THE BEND screening tomorrow – a film by a Concordia alumnus

THE BEND, a film written and directed by Jennifer Kierans, a graduate of Concordia’s MA program in creative writing, will open in Canadian theatres tomorrow, including the AMC Forum.

Jennifer Kierans is a screenwriter, director and producer whose short films have screened at festivals around the world including the Critic’s Week section at Cannes. THE BEND marks her feature film debut. Jennifer now lives in New York City where she is developing her next project entitled BLUE MOVIE.

 

CONTACT INFORMATION
3401 St-Antoine West, Montreal (Quebec) H3Z 1X1 Telephone: (514) 931-6180 x 2657 Fax: (514) 939-2034
www.filmoption.com

Actor Zach Braff, presents ‘The Cost of Living’ next week in Montreal

By Brendan Kelly, text from The Gazette: Show Biz Chez Nous

Zach Braff will be in town next Tuesday (April 12) to talk up the Montreal-shot film The High Cost of Living and he will also be on-hand for the local premiere of the film that night at the Imperial Cinema. Braff is most famous for starring in the long-running medical drama Scrubs, in which he played Dr. John Dorian, and for writing, directing and starring in the 2004 indie hit Garden State.

The High Cost of Living won the award for best first Canadian feature at the Toronto International Film Festival last fall and it also nabbed the prize for best screenplay at the Rendez-vous du cinema quebecois earlier this year. Written and directed by Montrealer Deborah Chow, it stars Braff, Isabelle Blais, Patrick Labbe, Julian Lo, Anick Lemay, Sean Lu and Aimee Lee.

It’s a dark drama about Henry (Braff) who, driving under the influence,  smashes his car into Nathalie (Blais), who is eight months pregnant, and then flees the scene of the accident. She loses the baby and just as her relationship is falling apart with her boyfriend Michel (Patrick Labbe), she meets Henry. They become close and, of course, she has no idea who he really is.

I met Braff last year and he had nothing but totally enthused things to say about Chow, her movie and our city,.

The High Cost of Living opens here April 22.

News: Segal Season Launch

The Segal team (Bryna Wasserman, AD, centre) (Photo: Randy Cole)

By Joel Fishbane
Excerpt from The Charlebois Post

(…)

The strengths of Segal Centre has always been its commitment to all artistic disciplines and it’s new season features a slew of dance, music and cinematic offerings which I’d encourage everyone to explore. Theatrically, their studio space offers the most intriguing possibilities: Tableau d’Hote will present Timothy Findley’s astounding Elizabeth Rex while Scapegoat Carnivale (Segal’s new resident company) will be presenting a new play by Joseph Shragge, The Heretics of Bohemia. I can’t tell you anything about it, other that it involves puppets, fairy tales and that it’s producers are the same people who gave us Medea - which, as I continue to tell Artistic Director Alison Darcy every time I see her, was the best show I saw in 2010.

(…)

Continue reading on charpo.blogspot.com/…/

Trailer: MTL PUNK – La première vague (NSFW language)

Screening at FIFA, March 21 & 26.
Visit Facebook.com/MTLPunk for more information.

When the punk movement reached Montreal in 1977, it ignited the passions of a handful of young people who were forever changed by it. Thirty years later, some of the players from this momentous time give a surprisingly frank account of their experiences at this key period in their lives—the music and the drugs, as well as a burning need to do things differently. The film includes rare archival footage of the Montreal punk scene and features the music of the earliest local punk bands: The 222s, The Normals and The Chromosomes.

QDF: Spring ProductionLaunch Calendar

Because so much of what is produced in English in Montreal pops out of nowhere, on a shoestring budget, the launch inevitably offers many surprises, as well as an opportunity to shmooze and nibble.

Read more:MontrealGazette.com

Film: ‘À St-Henri, le 26 août’

The  ONF Presents a Unique Event March 9th.

The feature documentary film ‘À St-Henri, le 26 août‘ was made in less than one year, from pitching the concept to outputting the finished master.

Using a unique collaborative approach, and operating in the style of a fiction film for the one day shoot, fourteen directors, cinematographers and sound recordists along with three production managers, twelve production assistants, card runners, data wranglers, craft delivery bike couriers and sponsorship partners transformed the neighbourhood of St-Henri into a documentary movie set.

As August 26th came to a close, teams trickled in to Parabola Films’ headquarters on St. Ambroise street, buoyed with excitement and stories, close calls and the beauty of the day.

