Film festival just beachy

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This article was published 23/07/2015 (4107 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s an ongoing irony that the biggest selling point for the Gimli Film Festival is its free beach-front movies. Those shows at the Lake Winnipeg-fronting venue are almost invariably Hollywood hits. This year’s 10 p.m. Sunset Screenings include Labyrinth (Thursday, July 23), Monty Python and the Holy Grail double-billed with Alien (Friday, July 24), Jurassic Park (Saturday, July 25) and Dr. Strangelove (Sunday, July 26).

Rest assured, the bulk of the Gimli Film Fest puts the emphasis on more alternative, less mainstream fare. Now in its 15th year, the festival’s programming creates a kind of one-stop shop for movies that typically find themselves on screen at venues such as Winnipeg’s Cinematheque and Bandwidth theatres. Indeed, the festival is screening a lot of feature films that have already played in Winnipeg (Ex Machina, It Follows, Slow West, Force Majeur, Monsoon, Mommy) with one film — the Amy Winehouse doc Amy — currently playing at Polo Park Silver City.

That shouldn’t undercut the fest’s value as Manitoba’s most important film showcase. As usual, GFF brings filmmakers to the Interlake to present their films personally. This year, visiting directors include Sturla Gunnarsson, who will show his documentary Monsoon, detailing the awesome phenomenon of India’s monsoon season.

It’s also a showcase for Manitoba-made films, including a handful of docs shot for MTS TV Stories From Home, featuring A Good Madness: The Dance of Rachel Browne, One Gay City: A History of LGBT Life in Winnipeg and the aboriginal music doc Brown Town Muddy Water.

• The Editor, a feature film from Manitoba’s most outré film collective Astron-6, finally gets its Manitoba debut 10 months after its world première at the Toronto International Film Festival last September. It screens twice, including an early evening screening on Friday, July 24, at the Lady of the Lake Theatre, at 5:30 p.m. But it’s the Thursday night 10:30 p.m. screening July 23 that’s extra special. The inaugural movie of the fest’s new Late Night Film event, it screens at Johnson Hall, on the fifth floor of the Waterfront Centre, with the added incentive of a cash beer bar and free pizza, all for $5 more than the usual $10 screening price.

The film may make you grateful to have a drink nearby. A skilful parody of the Italian giallo genre, it’s about a film editor (played by director Adam Brooks) suspected of a series of gruesome murders. On a minimal budget, Brooks and company impressively nail the excesses of the genre, including protracted, gory death scenes, plentiful red herrings, dreamlike imagery and insane lapses of logic.

Attending the Gimli fest for the first time, Brooks says the drink option may be appreciated by Astron fans. “People are always telling me our movies make for great drinking games,” he says. “I don’t drink myself, but I do eat pizza so I guess I’ve got that to look forward to.”

 

• The 48 Hour Film Contest (Saturday, July 25, at 3 p.m. at the Gimli Lutheran Church Theatre), a traditional annual event of the Winnipeg Film Group, has shifted to the Gimli fest, where it brings a competitive edge to the usual screenings.

Contestants were challenged to make a film under four minutes long in a 48-hour period from July 3 to 5. This year, contestants had the benefit of working with professional local actors, courtesy of a deal with ACTRA, with additional help from the City of Winnipeg, which gave out film permits over the two days of the competition.

“This was a huge opportunity for us to up the ante of the 48-hour competition,” says Ben Williams, WFG’s production centre co-ordinator. “We can really enhance the filmmaking capabilities in the city.”

This year’s crop of 16 films includes an entry from last year’s winner, BJ Verot, who collaborated with Ian Bawa on a freaky fantasy called Meteorite Before Prom Night. In another, 16-year-old Tess Lupkowski not only shot and edited her film H is for Hadley, she played four characters as well.

Seven awards will be given out at the event for best film, director, editor, actress, actor, sound and cinematographer, with an additional people’s choice prize awarded for best film.

 

Don Hertzfeldt Retrospective (July 26 at 12:30 p.m. at the Gimli Theatre) features the animated shorts of an artist close to the heart of Gimli Film Fest programmer Aaron Zeghers. Literally.

Zeghers has a tattoo on his chest of a Hertzfeldt design.

To most people, Hertzfeldt may be best known as the creator of one of the most bizarre Simpsons couch gags ever, wherein Homer’s TV remote takes him thousands of years into the future.

“He’s one of my all-time favourite animators,” says Zeghers. “He burst onto the scene in 2000 when his Oscar-nominated animated film Rejected became one of the first big viral videos on the Internet.

“This is a collection of his previous work,” Zeghers says, referring to the trilogy of It’s Such a Beautiful Day, The Meaning of Life and I Am So Proud of You. “They’ll screen alongside the Manitoba première of his brand-new short World of Tomorrow, which won best short film at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival.”

The complete Gimli Film Festival program is online at www.gimlifilm.com.

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca