Shortlisted
Apparently, 'On A Sunday' has been shortlisted for competition in the Vancouver International Film Festival. Our director and producer are flying into town from Winnipeg for the screenings on Friday and Sunday. Should be a great weekend, and the two week's worth of outstanding national and international films to follow shouldn't be too hard to take either.
The VIFF kicks off this Thursday with 'Water,' the final installment of Deepa Mehta's elemental trilogy that began with 'Fire' and 'Earth.' I'm embarrassed to say that I've not seen either of the two previous films, but I am looking forward to 'Water' which is set in an ashram in Colonial India where Hindu widows are forced to live in penitence. Filming in Varanasi in 2000 was abandoned after a fundamentalist protest mob became violent and destroyed the set, threw it into the Ganges, and burned Mehta in effigy. They claimed that she was pandering to The West's negative image of India and threatening core Hindu values. Esther and I first heard about the film while we were in India during which time 'Water' was being completed in secret in nearby Sri Lanka.
The 24th annual VIFF also marks the unofficial opening of the new Vancouver International Film Centre, "...an exciting new centre of excellence for Vancouver's film lovers, both for filmmakers and for cinephiles." Seems like a good thing, and hopefully will help to fill the programming void left by the multiplexes.
The VIFF kicks off this Thursday with 'Water,' the final installment of Deepa Mehta's elemental trilogy that began with 'Fire' and 'Earth.' I'm embarrassed to say that I've not seen either of the two previous films, but I am looking forward to 'Water' which is set in an ashram in Colonial India where Hindu widows are forced to live in penitence. Filming in Varanasi in 2000 was abandoned after a fundamentalist protest mob became violent and destroyed the set, threw it into the Ganges, and burned Mehta in effigy. They claimed that she was pandering to The West's negative image of India and threatening core Hindu values. Esther and I first heard about the film while we were in India during which time 'Water' was being completed in secret in nearby Sri Lanka.
The 24th annual VIFF also marks the unofficial opening of the new Vancouver International Film Centre, "...an exciting new centre of excellence for Vancouver's film lovers, both for filmmakers and for cinephiles." Seems like a good thing, and hopefully will help to fill the programming void left by the multiplexes.
