CANADIAN FRONT AT MOMA
Last week, The Musuem of Modern Art, in association with TeleFilm Canada and the Canadian Consulate General in New York, opened its annual survey of recent Canadian filmmaking, Canadian Front, with Clement Virgo’s tale of boxing and revenge Poor Boy’s Game. The seven day affair runs from March 13th through the 20th. While most of the films screen twice over the seven days, Virgo’s film, one which includes some terrific performances by Danny Glover, Tonya Lee Williams and Rossif Sutherland, will screen daily.
Other notable titles on tap for the seven day event include Bruce MacDonald’s hotly anticipated adventure in split-screen filmmaking The Tracey Fragments, starring academy award nominee Ellen Page, Denys Arcand’s new film Days of Darkness, billed as the final piece of the trilogy that he began with The Decline of the American Empire and continued to great effect in his Cannes and Oscar winning The Barbarian Invasions and Laurie Lynd’s Breakfast With Scot, about an ex-NHL enforcer who has recently climbed out of the closet. The film, despite being a relatively light hearted Queer comedy, has been at the center of the controversy surrounding a proposed bill in the Canadian parliament, C-10, that would give the Canadian government a greater say in the content of films and TV shows that are made with the assistance of state funds.
On Friday, a contingent of Canadian film personalities, many the producers and directors of the films screening at MOMA over the next week, were treated to a US Industry Immersion sponsored by IFP. The day long affair provided four panels on various aspects of the American film industry, with such indiewood notables as IFC’s Arianna Bocco, Magnolia’s Tom Quinn, Koch/Lorber’s Richard Lorber, This Is That’s Ted Hope, Cinetic Media’s Sarah Lash and ThinkFilm’s Ben Stambler participating in discussions led by Filmmaker’s own Jason Guerrasio and Peter Bowen.
While acknowledging the bleak outlook for traditional specialty film distribution, IFC and Magnolia’s representatives both trumpeted the day and date distribution model as having helped find audiences for films that otherwise would have been unreleasable. Lance Weiler and IndieGoGo’s Slava Rubin each offered their thoughts on alternative modes of distribution for indie films. Many of Weiler’s web 2.0 saavy ideas about online distribution can be found in this article he wrote for Filmmaker’s Winter 08′ issue. Weiler summarized the thoughts of most of the panelists during an early session when he chimmed in, “The democratization of the tools has created a surplus of films in the market place. Its the best of times and the worst of times.”
