Media : Press

Actress Lisa Ray said she's found a supportive community among other cancer patients. (Mark Mainz/Getty Images) Toronto actress Lisa Ray is preparing for a stem cell transplant to treat her rare cancer.

The star of Water and Bollywood/Hollywood was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a cancer of the

bone marrow, in June and began chemotherapy in July. Read More...

News

By LARA BRADLEY THE SUDBURY STAR

April 1 2010

With the credits of Meatballs rolling on the screen, Jack Blum, executive director

of the REEL Canada film festival, took the microphone and asked the high school

students if they knew what character he played in the 1979 classic.

"Spaz," they screamed and then laughed.

Another actor from the film, Norma Dell'Agnese, who played a nerdy red-haired

girl in the tennis scene, joined him on stage for the question-and-answer session.

It's the first time REEL Canada made its way to Sudbury. More than 700

secondary students from eight area schools attended the one day-festival,

presented in part by Cinefest Sudbury and held at Sudbury Secondary School on

Thursday. Read More...

On Tuesday, Nov. 24, 2009, The Woodlands School in Mississauga, Ontario, will hold its first ever REEL CANADA film festival. 

REEL CANADA is a program designed to bring Canadian films to the nation’s schools.

The one-day festival will screen original Canadian films for the school’s 1,200 students, and will feature several directors’ talks and question and answer periods. Director Deepa Mehta’s acclaimed film Bollywood/Hollywood will be the festival’s highlight showing.

Following the screening of her film, Mehta will take part in a question and answer session. Other films that will be featured at the festival include Bon Cop, Bad Cop, Fido; How She Move; Meatballs and RIP: A Remix Manifesto.

A low-key program is introducing high-school students to some of Canada's top directors – and their films.

By Brad Wheeler for The Globe and Mail | Feb 24, 2007

Deepa Mehta makes her way to the front of the auditorium as a crowd stands, cheers and whistles. The diminutive director must be bushed – she flew so many kilometres to get here – yet she is energized by the outpouring of admiration. Her Oscar-nominated melodrama Water has just finished screening, and now the audience lobs questions that she's pleased to answer. Read More...

By Alexandra Martineau

For Metro Toronto | Tuesday Feb 20th, 2007

Toronto high school students have started packing popcorn in their lunches as REEL CANADA begins to screen films in their classrooms all this month and next.

"REEL CANADA is a traveling film festival that goes from high school to high school," said Jack Blum, REEL CANADA's executive director. Read More...

Originally published in The Globe and Mail, February 27, 2007

After enduring burning sets, death threats and violent protests, Deepa Mehta drinks in the success of her film, Brad Wheeler finds.

Call it Deepa Goes to Hollywood. Indo-Canadian filmmaker Deepa Mehta, nominated for an Academy Award in the category of best foreign language film for Water, is enjoying the Oscar hoopla so much that she's thinking of making a movie about the experience. "The whole sort of hype is fascinating," Mehta told The Globe and Mail yesterday. "You can't put it down, because it really is fun. It's all material for another script," she joked. Read More...

By Marise Strauss for PLAYBACK:

Through makeshift movie theaters in classrooms and gymnasiums, 6,000 Toronto-area high school students are getting a front row view of films by Deepa Mehta, Jean-Marc Vallée, Allan King and others through the Reel Canada Film Festival. The second annual program, now partway through a four-week run ending March 9, aims to raise awareness among Hollywood-minded high school students about Canadian cinema through screenings and Q&A sessions with the filmmakers. Read More...

Program introduces teenage students to homegrown films, their stars and directors 

Bruce DeMara, for The Toronto Star

In a movie worlD dominated by Hollywood blockbusters and with a generation living in a world of video games, iPods and YouTube, how do we get young people to watch Canadian films and realize there's actually a viable industry here?

Here's how: turn high school gyms and auditoriums into movie theatres – with big screens and big sound – and then let them meet the actors and directors behind the cameras. Read More...