Sundance debuts Canuck gore film
The scattergun selection of features and shorts opening the Sundance Film Festival represents artistic director John Cooper's attempt to return the festival to its indie roots.
"It was almost impossible to find a film that represented the entire program, and if you have one opening film, it's so talked about, it's the only thing happening and tends to be the lead story. I wanted the lead story to be a lot of films and a lot of subjects," Cooper said.
Fourteen Canadian films are set to screen over the next 10 days in Park City, Utah, among them Denis Villeneuve's critically acclaimed Incendies, which is highlighted in the Spotlight program.
The Canadian contingent also brings aboriginal stories and a film about a hobo with a thirst for vengeance to screen at the popular Park City in the Midnight program.
That film is Nova Scotia director Jason Eisener's debut feature, Hobo with a Shotgun, which has sold out its first four midnight showings. The gore-soaked B-movie stars Rutger Hauer as a vagrant vigilante who blows away bad guys with his own brand of justice.
Eisener's road to Sundance began with a fake trailer that ran between the Grindhouse films, a pair of horror flicks written by Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez that screened together three years ago.
Eisener conceived and created the fake trailer with his best friend Johnathan Davies in less than three weeks, entering it in a contest to win a slot between the Grindhouse films.
"Once we heard the idea for that contest we knew we had to jump on it. We actually started shooting the trailer the night we heard about the contest," Eisener said in an interview with CBC News. After the Grindhouse debut in Los Angeles, producer Alliance Films called Eisener and requested a full feature treatment. They couldn't believe their luck with B-movie great Hauer signed on to the project.
Eisener and Davies misspent their youth in Dartmouth, N.S., watching horror flicks and they hope Sundance's Midnight viewers have the same tastes.
"I just hope there's an audience there that will get into this film and dig it," Eisener said.
It's his second trip to Sundance — his short film Treevenge screened there three years ago.
Other Canadian features to premiere include:
* I Melt with You, a Canada-U.S. co-production by Mark Pellington.
* The Salesman (Le Vendeur) by Sébastien Pilote.
* Vampire, a Canada-U.S. co-production by Iwai Shunji.
* Family Portrait in Black and White by Julia Ivanova.
Nathalie Cavezzali, a Montreal actress who stars in Quebec director Pilote's Le Vendeur, said the sad, sweet story will resonate with Americans suffering through the economic downturn.
"What really pleased the Americans is the truthfulness of the film," she said. "It's a simple story, very touching. It's the kind of film that when you go out of the movie theatre you stay with it for a while."
It follows car salesman Marcel Lévesque whose livelihood is threatened by the decline of jobs and industry in his small town.
"They have big economic problems right now in the States so I think they can relate very much to that," Cavezzali said.
Three Canadian filmmakers have a place in the Sundance presentation of films by aboriginal filmmakers as well as in the overall short film competition.
Among them is Danis Goulet, whose short film Wapawekka is an intensely personal exploration of native family life.
"It was based on my experiences growing up in Saskatchewan. It's really about the intergenerational differences in a family," she told CBC News.
"My dad grew up hunting and fishing and really living on the land and within the span of one generation, there is such immense change. I don't speak Cree and I live here in Toronto, now."
Wapawekka is the name for the lake near La Ronge where Goulet grew up and where she shot the film. She cast her father, her uncle and many other local people in the film.
Her cousin plays the lead role of an aboriginal teen who chafes at spending time there.
"He's a hip-hop artist. He's got places to go, people to see, so being stuck at a cabin with his dad is the last thing he wants to do. They've got to find a way to be together," Goulet said.
Goulet is a Métis artist who says she rarely saw her own life reflected on screens when she grew up.
"In a general audience, people respond to [aboriginal stories] because they are under-represented, but also they enrich our understanding," she said.
The native film program at Sundance also includes The Cave, by Helen Haig-Brown of B.C., about a hunter on horseback who accidentally discovers a portal to the afterlife and Choke by Michelle Latimer, the actress who played Trish Simpkin on Paradise Falls, about a man who encounters the lost souls of the city after leaving the reserve.
The Sundance Film Festival will screen 120 feature films and 80 shorts over the next 11 days.
Stars expected to attend include Don Cheadle, Kevin Spacey, Demi Moore, Pierce Brosnan, Katie Holmes, Kevin Spacey and Tobey Maguire.
News From: www.cbc.ca
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