It was crunch time, with just 72 hours to go before the opening gala, but that didn’t dampen Kathy Kay’s reflective spirit at Victoria Film Festival headquarters.
This year’s festival will be a blast from the past, its director said, but not just because of the 1960s-themed opening bash on Friday night at 722 Johnson St.
Like so many of its off-screen events, Friday night’s gala party theme was chosen “just for fun” — much like last year’s dazzling Speakeasy-flavoured shindig. Theme cocktails will correspond to the action on three floors, including a replica of Andy Warhol’s factory, with a Polaroid-clutching lookalike; a white rabbit dispensing treats; a Breakfast at Tiffany’s party, and a Central Park hippie “be-in.”
Cinephiles will likely wax nostalgic as much about the festival’s past as the swinging ’60s after walking the pink carpet to the gala screening of the Steve Coogan comedy Alan Partridge at the Odeon.
This is a significant milestone, after all. It’s the 20th anniversary of the little festival that could, its principal venue shifting to the Odeon after last fall’s shutdown of Empire Capitol 6. Many of the features, shorts, documentaries and animated fare on tap will also be shown at the Vic Theatre, doubling as the Springboard industry conference site, and Parkside Victoria’s small but luxurious cinema.
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Indeed, with attendance ballooning to 24,200 last year, more than twice as many as the festival attracted a decade ago, the 10-day event has come a long way since 1995, when it began as a modest three-day affair showcasing 42 films for a few hundred filmgoers under the auspices of CineVic, Cinecenta and Origins Theatre.
Victoria-raised Atom Egoyan’s Devil’s Knot, Vancouver filmmaker Ben Ratner’s Down River, Vancouver director Jason James’s That Burning Feeling, hometown helmer Andrew Naysmith’s Tide Lines, and dozens of films from farther afield such as Our Man in Tehran, The Rocket, Young & Beautiful and the Irish charmer Life’s a Breeze — have generated early buzz and, in some cases, advance ticket sellouts.
This year’s opening weekend spotlight will be on the stars of the festival’s inaugural In Conversation With series of pre-screening discussions. Participants include Egoyan; former Canadian ambassador to Iran Kenneth Taylor and co-director of Our Man in Tehran Drew Taylor (no relation), avant-garde Winnipeg filmmaker Guy Maddin, prodigious Canadian actor, writer and director Don McKellar and comedian Bob Martin, his collaborator on Sensitive Skin, their new Movie Central series starring Kim Cattrall.
Don’t be surprised to hear festival veterans reminiscing this weekend about familiar faces from years gone by.
While the Victoria festival has always emphasized showcasing international gems and Canadian film and being a launch pad for emerging filmmakers, its roster has been impressive.
Memorable high-profile guests include directors John Landis, Arthur Hiller, Charles Martin Smith, Lewis Teague, prolific Canucks Egoyan, McKellar, Bruce McDonald, Carl Bessai and Ron Mann, Gareth Edwards (Godzilla) and Alan Rudolph (Choose Me), the godfather of American independent cinema. It has also attracted dozens of actors, including Kris Kristofferson, the late Richard Farnsworth (The Grey Fox), Linda Blair, Madeleine Sherwood, Keith Carradine, Dirk Benedict, Beverly D’Angelo, Matt Frewer and Campbell River-born actor Barry Pepper.
While Kay still hasn’t been able to bring in one of her most coveted guests — Mads Mikkelsen, the Danish actor seen in festival films including The Hunt and Flame and Citron — she says she hasn’t given up hope. Meanwhile, she’s treasuring accomplishments the festival has become known for — such as showcasing Canadian filmmakers she and programmer Donovan Aikman believe deserved attention.
Notable examples include shining an early spotlight on Warren P. Sonoda, whose debut feature Ham & Cheese made its world première here, and David Birdsell, now working in the U.S.
“We helped give Warren a lift, which was cool, and I just love David’s sense of humour,” said Kay, proud to have been able to showcase Birdsell’s quirky shorts Blue City and Phil Touches Flo.
It’s not for nothing the Victoria festival consistently attracts world-class players such as Harold Gronenthal, the AMC/Sundance Channel executive whose Springboard appearances are a highlight, says Sheena Macdonald, chief operating officer of the Canadian Film Centre. (Gronenthal’s keynote speech on Friday, 2:30 p.m., at the Vic is on how changing technology affects media delivery platforms.)
Macdonald, a veteran of festivals worldwide, says Victoria provides a significant forum for filmmakers, especially emerging ones.
“[It] is extremely well-run, relevant and very welcoming to their guests,” she said. “It’s a fantastic place to network, and people leave with stronger relationships within the industry.”
Larry Weinstein’s film Mozartballs also made festival history when 250 lit candles on a cake celebrating Mozart’s birthday set off alarms at the Odeon in 2006, triggering an automatic shutdown.
It was enough to extinguish, we assume, any thoughts of bringing in a cake with 20 flaming candles this time out.
Film festivals aren’t exempt from unforeseen mishaps such as this, or delayed or damaged film prints, or guests who renege at the 11th hour, as both Robert Lantos and Steve Oedekerk once did.
“It’s bad behaviour, but we had to take it on the chin,” says Kay, who was as disappointed as local zombie movie lovers when horror movie icon George A. Romero also backed out in 2011.
“I try not to think about them,” says Kay, who hasn’t had as much luck avoiding reminders about the festival’s infamous Wadd controversy in 2000.
All hell broke loose when organizers of the Victoria Independent Film and Video Festival, as it was then known, announced that Wadd: The Life and Times of John C. Holmes would screen at St. Ann’s Academy, a former convent. The Greater Victoria Concerned Citizens Association sought an injunction to block the cheesy documentary about the porn icon, saying the building was sacred ground.
It wasn’t public pressure to change the screening venue that prompted organizers to pull the film, however. It was legal action threatened by the porn star’s widow, Laurie Holmes (a.k.a. Misty Blue) the adult film actor who had filed a lawsuit a few months earlier against distributor VCA Labs Inc., and John Holmes’s former manager Bill Amerson.
Holmes sued for defamation of character, based chiefly on Amerson’s reference to her as a hooker in the documentary she told us “was full of crap anyway.”
Kay still moans — and not from pleasure — when the topic comes up, partly because they felt the venue was justifiable.
“I was wet behind the ears when that came down,” she said. “It felt like an unreasonable complaint and I felt we should hold our ground. We have to be careful about who gets up on their soapbox.”
Ironically, the Wadd controversy overshadowed a more graphic entry that year, she said — Tops and Bottoms, Christine Richey’s explicit sado-masochism subculture documentary.
After 17 years at the helm, Kay has been around long enough now to have grown accustomed to potentially negative attention that entries with sexual content, however justified, can attract.
In 2011 it was the nudity and stylized sex in House of Pleasures, Bertrand Bonello’s artful snapshot of a Paris brothel’s final days, that aroused controversy.
Last year, it was The Final Member, the documentary focusing on an eccentric curator who preserves penises at an Icelandic museum, that got people talking, albeit with a sense of humour.
How audiences will react to a French teenager’s sexcapades in Francois Ozon’s Young & Beautiful, or the bountiful gay sex in the erotic drama Stranger by the Lake remains to be seen.
Whatever happens, Kay says the festival isn’t fading to black anytime soon and, with the Vic Theatre now available as a year-round digital venue, will adapt to changing times.
“We’ve managed to stay on course, but I’m never feeling like this one’s done,” says Kay, a former chef. “It’s never perfect, but we’re getting there.”
For movie times and more, go to victoriafilmfestival.com.
