LUCID FORGE

The Guelph Festival for Moving Media, or formally the Guelph International Film Festival, is famously known for being called “the film festival with a conscious.” But more than that, the festival is well known for the fact that there was a decade long hiatus for the event before its 2003 resurrection. But after a couple of years of development, the festival has emerged confident with a name change and a slightly bolder focus.

The GFMM has gotten off to early start this year with an outdoor screening at Fourfold Farm near Elora last Thursday. The film was Michael Schmidt: Bioterrorist or Organic Hero? Which chronicles the struggles of Schmidt, a Durham, Ontario farmer and raw milk advocate. Two other pre-festival screenings take place this Thursday at the University of Guelph, both of which tackle the controversial issue of interference from multinational corporations in the third world. Suffering and Smiling follows Nigerian activists that resist through song; while The World According to Monsanto, a Canadian production, aims to debunk the corporation’s newly-minted humanitarian image. The true start of the festival begins Friday, of course, but here GFMM have changed up the program, starting not with a gala screening, but with the Guelph Lecture for Being Canadian. This is the sixth year for this lecture series, which has brought such other luminaries as the first Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations Louise Fréchette, journalist and filmmaker Alexandre Trudeau, and Academy Award nominated director Atom Egoyen to the Royal City to talk about what being Canadian means to them and should mean to us all.

Perfectly timed for the start of the festival, this year’s Guelph Lecture is being given by Guy Maddin, who’s occasionally been referred to as "The Canadian David Lynch." Fresh off his success with My Winnipeg, Maddin will discuss portions of the film in conversation with author Sheila Heti. Additionally, singer-songwriter Melissa McClelland will be performing and acclaimed author Rawi Hage will be reading a passage from his new book Cockroach. For more information or tickets to the Guelph Lecture you can visit the Lecture’s organizer online at http://www.eramosa.org/lecture/



After Maddin’s lecture, it’s all about the films, and it’s an impressive list of documentaries and short films covering a wide variety of topics that will appeal to all ages. The centrepiece is Saturday’s exhibition of the classic 1927 film Metropolis directed by Fritz Lang, which will accompanied by a live musical score by Eccodek's Andrew McPherson and Deliveryboy.



For the kids, a number of films are being offered that range from the engaging to the educational. The main branch of the public library will be exhibiting animated films from the collection of the National Film Board; movies like The Talespinners Collection 1, which tackles themes of identity, diversity, and belonging. It’s followed by Wapos Bay: A Time to Learn, which is a light-hearted stop-motion animation series about the adventures of three Cree children living in remote northern Saskatchewan. Later Saturday evening, a pair of films will be shown at Sunny Acres Park, also from the NFB: the animated The Forming Game and the short documentary Water Detectives.

For the parents, and other adults, the popular theme of the festival remains activism and activists, with water being a recurring motif. The closing gala is The Waterfront, the inspiring story about one Michigan community’s attempt to stop the privatization of water. In The Unforeseen the community of Austin, TX fights to stop a developer from destroying a limestone aquifer. And speaking of life on the water, Surfwise follows a doctor that gives up his practice to live the nomadic life of a professional surfer, dragging his family along with him. Culture is also a prevalent topic in this year’s festival. We Are Wizards documents the impact of the Harry Potter series on the imaginations of a generation. Paperback Dreams follows two San Francisco independent bookstores as they struggle to survive. Another film with a San Francisco connection is 1000 Journals, which is about an artist’s attempt to unite the world by sending one thousand blank diaries into the world to be filled by the people whose hands they fall into, and the one book that came back.

But aside from whimsy, GFMM also documents serious cultural concerns. The Linguists follows a team of scientists as they scramble to document the disappearing languages of Asia. Seven brothers and sisters struggle to keep the family business, a circus, going in their native Brazil in Pindorama: The True Story of the Seven Dwarfs. And in Examined Life, several of the world’s brightest philosophers talk about the places that inspire them.

And that’s just a sampling of what can be seen this weekend. Many of the screenings will also feature Q&A’s, visiting directors or discussion panels following the main screening. For more information, visit the GFMM’s website at http://www.festivalofmovingmedia.ca/