By Nicole Fitzgerald
The Whistler Film Festival announced a five-year partnership with American Express, along with the programming for the 6 th annual festival earlier this week in Vancouver.
“We are thrilled to have a five year deal with American Express as the presenting sponsor,” said festival director Shauna Hardy Mishaw. “It took six years to get to a place where we were able to do that. It is critical for us as a non-profit to ensure the viability for the event to move forward. We are locked and loaded for the next five years.”
This year’s Whistler Film Festival, Nov. 30 to Dec. 3, fires off with a bang with a special advance gala screening of Jacques Russo’s Let It Ride! The funny, exhilarating and tragic story tells the tale of Craig Kelly, a legendary big-mountain, backcountry snowboarder.
Festival officials expect a sellout. The festival’s first gala screening, Ski Bums in 2002, drew more than 1,300 people — the largest screening ever for a National Film Board film.
“We always try to program films of interest to the community,” Hardy Mishaw said. “Not just the sports world, but a wide range of topics.”
She noted documentaries are always a hot ticket item at the festival.
The festival screens 93 films, including 25 premieres, over three days this year, with lots of documentaries as well as features and short films to look forward to.
Liam Walsh’s mountain culture documentary Pipe Dream follows snowboarders Dan Raymond and Crispin Lipscomb on their journey from snowboard instructors to the 2006 Torino Winter Olympics. Also premiering at the festival, Carolyn Allain’s A Safer Sex Trade, which explores the stigma of prostitution, and Barbara Lee’s Between the Laughter, which follows a hearing-impaired comic.
Among the documentaries making their Canadian premieres are Alexandra Lipsitz’s Air Guitar Nation, Mark Harvey’s A Land Out of Time and Brooke Goldstein and Alistair Leyland’s The Making of a Martyr.
Among the B.C. documentaries premiering are John Paskivich’s Unspeakable, which examines the nature, history and treatment of stuttering; and Michael Dayan’s Glimpses of Heaven, a film about artists who turn their pain-filled histories into life-giving art.
The lineup of films making their North American premieres includes two mountain culture documentaries: Jens Hoffman’s Fatima’s Hand, from Germany, and Gerald Salmina’s Memento – A Boulder Life Line, from Austria.
Dramatic features fill in the rest of the lineup, including Sisters, Without Her, Them, Snow Cake, The Caterpillar Wish, I’m a Reed Fish, Lime Salted Love, Dirt Nap, Away From Her, Candy, Congorama, Everything’s Gone Green, Mount Pleasant, Shortbus, Mozartballs, Mystic Ball, The White Planet, Light of the Himalaya, Sita: A Girl From Jambu, Bloodrayne and Homeroom-Heart of America.
Documentary and dramatic films alike will go head to head in the Borsos competition for Best New Canadian Feature Film, which includes a $15,000 prize. This year’s finalists include Bojan Bodruzic’s Immigrant, Joshua Dorsey’s The Point, Stephanie Lapointe’s The Secret Life of Happy People, Wyeth Clarkson’s SK8, David Gow and Mar Adam’s Steel Toes and Matt Bissonette’s Who Loves the Sun.
In addition to the Borsos award, the festival also hosts the People’s Choice Best Feature Award, the $5,000 Best Documentary Award, the $1,000 Best Short Film Award and the Best Mountain Culture Film.
Special festival screenings include Joe Moulin’s documentary Citizen Sam as part of the DOC TALK series in the festival’s Filmmaker Forum program.
Whistler Stories, four short films created by B.C. filmmakers through the festival legacy program, will screen at the festival gala before the showing of Let It Ride!
Short films will also be staged at a free show on a giant outdoor screen located in Skier’s Plaza.
Special evening events are also scheduled, including a Tribute to Norman Jewison (which includes a discussion between the filmmaker and Brian D Johnson), the 6 th Anniversary Party at the Bearfoot Bistro and Awards Brunch and Closing Film Screening of Snow Cake.
Tickets to films, special events and filmmaker forum programming are now on sale individually or as packages. Tickets can be purchased at the Whistler Box Office located in the New Blackcomb Lodge after Wednesday, Nov. 15 or by calling 604-932-7469.
Visit www.whistlerfilmfestival.com for a preview guide.
