Shorts – The Reel Thing! showcases Festival Favourites
Nettie Wild inaugurates Norman Jewison Series
TORONTO, March 08, 2007 --York University’s Faculty of Fine Arts celebrates its resident talent and the next wave of outstanding visual artists, filmmakers and performers with the York Fine Arts Festival, featuring more than 40 public events packed into a three-week period running March 9 – April 1, 2007. All the fine arts are represented: dance, design, film, music, theatre, visual arts and interdisciplinary fine arts cultural studies. Events take place at York’s Keele campus.
The Department of Film contributes an outstanding lineup of emerging and established artists to the Fine Arts Festival. Productions by York film students – who regularly go on to show their work and win prizes in national and international film festivals – are showcased in York Shorts – The Reel Thing! on March 19. Screenings and presentations by three leading lights of the Canadian film scene are featured in the new Norman Jewison Series and The Independents series on March 15, 22 and 23.
York Shorts – The Reel Thing! brings ten festival favourites produced by York film students to the big screen on March 19. The screening takes place in the new, state-of-the-art Price Family Cinema in York’s Accolade Project.
The program includes Shetu Modi’s documentary Deflowering Bollywood, where second-generation Indo-Canadians express both their love of this popular cinema and their dismay at how it’s changing; Love Letters, a filmic love letter to celebrities from Michelle Lovegrove Thomson; and Luo Li’s experimental Fly, a lyrical impression of the flight of birds. Young voices come to the fore in Chelsea McMullan’s Plume, chronicling two boys’ pick-pocketing efforts to raise funds for their first sexual encounter; Lindsay MacKay’s We’re on our Way, about three schoolchildren trying to get their bus driver fired; and Joyce Wong’s bittersweet Banana Bruises, capturing the joys and woes of an Asian kid trying to fit in. Sinara Rozo’s Waste Symphony delivers an audiovisual opera about frantic consumption, waste and its ecological consequences, while Lesley Chan’s lighthearted Compost Mon Amour portrays a Canadian mycologist who’s looking for fresh romance, only to find that things get a little mouldy.
The festival also marks the launch of the Norman Jewison Series, named in honour of internationally acclaimed Canadian film director and producer Norman Jewison, whose generous support has made this program possible. The series brings distinguished film artists to York to meet with students, and present and discuss their work in a public forum open to the wider community.
Acclaimed filmmaker Nettie Wild inaugurates the series on March 15 with her riveting documentary Fix: The Story of an Addicted City. Over 18 months, Wild and her crew delved into the alleys and politics of Vancouver’s drug scene, where street level drug users forged an unexpected alliance with Philip Owen, the city’s conservative mayor. Together they struggled to open North America’s first safe injection site. It cost the mayor his job but galvanized the birth of a social movement. Fix won the 2003 Genie Award for Best Canadian Documentary. Wild’s previous films include A Place Called Chiapas (1999), and Blockade (1993). Film reviewer, journalist and Images Festival co-founder Marc Glassman will introduce Wild and moderate a Q&A following the screening.
Renowned film scholar William Boddy is featured in a second Norman Jewison Series event on March 23, with a talk on The History & Future of Digital Cinema. An authority on media history, film and cultural studies, and an associate editor of Cinema Journal, Boddy is an alumnus of York’s film program and currently teaches at Baruch College, City University of New York. His interests include the social implications of contemporary digital media, and avant-garde and nonfiction filmmaking. Boddy is the author of New Media and Popular Imagination: Launching Radio, Television, and Digital Media in the United States and Fifties Television: The Industry and Its Critics.
Also featured in the festival is screenwriter Karen Walton, who presents her thriller Ginger Snaps as part of the Film Department’s indie cinema series, The Independents, on March 22. Walton will be introduced by York film professor, director and screenwriter Amnon Buchbinder (The Fishing Trip, Whole New Thing).
The Faculty of Fine Arts, York University presents the
York Fine Arts Festival March 9 - April 1, 2007
Events take place at York’s Keele campus, 4700 Keele St., Toronto
All the Film Events in the Festival are FREE.
Nettie Wild, director, presents Fix: The Story of an Addicted City, inaugurating the Norman Jewison Series.
March 15, 7 pm, The Price Family Cinema, Accolade East Building
York Shorts – The Reel Thing!
March 19, 8pm, The Price Family Cinema, Accolade East Building
Karen Walton, screenwriter, presents Ginger Snaps - The Independents series
March 22, 7 pm, The Price Family Cinema, Accolade East Building
William Boddy presents a talk on The History & Future of Digital Cinema - Norman Jewison Series
March 23, 2pm, Nat Taylor Cinema, N102 Ross Building
Fine Arts Festival Information & Box Office: 416-736-5888
For a detailed schedule, visit www.yorku.ca/finearts/festival.
York Fine Arts Festival: Meet the arts in the heart of the GTA
The Faculty of Fine Arts at York University is spotlighting its resident talent in a three-week festival packed with more than 40 exciting and entertaining events. Running March 9 to April 1, the York Fine Arts Festival features exhibitions, theatre and dance productions, film screenings, multimedia shows, and a wide variety of classical, jazz and world music concerts. Events take place in state-of-the-art facilities at York University’s Keele campus. Join us for this showcase celebrating the next wave of outstanding young talent in the visual and performing arts.
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The Faculty of Fine Arts at York University is one of North America’s leading and largest centres for fine arts education. A vibrant community of some 3,200 students and 280 faculty working at the leading edge of fine arts practice and scholarship, it offers academic studies and professional training in dance, design, film, music, theatre and visual arts as well as interdisciplinary cultural studies in the fine arts. For more than 35 years, York Fine Arts has been a premier launching pad for outstanding young talent and a major contributor to the arts and cultural scene in Toronto, Canada and beyond.
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York University is the leading interdisciplinary research and teaching university in Canada. York offers a modern, academic experience at the undergraduate and graduate level in Toronto, Canada’s most international city. The third largest university in the country, York is host to a dynamic academic community of 50,000 students and 7,000 faculty and staff, as well as 190,000 alumni worldwide. York’s 11 faculties and 23 research centres conduct ambitious, groundbreaking research that is interdisciplinary, cutting across traditional academic boundaries. This distinctive and collaborative approach is preparing students for the future and bringing fresh insights and solutions to real-world challenges. York University is an autonomous, not-for-profit corporation.
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Media Refer: Dianne Weinrib/Amy Stewart, DW Communications, 416-703-5479 dw@dwcommunications.net
