Another year, another festival, and this year brings exciting new developments. Powell River Film Festival will screen its films at Patricia Theatre, and the Arts Mosaic, community tables, live music, receptions and bar will be at Dwight Hall.
Running from February 19 to 24, the festival has a selection of films that delve into the richness and complexities of human relations.
Winner of the Palme d’Or at 2012 Cannes Film Festival, and now receiving lots of Oscar buzz, director Michael Haneke’s Amour draws on the extraordinary talents of two of the finest and most legendary performers in the history of French cinema, Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva, to create a powerful and moving portrait of an elderly couple struggling with their mortality.
Ensconced in their cushy Paris apartment and settled happily into their long-established domestic routines, retired music teachers Anne and Georges Laurent have their comfortable world cataclysmically upended when Anne suddenly displays symptoms of a stroke. With Anne partially paralyzed, Georges struggles to care for her at home, with each day bringing new, painful challenges. It would have been easy with this material to slip into the conventions of a tearjerker, but Haneke unerringly steers clear, delivering a humane and compassionate work, a triumph of simplicity and the naturalness of existence. Amour will be shown at 7 pm on Wednesday, February 20 at the Patricia. Dwight Hall open at 4:30 pm that day.
Showing at 3 pm on Thursday afternoon, February 21, Come as You Are represents the best in offbeat entertainment with a road trip movie following three 20-something handicapped Belgian men who decide to defy their disabilities and visit a Spanish brothel catering to men with special needs. After telling their worried families that they are going on a wine tour, they hire a van and driver/nurse, but things don’t exactly go as planned.
Loosely inspired by Briton Asta Philpot’s real-life trips to a wheelchair-accessible Spanish brothel, filmmaker Geoffrey Enthoven burnishes his reputation for deft directing and spot-on performances, even as his subject matter alternates between comedy and serious drama.
The festival invites everyone to start their Friday morning at 10 am with Breakfast with Curtis. When a family feud spills into its fifth year, Syd, a middle-aged hippie, brokers a tentative peace by roping Curtis, his introverted 14-year-old neighbour, into a web venture he’s launching from his ramshackle abode. This cheeky coming-of-age tale is slightly akin to stepping into a lush, late-summer Kitsilano garden with your favourite wise-cracking draft-dodger.
But for all of its wine-soaked, pot-infused dreaminess, Breakfast is firmly rooted in reality. The rambling purple house where the action happens belongs to writer/director/co-star Laura Colella, and her captivating cast is composed of her housemates and neighbours. Despite the homespun approach and unfettered narrative, Colella’s smartly written, tightly directed tale has a distinct vision and clear intention, one joyously devoted to the pleasure principle.
The documentary My Father and The Man In Black, is the untold story of “bad boy” Johnny Cash, his talented but troubled manager, Saul Holiff, and a son searching for clues to his father’s suicide.
Who was Saul and how did the serious-minded Jew from Canada get hooked up with a wild Southern Baptist? These are questions first-time-filmmaker Jonathan Holiff, who also narrates the film, sets out to answer.
Saul handled the bookings and the no-shows, Cash’s divorce from Vivian Liberto and the marriage to June Carter, the arrests and the trials. He was there for the absolute worst and for the best of times. But in 1973, at the zenith of Cash’s career, Saul quit. Father and son were estranged for 20 years when Holiff senior committed suicide in 2005, without leaving a note.
And until now, no one knew why. When Jonathan returned home to deal with his father’s things, he discovered a storage locker, filled with hundreds of letters between Saul, Cash and June Carter, and 60 hours of very personal audio diaries recorded from the early 1960s until shortly before his death. The result is a music documentary like no other. Jonathan will be attending the presentation starting at 3 pm, Friday, February 22.
Tickets for individual films go on sale January 21 at Breakwater Books and Coffee, Armitage Mens Wear, Patricia Theatre and online. For more information readers can call 604.414.9758.
