The opening night festivities of the 23rd annual Vancouver International Film Festival have passed into memory. Guests in attendance at the Opening Gala (held at The Commodore) included Vancouver fixture Sir Ian McKellan, Bruce Greenwood (here with the opening night film, Being Julia), local actors Carly Pope, Joely Collins and William B. Davis, as well as a host of other minor celebrities, too numerous to mention.
For film buffs, though — the cinéaste aficionado — the happening place to be was inside a darkened theatre (even if Vancouver began to experience a late burst of Indian summer yesterday), to catch an opening day film. Popular choices on the first day included Mirage (which will screen two more times at the Granville 4, on Monday, October 4 at 9 p.m. and Thursday, October 7 at 2 p.m.); Good Morning, Night (given a 4-star review by the Vancouver Sun’s Tom Charity yesterday); Moolaadé (the final screening of which VanRamblings will attend at The Vogue at 9:30 this evening), Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear and the Selling of American Empire (which had a sold-out screening at Pacific Cinémathèque) and Machuca, one of the buzz films at this year’s Festival, and sure to emerge as a Festival favourite.
Buzz Films From the First Day of the Festival

Quirky to be sure, Baober in Love is a surreal, fever-dream of a film, the frantically charming story of a wondrously energetic sprite who takes us on a wild and sometimes unsettling personal journey, made all the more watchable by the pixie-ish presence of winsome newcomer Zhou Xun. During the course of the exposition of the film, viewers are provided with a subtle political insight into contemporary China, Zeng Nianping’s incandescent cinematography by turns revealing, hallucinatory, and just plain gorgeous. Worthy of a 2½ star (out of five) designation, Baober in Love may not be a great film necessarily but it is, as the VIFF programme suggests, “entirely captivating”.

One of the must-see films at this year’s Film Festival (it’s playing again next Thursday at 7 p.m. at The Vogue theatre), Machuca tracks a group of young boys attending school at Santiago, Chile’s St. Patrick’s English Academy in September of 1973, in the weeks leading up to the military coup that overthrew leftist-progressive President Salvadore Allende. As a piece of visual anthropology, Machuca provides a humanistic, heart-rending and melancholy insight into the class divisions at the centre of what became the failure of the democratic socialist experiment in Chile, the story set within a compelling coming-of-age drama that is, at turns both joyous and tragic, and always humane. VanRamblings recommends Machuca, awarding it a deserving 4-star designation.
Buzz Film of the Day — VanRamblings’ Friday Must-See Film

There is no film that will arrive at the 23rd annual Vancouver International Film Festival that has better buzz than Ousmane Sembene’s Moolaadé (the title, Sengalese for sanctuary) about which Eye Magazine’s Jason Anderson wrote in his 5-star review “The latest by Senegalese great Ousmane Sembene is a passionate argument against female circumcision and a rousing triumph for African cinema. A fiery-tempered woman (Fatoumata Coulibaly) provides shelter for a group of scared young girls who’ve fled their ‘purification rituals’. What one fellow calls ‘a minor domestic issue’ soon puts the entire community on the brink of violence. Though its subject matter is grave, Moolaadé brims with humour and vitality. This is politically committed filmmaking at its most vigorous and engaging.” Vogue, tonight at 9:30 p.m.
23rd Annual Vancouver International Film Festival Guide (click on the link)
Each day, VanRamblings will add 10 new reviews of films screening at this year’s Festival, taken from various sources, ranging from the Georgia Straight and the Vancouver Sun to the Hollywood Reporter and the New York Times, as well as many other sources. As of this writing, in alphabetical order, VanRamblings has added reviews for Baghdad Blogger / Salam Pax — Video Reports from Iraq; Beautiful Boxer; L’Esquive; Finisterre; Good Morning, Night; In the Realms of the Unreal; Machuca; Mirage; Or (My Treasure); and Schultze Gets the Blues.
As of this writing, there are 85 reviews available on VanRamblings; an additional 10, or more, reviews will be up on the site by noon Saturday.
More To Come Tomorrow on VanRamblings In the Day 3 Report
On Saturday, VanRamblings will introduce you to another site providing daily coverage of the Festival; provide a link to an audio interview with Fest director Alan Franey, link to Film Festival films that have been designated 14A by B.C.’s Film Classification branch, and thus have been deemed suitable fare for younger viewers (teenagers, not young children); and seek to publish our first Festival photos of the 2004 Vancouver Film Festival.

