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This article was published 14/02/2019 (2665 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Festival du Voyageur

Western Canada’s largest winter festival is celebrating its golden anniversary this year.

For 50 years, Festival du Voyageur — which kicks off Friday and runs until Feb. 24 — has brought joie de vivre to our Winnipeg winters, a raucous celebration of French-Canadian culture. Over the past five decades, the festival has grown into a destination event with a massive music component.

More than 150 genre-spanning musical acts will grace the stage at Voyageur Park over the course of the 10-day festival, including practically everyone from the Winnipeg music scene including the Lytics, the Duhks, Sierra Noble, JP Hoe, Mise en Scene, Leonard Sumner and more.

Of course, the festival is not just a music festival. There are also the beard-growing contest, the Bothwell cheese-carving contest, dogsled rides, horse-drawn carriage rides, kitchen parties and so much more.

Day passes are $25 for adults, $15 for teens and seniors, and $5 for children between the ages of six and 12. For further information on ticket packages and pricing, visit heho.ca. And for more on the history — and future — of Festival du Voyageur, see Erin Lebar’s feature in Saturday’s Free Press.

— Jen Zoratti

Real to Reel Film Festival

The tagline for this annual festival of feature films, documentaries and shorts from around the world is “Cool, clean, compelling.” That means a wealth of family-friendly viewing (the program helpfully highlights kid-focused material, which includes animated movies Incredibles I and II, F.R.E.D.I. (about a lovable robot who is stolen from a research facility and discovered by a teenager in the forest) and Ice Dragon: Legend of the Blue Daisies, a cartoon musical feature about two friends who use the power of magical flowers to ward off a dangerous beast.

The festival also features faith-based films such as An Interview With God, Samson, I Can Only Imagine (a musical biopic that tells the story behind the biggest-selling Christian single of all time, MercyMe) and Tortured for Christ, an adaptation of the book of the same name by Richard Wurmbrand, a Romanian Christian convert from Judaism who was imprisoned and tortured for 14 years by the then-Communist government for his beliefs.

Documentaries include Otto’s Passion, about Canadian Mennonite filmmaker Otto Klassen, and After a Suicide: Moving Past Why, by Manitoba filmmaker Leona Krahn.

The Real to Reel festival runs Feb. 19 to 24 at North Kildonan MB Church, 1315 Gateway Rd. (There are six rooms screening different films simultaneously). Snacks and beverages are available for sale, and talkback sessions will be held after each showing.

Tickets are $5 for single tickets or $15 for a festival pass. Kids 12 and under get in free. All proceeds go to support inner-city initiatives in Winnipeg. For more information and a complete schedule, see winnipegfilmfestival.com.

— Jill Wilson

Shad at the Good Will

Ontario hip-hop artist Shad is bringing his new record, A Short Story About A War, to the Good Will Social Club on Friday.

A Short Story About A War is a concept album that tells a sociopolitical tale set in a world covered in desert. Shad welcomes a collection of high-profile collaborators on the record, including Polaris Music Prize winners Kaytranada and Lido Pimienta, 2oolman of A Tribe Called Red, Yukon Blonde, Ian Kamau, Eternia and DJ T Lo, among others.

This is the fifth solo record in Shad’s catalogue, which includes three Polaris Music Prize-nominated albums and the Juno Award-winning TSOL, which took home hardware for Rap Recording of the Year in 2011.

Shad also hosts an Emmy and Peabody Award-winning docu-series, Hip-Hop Evolution, which tells the stories of the artists who were pivotal to the development of the genre, featuring interviews with some of the biggest names in the biz, both past and present, such as Busta Rhymes, Lil’ Kim, Diddy, Ghostface, Method Man and Raekwon. The series, now in its second season, is available on Netflix.

Tickets for Shad’s show at the Good Will are $20, available at Showpass.com. Doors open at 9 p.m. and music starts at 10 p.m. with Winnipeg multi-instrumentalist Marisolle Negash.

— Erin Lebar

 

Mother Mother

Vancouver’s Mother Mother has brought their energetic live show to practically every corner of the country over the course of their extensive touring schedule, including several stops in Winnipeg.

And on Sunday, the quintet, fronted by singer and primary songwriter Ryan Guldemond and his sister Molly, roll back into Winnipeg to play the Burton Cummings Theatre in support of their latest record, Dance and Cry, which was released in November.

Since forming in 2005, Mother Mother has released seven hook-laden dance-pop-rock albums to widespread critical and popular acclaim. Their 2014 record Very Good Bad Thing peaked at No. 4 on the Canadian Billboard charts, while their song The Drugs, from 2017’s No Culture, hit the top of the Canadian alternative-rock charts in 2016.

Joining the band on their 2019 tour are Juno-winning fellow Vancouverites Said the Whale, whose latest record Cascadia, their sixth studio full-length release, landed on record store shelves earlier this month via the Arts & Crafts label.

Tickets for Mother Mother and Said the Whale start at $40.25 plus taxes and fees, and are available at ticketmaster.ca.

— Ben MacPhee-Sigurdson