Have you heard of the First Weekend Club? It’s a casual association of Canadian cinemagoers who believe in supporting Canadian cinema. The idea is to see a Canadian movie on its opening weekend, thus boosting its grosses and encouraging its distributor or exhibitor to keep said movie in theatres for a second week.
Since so few distributors and exhibitors have much faith in Canadian films – to say nothing of audiences – this is a very noble idea. (I admit I’m a little leery about the inherent boosterism, since it means these poor people probably trooped out to GravyTrain and Donovan’s Echo, but I guess that’s my issue.)
Beyond the informal agreement to go out and see stuff, the First Weekend Club has been running a screening series in Vancouver for a while that offers supporters a private screening of a Canadian feature, bookended by a live musical performance and a post-movie conversation with the talent behind the film. This Thursday (August 9), the screening series comes to Toronto
with a special presentation of Larysa Kondracki’s 2010 thriller The Whistleblower.
A $12 ticket – available here – gets you the whole package: a reception before the film at 7 pm with music by The Weather Station, a screening of the film at 8 pm and a Q&A with producer Christina Piovesan (in person) and director/co-writer Kondracki (via Skype). The event will be held at the Deluxe post-production facility on Adelaide, for that extra insider zing.
A cranky person might ask why they’re kicking off the Toronto series with a two-year-old movie that, by definition, most First Weekend Club members have probably already seen.
But it’s likely been a year since they’ve seen it, and the film’s strong enough that it will withstand a second viewing, especially for fans of Rachel Weisz and David Strathairn – both of whom are currently all over your TV in those Bourne Legacy ads. (And it’s also likely they couldn’t snare an upcoming Canadian film, since most of those are hoping for a TIFF slot and thus unavailable for sneak peeks.)
So let’s not be cranky. Let’s hope this week’s event gets a decent turnout, enabling the next event to introduce an audience to something they’ve never seen before. And let’s hope that movie proves worthy of their true patriot love.
