| Friday May 8, 7 pm, Animation Film Night Program. (May 9 see below) |
| I Met the Walrus2008 Academy Award nominee1n 1964 14yr old Jerry Levitan snuck in to John Lennon's hotel room and interviewed him. Now 40 years later Levitan and director Josh Raskin turn the interview tapes into this 2008 academy award nominated short that is a vital reminder that the state of the world can be changed. Directed by: Josh Raskin
2007, 5 min |
 | Procrastination
“Johnny Kelly is a thoroughly talented chap - and don’t take my word for it - look at this work. Procrastination is a wonderful tour de force bundle of witty, characterful, soulful, clever, creative, colourful, immediate, meaningfully funny moving image. Never has so much come from doing so little!”
An animation looking at the universal trait of procrastination; sometimes the only way to get something done is to do two-dozen other things first.
(Jerwood Moving Image Awards winner 2008)
Director: John Kelly
2007, 4 min. |
| Engine 371 A film without words, Engine 371 examines the building of Canada’s transcontinental railroad. It’s a struggle between man, machine and nature – a struggle that ultimately united our country.
Directed by: Kevin Langdale
2008, 9 min |
| ParadiseJesse Rosensweet belongs to a new wave of storytellers. His narratives are humorous yet dark, quirky yet mature, and he combines his own style with the unique properties of stop-motion animation to create films with universal appeal.
Rosensweet’s first short film, The Stone of Folly, won the Jury Prize for Short Film at Cannes and played at animation and film festivals around the world. He has also directed a number of commercials and music videos, including a stop-motion video for Destiny’s Child. He is currently in production as director on Edison and Leo, a skewed and quirky story about Thomas Edison. It will be Canada’s first stop-motion feature.
Paradise is Rosensweet’s second short animation.
2000 Oscar winner
Directed by: Jesse Rosensweet
2007, 8 min |
| Primiti Too Taa by
Primiti Too Taa uses an excerpt from the poem "Ursonate" (Sonata in primitive sounds) by Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948) as the soundscape for this innovative and experimental film.
Directed by: Ed Ackerman
1988, 4 min |
| Revolver
Flattened fish, beating hearts, spinning churches, Jonas Odell, hourglasses, retrospective and much, much more. This film in black and white by Swedish filmmaker, Odell, uses the device of film looping in an artful and evocative way.
1979 Oscar winner
Directed by: Jonas Odell
1993, 8 min |
| Ricky Sprocket episode (Being Leonard)
Our resident animators in the Valhalla Youth Film School, David and Alison are also the creators and animators of the highly successful TV series Ricky Sprocket. In this episode, Ricky opens an amusement park and Leonard brings Ricky to work with him. The series was produced in 2007 and it is seen in over 150 countries. In Canada, it is aired on Teletoon. Elsewhere, Nickelodeon shows the series in the UK, Australia, Latin America, Germany, Italy, France, Spain and Scandinavia. Nicktoons Network plays the series in the United States. Ricky Sprocket is a Canadian production made in Vancouver, BC.
Directed by: Alison Snowden and David Fine
2007, 11 min |
| Second Class Mail
Second Class Mail is a film is about an old woman's quest for love and companionship, with an unexpected ending. It was directed by Alison Snowden and made at the National Film and Television School in 1984. Alison Snowden and David Fine wrote and animated it. It was made in just three months at the end of their four year course. The crew on the film includes such big time animation names as Nick Park, Mark Baker and Barry Baker.
Second Class Mail runs only 4 minutes, but it won a number of awards including an Oscar nomination.
Directed by: Alison Snowden
1984, 4 min |
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| Special Premiere!by shhhhhhhhhhhhh…
Top secret! – It’s the North American premiere of a fantastic, hilarious animation from an internationally acclaimed filmmaker. You’ll be rolling in the aisles at this spectacular film, shown here in New Denver at the Valhalla Film Festival before it hits the screen any place else in North America!!!
