event this spring, but their enthusiasm has grown, and now every student at Bloor CI will have the chance to participate in the exciting REEL CANADA festival.

We can't wait to bring this Toronto school into the REEL CANADA fold. 

Welcome to Canada.

That’s the name of the REEL CANADA program that began last year with one event and this year is growing like the US Space Program in the Sixties. This season a five-fold increase; next year who the hell knows?  Ten events?  Twenty?

It’s called the Welcome to Canada Program because it is aimed at recent arrivals to this country, whom we reach via their English as a Second Language classes.  For this initiative we’ve begun to grow beyond our traditional high school audience to include special events for adult ESL students.

I can’t begin to convey how emotional these screenings are. The audiences – coming as they do from an astonishing variety of backgrounds and cultures – are so open in expressing their gratitude, their sense of literally being welcomed by these movies which give them an immediate sense of the fabric of Canadian life and the values we share as a nation.

Last week 600 of them came to the Eau Claire Cineplex in downtown Calgary to view two feature films of their own choosing:  HOW SHE MOVE, the Toronto-based dance movie, and IRON ROAD, which dramatizes the experience of Chinese labourers building the railroad in the late 19^th Century. (They were also treated to WILD LIFE, the wonderful Oscar-nominated short animation by Calgarians Wendy Tilby and Amanda Forbes).

As it turns out, each of these films, in its own way, deals with the challenges that immigrants face as they try to build a new life in this country, and the audiences responded to that theme very viscerally. But the big thrill came when after the screening they found themselves face-to-face with the respective stars of the two features.

Jack Blum (right) and actor Luke Macfarlane (right)

Luke Macfarlane (known to many from his five-year run on the ABC series BROTHERS AND SISTERS) set hundreds of hearts a-flutter when he took the microphone after the screening of IRON ROAD. Many female audience members began their “questions” with comments like “You are very handsome” and “I would like to know if you are married” (By happy coincidence, Luke, who lives in LA, was able to take advantage of the REEL CANADA appearance to enjoy an Easter celebration with his twin sister Ruth, who moved to Calgary a couple of years ago).

Actor Dwain Murphy (left) and Jack Blum (right)

Over in another screening room, HOW SHE MOVE star Dwain Murphy caused a similar sensation with an equally enthusiastic audience. Dwain considers himself an actor not a dancer, so when someone asked him to show some moves, he dodged the request charmingly, “It’s called ‘How She Move’, not ‘How He Move’.”

Given how critical it is to our country’s future to open our doors to hundreds of thousands of new immigrants each year, it is clear that REEL CANADA has stumbled on a way to speed up their integration into Canadian society that is exciting, emotional, human, and (most important) fun. If last week’s audience response is an indication, I’ve no doubt that the “Welcome to Canada” Program will continue to grow by leaps and bounds.