01:00 – Podcast Introduction

03:00 We preview a selection of films from the 2017 Vancouver International Film Festival, and speak with Alan Franey, Director of International Programming (and longtime former Festival Director). On today’s podcast we also talk with visiting and local filmmakers about their new works. 

VIFF is massive with 342 short and feature-length films from 69 countries (including 11 world premieres, 39 North American premieres, and 47 Canadian premieres), creator talks with filmmakers and TV showrunners. Lots to do so how to get started? Listen in!

05:00 Reseba: The Dark Wind

Trailer  VIFF Page and screening times

Following this week’s Iraqi Kurdistan independence referendum, here is a timely film to learn more of the story. Kurdish director Hussein Hassan has made a film of the utmost urgency. Detailing ISIS’s genocidal attacks on the Yazidi people of Iraqi Kurdistan, it’s a taut, compelling drama that will resonate everywhere it’s seen. Pero (Diman Zandi) and her fiancé Reko (Rekesh Shabaz) are cautiously looking forward to a good life together when their village is invaded; Pero is taken and sold into sexual slavery. When, mercifully, she’s reunited with Reko, she finds that she’s viewed as tainted by her peers…

10:00 Bosch: The Garden of Dreams

Trailer    VIFF Page and screening times

One of the highlights of the many events staged to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the death of Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch, documentary veteran José Luis López-Linares’ wide-ranging inquiry into the painter’s most famous work, The Garden of Earthly Delights, is fascinating on many levels. A mysterious triptych that has had as many interpretations as it has had viewers, the painting—commissioned by Brussels’ counts of Nassau in the early 1500s when the power of religion was beginning to wane and capitalism was ascendant—represents, at one and the same time, a compendium of sin and redemption, a vision of Hell and an erotic delirium. But what does this unbridled fantasy, with its many encrypted messages, actually mean to say about the world and humankind’s place in it?

15:00 ACORN and the Firestorm

Film clip and Review    VIFF Page and screening times

Interview with Rueben Atlas, Co-director. The documentary, set to make its westcoast premiere at VIFF, explores how the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), a group of over 400,000 left-leaning members, became a major player in the 2008 presidential election that resulted in Barack Obama’s victory, and was subsequently taken down by the strategic efforts of conservatives, including exposé videos from a then-budding media entity spearheaded by Andrew Breitbart. 

30:00 Interview with Alan Franey, Director of International Programming, VIFF

We talk about the many highlights of this year’s spectacular programming with Alan Franey who successfully steered the Vancouver International Film Festival as its Festival Director for many years, and now works as its Director of International Programming.

48:00 Never Steady Never Still

Trailer    VIFF Page and screening times    Website

Interview with Kathleen Hepburn, Director

Winner of Most Promising Director of a Canadian Short Film at VIFF 15 for her short film of the same name, Hepburn excels with this expanded version.  Set against a spectacular northern BC backdrop, Kathleen Hepburn’s much-anticipated debut is the intimate story of Judy, a devoted mother wrestling with Parkinson’s (Shirley Henderson, astonishing in a demanding role), and Jamie (Théodore Pellerin), a son saddled with unwanted adult responsibilities while attempting to come to grips with his slippery sexual identity. While Jamie’s hardship sees him weathering the unrelenting abuse of his oilfield co-worker (Hello Destroyer’s Jared Abrahamson), Judy’s obstacles take more mundane forms: as her health deteriorates, even meal preparation represents a Herculean effort. Left listing by a devastating loss, mother and son find their lives slowly steered back on course with the friendship they each forge with a pregnant teenager (Mary Galloway).