Aug 30, 2010
WFG members Caroline Monnet, Matthew Rankin and Cam Woykin will see their short films premiere at the 35th anniversary of TIFF, arguably one of the most important film festivals in the world.
Warchild, directed by Caroline Monnet and produced by Kevin Lee Burton is part of a trilogy of experimental documentary focusing on students from Northern Manitoba who come to live at a boarding school in Winnipeg for Aboriginal youth. Monnet, who grew up between the Celtic coasts of France and the Algonquin territory of Outaouais, QC and currently lives in Winnipeg just completed a photography residency in Berlin. She premiered her short experimental film, IKWÉ, at the festival in 2009.
A short film collaboration long in the making, Negativipeg, directed by Matthew Rankin and produced by Walter Forsberg, tells the story of Rory Lepine, who shot to Herostratic fame in 1985 when he attacked Winnipeg rock legend Burton Cummings with a beer bottle in a North End 7-Eleven. Rankin, a filmmaker from Winnipeg has previously had two other short films in the festival, 2006’s Ou est Maurice?, co-directed with Alek Rzeszowski and 2008’s Cattle Call, co-directed with Mike Maryniuk.
Director and Producer Cam Woykin, originally from Calgary and later Winnipeg, is currently completing his MFA in film production at York University in Toronto. Woykin?s new short film, Open Window, co-produced by Boaz Beeri, intimately depicts the portrait of a family and the rising tension of the unspoken in a single continuous shot.
All three filmmakers will be present in Toronto to see their films premiere at the largest festival in Canada, which will screen only 40 short films in the Short Cuts Canada programme this year.
“Short Cuts Canada highlights the best of new Canadian short film each year, and we’re thrilled that we have films from Manitoban filmmakers that represent their diversity, creativity and passion so vividly in their work. We’re looking forward to welcoming Matthew Rankin and Caroline Monnet back to the festival with world premieres of their newest films, as well as introducing audiences to Cam Woykin with his first appearance at the festival,” says Alex Rogalski, Programmer for Short Cuts Canada.
Also featured this year as part of the Essential Cinema exhibition, the inaugural exhibition at TIFF’s Bell Lightbox, will be Hauntings I and II, eleven new silent short film installations by Winnipeg Film Group honourary lifetime member Guy Maddin. Hauntings I involves eleven projections of reclaimed fragments of cinema’s lost history. Shot in Winnipeg earlier this year with Fassbinder legend Udo Kier, Louis Negin and Tattiawna Jones hired to star, the fragments range from lost avant-garde projects by Hollis Frampton (left on a subway) and Michael Snow to lush dramas from F.W. Murnau and Oscar Michaux. Hauntings II is an original work based on outtakes and inspirational moments from the making of Hauntings I. (Noah Cowan, artistic director of TIFF’s Bell Lightbox)
For more information please contact Monica Lowe at monica@winnipegfilmgroup.com or 204-925-3452