Join the producing team Sarah Spring & Selin Murat, the film’s director Shannon Walsh and special guests to find out how they shot this ninety minute feature film in one day, and produced the entire picture in just eight months.

Nuit Blanche 2011: Scheduel

Back for its 8th year,
the Nuit blanche à Montréal
has become a tradition!

On Saturday, February 26, Montreal’s wildest winter night takes over the city, spreading out over three quartiers and one pôle: Old Montréal and the Quays of the Old Port, Centre-ville (Downtown) and Quartier des spectacles, Plateau-Mont-Royal and Mile-End and the Pôle Maisonneuve!

for more information, click here.

Litlive.ca launch Friday: Canada’s 1st web mag on national spoken word scene

Litlive launch party

Fri Feb 18 8pm
Sala Rossa (4848 St-Laurent)
Doors open 8PM; show starts 9PM
$5 (or pay what you can)
See map: Google Maps

Facebook event page: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=187852347913814

The whole spoken word community comes together for LITLIVE.CA, the first web magazine to document and review the spoken word scene across this country.

The show features music, poetry and vibe from the KalmUnity Vibe Collective (with Katalyst, Fabrice, Deanna Smith and Blackbird )
It’s the fabulous Alexis O’Hara flying in from Europe to perform
It’s Catherine Kidd, Fortner Anderson and the national launch of poetry/trance band Pharmakon MTL’s latest CD “To Call Out in the Night”

It’s Luna Allison, Kaie Kellough and Throw Collective’s Alessandra Naccarato

Your host and MC for the night is the editor of LITLIVE, poet and CKUT show host Mr. Vince Tinguely.

The launch of LITLIVE.CA is sponsored by the Canada Council for the Arts and CKUT 90.3FM. It is produced by Wired on Words Productions.

Source: http://www.rabble.ca/whatsup/litlive-launch-party

Funkytown: A new Roby & Galluccio film spotlights Montreal’s disco era

 

Montreal moves in step with disco’s groove by Brendan Kelly (Gazette)

“… Director Daniel Roby and screenwriter Steve Galluccio want to take you to Funkytown, which is the Lipps Inc.-inspired title of their gritty, ultra-ambitious movie opening across the province on Friday.

The film, which has echoes of acclaimed American director Paul Thomas Anderson’s ensemble dramas Boogie Nights and Magnolia, is a snapshot of Montreal at the height of the disco era in the second half of the 1970s, when our town was the second-most important disco hub on the continent, just behind the Big Apple. Stars like Mick Jagger, David Bowie and Grace Jones came to Montreal to party, and clubs like 1234 on Mountain St. and the Lime Light on Stanley St. helped establish the city as a can’t-miss pit stop for international jet-setters.

Funkytown revolves around a downtown nightclub called the Starlight, which will be immediately recognizable to anyone who lived in Montreal at the time as a thinly fictionalized version of the legendary dance mecca the Lime Light. The flick could be subtitled The Rise and Fall of Disco, starting with the drug-fuelled good times of 1976-77 and then taking a turn for the dark and depressing with a chronicle of the crash that inevitably followed in the final couple of years of that decade.

The film is half in French, half in English, with Roby and Mambo Italiano scribe Galluccio making the courageous decision to accurately reflect the linguistic mix at this dance hot spot in the west end of downtown…”

Continue reading on www.montrealgazette.com/entertainment/…

ELANews: January 2011

Director’s Message

ELAN wishes all the best for 2011 to all of our members and friends. We all have projects dear to our hearts that we’ll be pursuing this year, and ELAN will continue to make every effort to spread the news of your creations in 2011  through our website, Facebook, Twitter and ELANLinks blog.

With this issue of ELANews we encourage you to also take a look back at some of the highlights of 2010 (see the Year in Review articles listed below). In the midst of this creative explosion we must remember to pay tribute to pioneers who blazed a trail during years when the English-language arts scene was smaller, more fragile and less visible. 2010-11 has seen a number of important anniversaries for leading members of our community: Black Theatre Workshop (40 years), Geordie Theatre and Teesri Duniya (30 years), the Fringe Festival, The Other Theatre and Choeur Maha (20 years), and Pop Montreal, Expozine and Porte Paroles (10 years).

If you know of other trail blazers marking key milestones, please let us know. In March, ELAN will be holding an anniversary party to celebrate these fine organizations, and you’re all invited!

Guy Rodgers
Executive Director