Last summer, the St. Andrews Film Society joined the Toronto International Film Festival’s Film Circuit Program. Film Circuit offers smaller communities across Canada the opportunity to screen films that were recently (within the past year) shown at the annual TIFF festival held in mid-September.
Following the success of our first TIFF mini-festival in March, the Film Society will be hosting its second mini-festival this fall, with films offered in the W.C. O’Neill Arena Theatre at 7:00 each Sunday evening from October 25 to November 8 ($10 suggested donation). This time, our three chosen films will take us from Cape Breton Island to Manhattan to a small town in Scotland.
We open our festival with Dancing on the Elephant, a Nova Scotia comedy-drama that premiered last September at the Atlantic International Film Festival in Halifax. Directed by Julia Neill and Jacob Z. Smith, and written by Lisa Hagen, the film stars Sheila McCarthy as Nora, a woman forced to move into a nursing home. There she meets Edna (Mary Walsh) and together they attempt to break out of their ‘prison’.
Adapted from Hagen’s stage play (with significant changes), Dancing on the Elephant is an authentic and unsensationalized film about dementia and nursing homes, full of people trying to do their best despite the trials of life. The dialogue is sharp and often very funny, but the humour (like the film as a whole) is gentle. We wanted to open the festival with a film from the Maritimes. We are pleased to present a humanizing, heartfelt and poignant film which will do that in a delightful and thought-provoking way.
Our second film, Late Fame, was only just released in theatres. It is also written by a woman (Samy Burch, who wrote the recent hit film, Coyote vs Acme), which is important to us in the Film Society. Women have had limited opportunities to write and direct films during the past century and we feel it is important to prioritize films written and directed by women.
Late Fame, directed by Kent Jones, features Willem Dafoe as Ed Saxberger, a forgotten poet living a quiet life as a postal clerk in Manhattan. One day Ed is approached by Meyers (Edmund Donovan), a young admirer who introduces him to a group of fans, including the flirtatious actress Gloria (Greta Lee). Critics describe it as a funny, melancholy and compassionate film with wonderful performances by Dafoe and Lee (we haven’t had a chance to watch it).
We close our mini-festival with I Swear, a Scottish docudrama from Kirk Jones. It tells the true story of John Davidson (Robert Aramayo), a man with severe Tourette syndrome growing up at a time when this neurobiological disorder was virtually unknown in rural Scotland. Aramayo’s performance is sensational. This unsentimental yet moving film is honest about Davidson’s struggles while remaining compassionate and hopeful. Full of subtle humour, I Swear is a crowd-pleaser that will make you laugh and perhaps make you cry. Language warning.
The TIFF Mini-Festival is returning to Saint Andrews from Oct. 25 to Nov. 8.
Vic Thiessen has worked as a film critic and as a lecturer on film. He currently serves as the coordinator of the St. Andrews Film Society (a volunteer position).
