So, let’s take stock. There’s Canadian Music Week’s film component, the ongoing Canadian Film Fest, the start of aluCine … what, that’s not enough programming for you? You want more?
Well, consider the Water Docs International Film Festival, which is underway through Sunday at the AGO’s Jackman Hall. As its name suggests, the festival is dedicated to a single theme, offerings documentary shorts and features about water and water issues. (I bet you didn’t even know today is World Water Day. I certainly didn’t.)
The Water Docs program is a hair on the familiar side tonight’s feature, the very good Lost Rivers, comes straight off its commercial run at the Bloor Cinema, and Sunday afternoon’s The Whale has a few years on it. But the festival does offer the Canadian premiere of Guy Reid’s Watershed on Sunday night.
A documentary about the importance of the Colorado River – “the most dammed, dibbed and diverted river in the world” – Watershed is a passion project for executive producer and narrator Robert Redford. It’s part of a comprehensive effort to reconnect the river with its delta, about which you can read more here. Sounds like a fine idea to me.
A little ways to the northwest, the Canadian Film Festival is in full swing at the Royal. Tonight’s 7 pm show, The Disappeared, has been building some strong buzz: Shandi Mitchell’s drama follows the ordeal of six fishermen (among them Shawn Doyle and Billy Campbell) trying to reach shore after their boat goes down in the North Atlantic. And I enjoyed tomorrow night’s The Scene: An Exploration Of Music In Toronto, Josh Jensen’s scrappy little documentary about how difficult it is for a band to break in Hogtown. (He talked to the guys from Anvil. They know about breaking.) That’s screening Saturday at 6 pm.
If you make it through the weekend, there’s one more thing you should know about. A new monthly series called Sinister Cinema launches Wednesday night at Cineplex theatres across Canada, dedicated to giving indie horror titles. The inaugural screening is Don Coscarelli’s John Dies At The End, screening Wednesday at 9:30 pm. Now, the movie did not especially impress my colleague Glenn Sumi when he saw it at TIFF last year, but this is likely to be the only chance you’ll have to watch Paul Giamatti stammer out the secrets of the universe in a theatre before it comes to disc next month. So, you know, if that’s a thing.
