Since the end of last year’s reFrame Film Festival, this year’s festival was beginning to be planned. This cycle has been going on for 8 years in order to bring fascinating films from across the world, country and community to Peterborough. There are “120 committed local sponsors, 110 dedicated volunteers, a dozen local artists exhibiting in a dozen businesses”, according to the program. The films are screened at various locales downtown and on campus, student passes for the weekend are $15 and it is happening this weekend. ReFrame has recently “also received charitable status and found a new home with Green-Up.”
ReFrame has been growing bigger and bigger ever since it started. This year there is a Board of Directors as well as the organizing committee that are committed to making the festival happen and to raise awareness about the films being shown.
This year there will also be a filmmaker’s panel on Saturday, 11:30am to 12:20pm at The Venue downtown. “You get to see things that you wouldn’t get to see first hand,” film student at Trent and reFrame organizer Chris Chapman told Arthur, which includes this rare glimpse into the documentary film making process. Tara Williamson moderates the panel composed of Douglas Arrowsmith, who has won a “Gemini Award for a short documentary that he directed about Montreal singer Nikki Yanofsky”; Joseph Johnson Camí, a Toronto and Barcelona based director of Keepers of the Water; Aube Giroux, a Toronto environmental filmmaker; Lawrence Jackman, National Film Board member and director of How Does It Feel; and Mark Terry, a globe trotting adventure documentary filmmaker.
All the films are documentaries this year, in the past there have been short films. Documentaries to check out this year are:
Blood in the Mobile
Saturday, 5:05 p.m. Showplace
Directed by Frank Piasechi Poulsen
Denmark/Germany, 83 min. 2010
Cell phone production – the dark, bloody side.
We love our cell phones, and when we buy them we can choose from a large selection of different models. But there is a catch: the minerals used to produce those phones are coming from mines in the Eastern DR Congo. In buying these so-called conflict minerals the Western world is financing a civil war that has been the bloodiest conflict since World War II. The war will continue as long as armed groups can finance their warfare by selling minerals. Risking his own life, Frank Poulsen travelled to DR Congo to see the illegal mine industry with his own eyes.
The Creator ’s Game
Friday, 4:30 p.m. Market Hall
Directed by Candace Maracle
Mohawk and Onondaga, 42 min. 2011
A quest for Gold, a struggle for nationhood.
In 2010 the Iroquois Nationals lacrosse team chose to forfeit their chance for the World Championship when they were denied entry into England because of their Haudenosaunee passports. A year later they set off to try competing once again. This timely documentary follows the team on their quest for the 2011 medal at the World Indoor Lacrosse Championships in Prague. That mission turned out to be not just a fight for gold but the continuation of their determined struggle to be recognized as a sovereign nation. As much as they wanted to play, the team members were unanimous in their support for sticking to their principles in only travelling if they could so on their Haudenosaunee passports. “The beauty of the story,” director Candace Maracle says, “is that there could be no bad result.”
And of course be sure to check out The Chicken and the Hedgefund by Arthur Staff Collective writer and anti-nuclear activist Zach Ruiter at Showplace on Friday, 4:30pm. “A core group of 30 people led by aboriginal elders Danny Beaton, Dr. John Bacher, and Patricia Watts went on a five-day walk to protest the brewing current of upstream disaster: a proposed ‘megaquarry’ that if set in place will use toxic liquid explosives to blast the limestone filtering the headwaters of eight major rivers”. Ian McLachlan, Emeritus Professor of Cultural Studies at Trent University says that the film “has a clear and important message, but it is a lot more than just a one-dimensional polemic. “It draws ironic connections between the possible uses and misuses of the land, and in this irony it stands in stark contrast to the banal lies of the corporations.” And environmental activist and Trent student Alisha Embury said The Chicken and the Hedgefund “demonstrates that people are still taking collective action in a country many may consider socially disjointed and passive against industry and government.”
“Being involved with reframe has opened my mind to different kinds of film,” says Chris. So check out some solid cinema this weekend. Go to reframefilmfestival.ca for locations and a schedule.
