Canadian Film Festival Opens In Hamburg
Every Year the Metropolis Kino in Hamburg Holds a Film Festival Dedicated to Canadian Cinema. This Year’s Festival Begins on September 1st until October 20th
September 01st, 2015
The 7th Biennial of Canadian Cinema opens in Hamburg on September 1st. This year’s festival is entitled “Maple Movies 2015 – Diversity and Female Empowerment in Canadian Cinema”, focusing on films by women and about women.
The Biennial of Canadian Cinema is held every year at the Metropolis Kino in Hamburg, the festival is dedicated to oppositional narrative and to the diverse voices of artistic, political, and personal upheaval. As in previous editions of “Maple Movies”, this year organizers have again selected productions of indigenous cinema, which combine creativity along with substantive discourse on contentious themes. This year’s program presents both female filmmakers and female protagonists that ignite a sense of emancipatory force. Stories of individual self-realization and reassurance are the background these films, whilst also capturing the difficult journey to emancipation.
This year’s festival will also present a retrospective of three productions by filmmaker Stéphane Lafleurs, who directs, edits and writes. The Festival will present his films: Continental, a Film Without Guns; Familiar Grounds; and You’re Sleeping, Nicole. Using Lafleurs’s You’re Sleeping, Nicole, one can see the struggles of an ordinary woman growing up in Quebec. The film focuses on Nicole, a 22 year old who isn’t sure what she wants to do with her life. It's hardly the first film to investigate the ennui of post-college twenty somethings, but it's one of the richest. Nicole isn't just listless, she's borderline depressed and kind of self-destructive, a fact that the film only gradually ekes out. Nicole's relationships in the film are expertly captured, from her bond with her brother, highlighting the very particular bond between siblings who are a decade apart, to the starting-to-crumble friendship with Veronique, to her flirtations with JF. This all informs our knowledge of her, and the result is an entirely complete character study of someone we love, but like the other characters, can be frustrated by. Organizers of the festival chose this inspired film as an example of personal struggle along with the road to self-actualization.
The opening ceremony of “Maple Movies” will be held in the presence of director Sarah Goodman and starts in the evening of 1st September. For further information on the program, please visit:
www.metropoliskino.de
References and Links
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