Directed by: shhhhhhhhhhhhhh....
2009, 29 min |
| Saturday May 9, 7 pm. Documentary Film Screening Program |
| From Under the Bushy Trees
Written and Directed by Moira Simpson and Jan Padgett
Director of Photography and Editor Moira Simpson
Chad is a vibrant, poverty-stricken country in the middle of sub-Saharan Africa. It is here that the filmmakers ask a central question concerning North America’s involvement in Africa: how can aid be delivered with justice and dignity?
From Under the Bushy Trees follows Gerri Graber of Powell River, BC to Chad. There she teams up with a young education student, Bartholomew Mokuh, and they work together with the villagers of Manda to build a school. The project captures the imagination of the people of Powell River. As well as the money raised for the school, they also help support a family of seven AIDS orphans. Despite everyone’s best intentions, problems arise.
At the heart of the film are the women of Chad, living in a society of ongoing oppression. During the course of filming, these women meet collectively for the first time and begin taking control over the uses of the new school. They understand, along with the outspoken Lynn Whitehouse, Canada’s Honourary Consul for Chad and resident of the country for thirty years, that education is key to building sustainable social change and a better life for themselves and their children.
From Under the Bushy Trees takes us on an intimate and challenging journey into the complexities of offering aid to Africa.
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| Fearless City Mobile - Mobile Swarm
Direction, camera and editing by Moira Simpson with help from Fearless City Mobile participants
The Fearless City Mobile project is a two-way social media system for marginalized residents and artists of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (DTES). Swarm is an annual event of simultaneous openings of artist run galleries in Vancouver neighbourhoods. Last fall Fearless participants took their Nokia cellphones to thirteen galleries in the DTES and Gastown and encouraged people to text their comments about the artwork they were seeing. A shopping cart roving the streets carried a 42” plasma screen displaying the messages as they came in unfiltered and in real time. Two worlds co-exist in this neighbourhood and on this night they came together.
2009, 4 minutes 45 seconds
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| Fearless City Mobile - W2 – Building a Community Legacy
Made by Fearless City Mobile. Mentored by filmmaker-in-residence, Moira Simpson
The W2 Community Media Arts Centre is a highly anticipated project opening in the fall of 2009 at the landmark Woodwards’ redevelopment in downtown Vancouver. Through the eyes of Downtown Eastside (DTES) residents using video cellphones, the future of Woodwards and W2 is revealed. Seen by city councillors and planners as well as the mayor of Vancouver this piece has become an integral part of the dialogue on W2 and the critical role of community in the evolution of the DTES.
2009, 4 min 30 sec
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| Radiant City – a documentary about suburban sprawl
This film won a Genie award for best documentary. It’s funny. It’s ironic. It’s tongue in cheek. If you don’t live in suburbia, that is ...
Something's happening on the edge of town.
There's a desperate housewife in the parking lot, a musical chorus line mowing the lawn - and a loaded gun in the upstairs closet.
Welcome to Radiant City, an entertaining and startling new film on 21st century suburbanites.
Gary Burns, Canada's king of surreal comedy, joins journalist Jim Brown on an outing to the burbs. Venturing into territory both familiar and foreign, they turn the documentary genre inside out, crafting a vivid account of life in The Late Suburban Age.
Sprawl is eating the planet. Across the continent the landscape is being levelled - blasted clean of distinctive features and overlaid with zombie monoculture. Politicians call it growth. Developers call it business. The Moss family call it home.
While Evan Moss zones out in commuter traffic, Ann boils over in her dream kitchen and the kids play sinister games amidst the fresh foundations of monster houses.
A chorus of cultural prophets provide insight on the spectacle. James Howard Kunstler, author of The Geography of Nowhere, rails against the brutalizing aesthetic of strip malls. Philosopher Joseph Heath fears the soul-eating burbs but admits they offer good value for money. And urban planner Beverly Sandalack dares to ask, “Why can't we walk anywhere anymore?”
2006, 93 min
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