Continue reading 23rd Annual Vancouver Film Festival Review Guide →

Twenty-three years ago, two young movie enthusiasts named Leonard Schein and Alan Franey briefly interrupted the art-house programming they’d recently started at The Ridge Theatre to launch what they boldly proclaimed to be “The First Vancouver International Film Festival.”
As it survived, thrived and became an institution over the years, the event grew in size and evolved in character. Schein jumped ship in 1985 to take over the Toronto Festival of Festivals (eventually to return to Vancouver to create Festival Cinemas, which morphed into Alliance Atlantis Cinemas in 1998). Franey, working with a select group of programmers, sought to reinforce the ‘window on the world’ mandate of the Festival, and the VIFF became Canada’s pre-eminent independent, international film festival.
On Thursday, September 23rd, as the festival begins the first week of its 23rd anniversary edition, organizers are emphasizing the international focus of the two-week festival, which will showcase films from across the globe, including Malaysia, Peru, Latvia and Finland.
A series dubbed Dragons and Tigers will feature films from across East Asia. On the night of its anniversary gala on October 2nd, the festival will present the Dragons and Tigers award for Young Asian Cinema. To mark the occasion, the festival will show Electric Shadows, the d�but feature by China’s Xiao Jiang. The tangled family story, set in Ningxia and Beijing, glances back lovingly at five decades of Chinese filmmaking. Programmer Tony Rayns describes the film as a “Chinese Cinema Paradiso.”
The Canadian Images series will showcase more than 100 films — comprised of 33 features, 9 mid-length films and 64 shorts — one of the world’s largest showcases of new Canadian works. Velcrow Ripper’s ScaredSacred kicks off the Canadian Images series, the film taking us on a visually stunning tour of some of the world’s ‘Ground Zeroes’. Programmer Diane Burgess avers, “There’s an international flavour to this year’s programme that reflects a broader understanding of our definition of Canadian film.”
As seen through one eye, the Festival’s prospects for the next 23 years look bright. Its audience is fiercely devoted, and the increasingly bloated Hollywood alternative seems intent on driving discerning moviegoers to the intellectual relief of film festivals.
Through the other eye, though, it’s easy to see many challenges on the festival horizon — not the least of which is an ongoing dearth of genuinely exciting product. The sad fact is that the great foreign-film renaissance on which all the world’s film festivals built themselves is over.
Fellini, Truffaut and Fassbinder have long passed into history and no one half as substantial or charismatic seems to have taken their place. Every film in every film festival seems to be by a first-time director, or at least by someone you’ve never heard of. Where are the dazzling auteurs?
The growing DVD revolution may negatively impact the festival business, as well. This year, almost a dozen of the films in the lineup are already on DVD and available for rental in Vancouver at half the festival ticket price. Next year, there’ll be even more.
How does a film festival stay viable — and special — in the face of all these trends? Obviously, by ferreting out and fighting for the best films, by insisting on the best presentation and by sparking the schedule with creative showmanship and imaginative film education.
And the good news for VIFF’s future is that the current group of programmers have decades of experience, they like each other and work well together, and they seem quite cognizant of the challenges ahead.
Above all, their calling is clearly a labour of love.
Says programming consultant Jack Vermee, “Somehow, we’re able to communicate that, and also that we’re a group of people who aren’t in it for the money, that we’re the antithesis of the kind of corporate thinking that runs the business. And, amazingly, Alan’s been able to maintain this aura over the years.”
“So the Vancouver International Film Festival has always seemed like a big party, and the audience has been bonded with this love. It’s what makes (VIFF) special, and different from any other festival — and, if we have any kind of legacy worth maintaining, that’s it.”
The Vancouver International Film Festival runs September 23rd to October 8th. Online booking available at www.viff.org with Visa only. Cash sales at Pacific Centre Kiosk and Vancouver’s City Square Mall.

Continue reading 23rd Annual Vancouver International Film Festival Guide →

Late tomorrow evening, VanRamblings will publish a comprehensive review guide to the upcoming 23rd annual Vancouver International Film Festival.
Over the course of the next 18 days, VanRamblings will — as we did when covering the recent Canadian federal election — turn the site over, exclusively, to coverage of the Film Festival, one of the première events on British Columbia’s arts calendar each year.
Stay tuned. One hundred early reviews of VIFF films are on their way.