HIFF Newsletter • October 16, 2020
OPENING NIGHT FILMS
L.A. TEA TIME
dir. Sophie Bédard Marcotte
November 12 • 7 PM • Available in Nova Scotia
On November 12, the 14th annual Halifax Independent Film Festival will kick off online with L.A. Tea Time, Canadian director Sophie Bédard Marcotte's endlessly charming doc tracking her cross-continent journey to meet artist Miranda July.
Leaving the harsh Quebec winter for the bright lights of L.A., Sophie and cinematographer Isabelle Stachtchenko cruise through the American landscape, meeting a cast of unique characters and longing to find a source of renewed inspiration along the way.
RESERVE YOUR FREE TICKET HERE.
Presented by Telefilm Canada and The Talent Fund.
"Although Bédard-Marcotte and July have more in common ... the director displays a greater affinity for Ackerman’s work in her ability to find artful truth in the mundane aspects of daily life." —Pat Mullen, POV Magazine
"Marcotte has given her artistic idea the freedom to wander and meander, and created something beautiful in the process." —Kris Rothstein, Geist
Check out the trailer below:
BAIT
dir. Mark Jenkin
November 12 • 9 PM • Available in Nova Scotia
HIFF is thrilled to close out our opening night with Bait, Mark Jenkin's BAFTA-winning feature about a Cornish fishing village's fight for survival, gloriously captured on hand-processed 16mm.
Struggling fisherman Martin (Edward Rowe) ekes out a living selling door-to-door fish and lobster on the Cornish coast of the Atlantic. Having renounced his childhood home to a bourgeois out-of-towner family, he lives a brooding and disgruntled existence in flickering chiaroscuro.
Anchored by its singular artistic vision, Bait is an impassioned tale of class war filtered through a mesmerizing and dreamlike artisanal style.
RESERVE YOUR FREE TICKET HERE.
"One of the defining British films of the decade."—Mark Kermode, The Guardian
"A timely social portrait and a timeless work of art." —Sophie Monks Kaufman, Empire Magazine
Watch the trailer here:
ATLANTIC AUTEURS SPOTLIGHT
Where are you from?
A little bit from Toronto, a little bit from Belfast, PEI.
What was the inspiration for the film you’re presenting at HIFF?
Solastalgia is an attempt to convey my inner landscape in an outward fashion—the part of me that worries deeply about the earth's rapidly declining ecological stability and diversity. It is a worry that is shared by most around the globe, and yet somehow politics and economic interests obfuscate the issue. This film is an attempt to reach people on a personal and intimate level about the greatest crisis of our time.
What’s the pastime that’s saved you during the pandemic?
During lockdown I was very lucky to be approached by the National Film Board of Canada to create a pandemic-related short doc. Having a (paid) creative project to focus on was a godsend. The result is a short doc about love, Love In Quarantine, which is on the NFB site now.
Last year we asked filmmakers about their most memorable experiences in a cinema. In the spirit of our virtual fest, what’s the most memorable experience you’ve had watching a film at home?
Watching [Wim Wenders'] Wings of Desire off an old VHS tape when I was a teen. And then watching it again. And again. Because it's awesome. And also, no Netflix.
Where are you from originally?
Iroquois Falls, Ontario.
What was the inspiration for the film you're presenting at HIFF?
The fruits and veggies in my garden and the produce section at Pete's.
What's the pastime that's saved you during the pandemic?
When we first went into lockdown, I was having a lot of trouble focusing ... on anything; what brought me back was some old VHS footage that I transferred to digital few years ago. I spent some time just playing around with it, trying to emulate visual effects and graphics from the '80s onto this old footage. The videos ended up being a little dorky but fun to make, and this editing "exercise" helped me get my focus back.
What's your favourite memory of making this film?
Spending a significant time with fruits and vegetables was a bit of a weird experience; I ended up sort of communing with them. About half of the plants I grew from seed and the rest were selected at the market or the grocery store, so there is that connection with the plants and then there is the time spent lighting the fruits and vegetables, filming them, testing them as developers and tints, and then seeing them on the actual film stock and editing them—through all this, I couldn't help but have some kind of imprint from each fruit or vegetable.
The quince really stressed me out. I knew it was a seasonal crop that's only available for a limited time in the fall. Around "Quince Time" I could not find a quince anywhere and I had no back-up plan for another fruit or vegetable beginning with the letter Q. I ended up putting a bunch of quince feelers out and a friend of a friend ended up having this gorgeous, prolific, ornamental quince tree growing in their yard, and they were happy to share some quinces with me for the film. Incidentally, a week later, a bunch of quinces showed up at Pete's.
These film will screen along with nine others made by established and up-and-coming filmmakers from across the region in HIFF's Atlantic Auteurs shorts program, available online Friday, November 15 at 7 p.m. Learn more about the full program here.
Every year, HIFF brings programmers from prestigious Canadian and international festivals to Halifax to take part in the festival, watch local shorts and host one-on-one meetings with regional filmmakers. This year, we’re moving the meetings online! The Programmer Initiative is a unique opportunity for Atlantic Canadian filmmakers to connect one-on-one with programmers from around the world and make meaningful connections within the international film festival circuit.
This year we welcome:
Lisa Haller, International Programmer, Short Cuts, Toronto International Film Festival
Lori McCurdy, Feature Film Executive, Atlantic Region, Telefilm Canada
Julian Ross, International Film Festival Rotterdam
Sébastien Simon, Busan International Short Film Festival
Applications for meetings with Lori McCurdy of Telefilm Canada are now open!
APPLY HERE
HIFF will present the Linda Joy and Helen Hill Awards in an online ceremony on November 15, the closing day of our 2020 fest.
Each year, the Linda Joy Award is given to help a filmmaker in the Atlantic region produce a new film or piece of media art with $2000 cash and more in in-kind services.
The Linda Joy Post Award includes $1,000 in cash and in-kind post production services.
The Helen Hill Award grants $1000 cash plus in-kind services to an artist in Atlantic Canada working in animation or experimental forms.
Join us in celebrating this year's winners! More details to come.