Art/Film: VIFF

It’s that time of the year again….

Sandra Oh & Ann Marie Fleming – as it turned out needn’t have worried

On the heels of the Toronto International Film Festival which ended yesterday is the 35th Vancouver International Film Festival which starts on September 29^th to October 14th. I just picked up the festival guide and I can’t wait to see a ton of films of which I will report back to you my favourites.

In the meantime I want to give a SHOUT OUT to my friend Ann Marie Fleming who’s full length animated movie Window Horses (which I previously blogged about) premiered at TIFF to rave reviews.

This is a beautifully narrated and colourfully animated story of a young girl’s journey employing poetry, music and illustrations to celebrate the value of self-discovery. After being invited to a poetry festival in Shiraz, Iran, by a mysterious figure, Rosie Ming faces challenges that ultimately lead to her self-realization. The film’s superb voice cast includes festival veterans Sandra Oh, Don McKellar and Ellen Page.

From CTV News:

“The reason why I wanted to do this film and why I moved it to Iran and why I think it’s important to do now is I wanted to make a gesture of understanding, compassion and intolerance in this world of increasingly dark images and xenophobia and fear,” says Fleming.

“This is not a political film in any way, but the gesture is political. I just wanted to make some lightness, to be able to see people for what we have in common and how poetry — poetry! — is actually the glue that’s put us all together through all these millennia.”

The Canadian Press recently spoke with Fleming about the film, which she wrote, directed and produced (in co-production with the National Film Board of Canada). It’s slated to hit theatres in spring 2017.

You can VOTE for this film for MUST-SEE BC Movies (until September 29^th) and help support Canadian Art at:

http://mustseebc.viff.org/

Art + Culture, Girl Who Would be King

ART/Culture/FILM – Window Horses

“All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.” – Edgar Allan Poe

Everyone knows that Poe is a Poet but we all have different viewpoints of another person’s image. That is called perception. What happens when someone doesn’t fit into the “usual” image we form for something they represent?

What is Window Horses?

Window Horses is a new Animated, Multi-Cultural, Unusual, Smart Feature Film with a Message. I find it inspiring. It is written, directed and produced by someone I know, Ann Marie Fleming, who has been making award winning films for over 25 years. Because she is such an unusual & inspiring person herself I knew that at the very least it would be interesting and worth checking out. So….

Rosie Ming is a mixed-race, 20-something, introverted, closet poet who dreams of going to Paris. She doesn’t know a thing about her parents. Sandra Oh (Grey’s Anatomy, Sideways, Under the Tuscan Sun, etc…) is Rosie. Her work is about transformation!

Taken from the Website:

This film is our small effort to try and add a little more peace, love and understanding to our increasingly complex and conflicted world through art, poetry, history and culture. Heady stuff!

Not to give too much away but….

It’s about love (it’s always about love…) – love of family, poetry, history, culture. Here’s the story: Rosie Ming, a young Canadian poet, is invited to perform at a Poetry Festival in Shiraz, Iran, but she’d rather be in Paris. She lives at home with her over-protective Chinese grandparents and has never been anywhere by herself. Once in Iran, she finds herself in the company of poets and Persians, all who tell her stories that force her to confront her past; the Iranian father she assumed abandoned her and the nature of Poetry itself. It’s about building bridges between cultural and generational divides. It’s about being curious. Staying open. And finding your own voice through the magic of poetry.

Rosie goes on an unwitting journey of forgiveness, reconciliation, and perhaps above all, understanding, through learning about her father’s past, her own cultural identity, and her responsibility to it.

WATCH the Trailer:

“Window Horses hits all the things that are important to me: it’s pro-girl, pro-tolerance, pro-diversity and PRO-ART!! My nieces are mixed race and it’s very important to me that they see themselves represented in this society.” – Sandra Oh

Heady Stuff Indeed!

Window Horses will be playing during VIFF (September 29 – October 14, 2016). For program & tickets please visit:

https://www.viff.org

FUN

Feel-good Friday: Poetry in Motion

The next time someone tells you to go fly a kite “does anyone still say that?”

d. king - Kits Point — d. king – Kits Point

just do it!

“A kite is a victim you are sure of.
You love it because it pulls
gentle enough to call you master,
strong enough to call you fool;
because it lives
like a desperate trained falcon
in the high sweet air,
and you can always haul it down
to tame it in your drawer.

A kite is a fish you have already caught
in a pool where no fish come,
so you play him carefully and long,
and hope he won’t give up,
or the wind die down.

A kite is the last poem you’ve written
so you give it to the wind,
but you don’t let it go
until someone finds you
something else to do.” – Leonard Cohen, The Spice Box of Earth

Speaking about flying high & feeling good:

It’s nearly time to raise a glass at the ever popular California Wine Fair featuring award-winning vintners , happening at the Vancouver Convention Centre on Monday, April 27. The fair is presented in partnership with California Wine, an organization not only committed to showcasing the fine wines of the Golden State, but also giving back to the communities. Meet you there!

FUN

Words…& Art entwine

“Music, states of happiness, mythology, faces molded by time, certain twilights and certain places– all these are trying to tell us something, or have told us something we should not have missed, or are about to tell us something; that imminence of a revelation that is not produced is, perhaps, the aesthetic reality.” – Jorge Luis Borges (Argentine poet, essayist, and short-story writer whose works have become classics of 20th-century world literature). When asked about ART.