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TERRA NOSTRA:
RE-MAPPING CANADA
In an entirely different Canadian context, literary critic Northrop Frye once ventured that the quintessential question confronting Canadian culture is: where is here? That question remains a valid and vital one, and its many possible answers are encoded cinematically in films from various Canadian filmmakers. The works in this programme investigate and, in some cases embody in their very styles, the shifting contours of Canadian society and culture on a number of fronts.

As our Alanis Obomsawin retrospective in the Fall of 2007 demonstrated so impressively, there are other maps of this country that are either entirely unseen, deliberately repressed, or, at the very least, difficult to locate. This ongoing series, which really began with the Obomsawin “Cinema of Sovereignty” retrospective, will feature films that confront, depict, or make problematic our sense of the shape and being of Canada. Terra Nostra will, we hope, encourage debate not only about Canada, but how Canada is imagined by its moving image makers from coast to coast to coast. Stay tuned. You’re in for a bumpy, creative, and occasionally impolite ride across and through and along the many maps of nunavut, terra nostra, our land.
Tom McSorley

Sun./dim. Feb. 17 fev., 21:00
WELCOME TO CANADA
Canada 1989 • Director: John N. Smith
Inspired by the 1987 incident in which a boatload of Sri Lankan Tamils were rescued off the coast of Newfoundland by local fishermen, WELCOME is an extraordinarily moving drama of two distinct cultures attempting to communicate. “Much of the film is taken up by the tentative, touching, and frequently comic exchanges between the Tamils (who think they’ve been dropped somewhere near Montreal) and the Newfoundlanders (for whom Ceylon is the name of a tea). As the clock ticks away, and the emissaries of the police and government make their way to the remote village where the refugees have landed, we can’t help but be reminded of the uncertainty of these people’s future, and of the questionable integrity of Canada’s multicultural dream.” Geoff Pevere.

Thurs./jeudi Feb. 28 fev., 21:00
RUDE
Canada 1995, 89 minutes • Director: Clement Virgo

RUDE is the stunning feature debut of Jamaican-born Toronto filmmaker Clement Virgo. Exploring three separate tales taking place over an Easter weekend, the film concerns a man returning to the projects after getting out of jail and trying to go straight, a young woman struggling with a decision to terminate her pregnancy, and a boxer struggling with his homosexuality. All these tales are ingeniously interwoven by a raunchy pirate broadcaster named Rude. Visually and aurally inventive and impressive, RUDE presents a Canada you’ve never seen or heard before. “Clement Virgo’s film, RUDE exposes the gross underbelly of Canadian society. Canada is often times promoted as the kinder gentler nation, but we too have our dirty little secrets. There are ghettos in Canada, there is homophobia and racism, oppression reigns supreme here as much as it does in the good ol’ USA! There are all sorts of CanadianISMS!” Patrice James, director, Independent Filmmakers Co-operative of Ottawa (IFCO).

Fri./ven. March 14 mars, 19:00
EVE & THE FIRE HORSE
Canada 2005, 92 minutes • Director: Julia Kwan

great fervour, while Eve, born under the sign of the fire horse, treats religion as a world of wonder and imagination. A fascinating character study rooted in a Canada that is both changing and is being changed by its new multicultural realities. Preceded by Kwan’s most recent short, SMILE (2007, 18 minutes), about the at once strange and familiar cultural practice of the family portrait, and THREE SISTERS OF THE MOON (2001, 18 minutes), her award-winning coming-of-age short from the Canadian Film Centre. Films in English and in Cantonese with English sub-titles.