Pandemic upends best laid plans for film

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/08/2020 (2240 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It really was one of the better plans, even if it went wildly astray.

Back in March, Winnipeg filmmaker Sean Garrity had a beautiful strategy for the release of his film I Propose We Never See Each Other Again After Tonight, meshed into the weave of the movie itself.

I Propose is a romantic comedy about a fraught relationship between a young Filipina woman and a young Mennonite-raised man, set in Winnipeg (with a side trip to Carman) as a frigid winter melts into spring.

Garrity was going to première the film at the Cinema City in the Northgate Shopping Centre, a location that regularly serves the surrounding Filipino community with films imported from the Philippines.

To see the movie is to understand the genius of the plan. It is an ultra-rare Canadian film that even acknowledges the Filipino-Canadian experience, let alone makes an effort to explores the immigrant dynamics in play, as the more conservative older generation bridles against the more liberal attitudes of the second generation.

Screening at Northgate, the movie literally would have hit that community where it lives. But of course, the COVID-19 pandemic shut down all the cinemas in town just before the film opened.

Garrity is not entirely happy the film will finally open in theatres today.

“Even without a pandemic, Aug. 21 is not a date that I would pick to première a film,” he says in a phone interview. “People are at their cottages and trying to squeeze the last drops of summer.

“We will make it work,” Garrity says, pointing to an unexpected upside: “We’re playing at two cinemas now.”

The film is opening at the McGillivray VIP cinemas and the Northgate. That situation would not have been possible pre-pandemic, Garrity says.

“When I was talking with my distributor, I said, ‘Hey, how about two theatres?’”

He was told in no uncertain terms that would be impossible. But Garrity pressed them to ask anyway.

“What else are they going to play?”

Currently, movies in Winnipeg are playing at about a 30 per cent capacity to allow physical distancing in the theatres. Garrity acknowledges that actually fits with the typical response to a Canadian film.

“A lot of bigger American films can’t make money on that model,” he says. “They are trying something with Tenet,” he says of the Warner Bros. release of a big-budget sci-fi film planned to open in Canada next week.

“But it’s not really a sustainable model to release all your films that way. They’re holding back (movies) because if they don’t have 300 people per hall watching The Avengers, the model that they have is not viable.

“But ours is,” he says. “For a Canadian film to have 30 people per house? Yahoo! Open the champagne!” Garrity says, laughing. “We can work on that model. That’s how we’ve been working for the past 20 years.”

The original party-première plan for the film has, sadly, been shuttered. However, Garrity and many of the cast will show up for opening night tonight at the McGillivray cinemas, though the typical Q&A session can’t take place.

“We obviously can’t have audience members sharing microphones and standing up and speaking in a loud voice asking questions,” Garrity says. “So I’m thinking I might stand up at the front at the end, if the cinema allows us and I’ll tell the audience my cellphone number and I’ll have them text me questions.

“That is, I think, the extent of our plan to celebrate.”

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @FreepKing