Happy 20th anniversary WIFF, and Opening Night

It’s the 20th anniversary of the Windsor International Film Festival (WIFF) and it’s my 20th anniversary attending it too – kind of. I tend to travel in the Fall and have missed one or two editions. I remember how excited I was when a Windsor film festival was first announced in 2005, and I enthusiastically attended screenings in what used to be Armouries. Its vast parade hall was turned into a makeshift theatre with a giant inflatable screen (before it was rebuilt and now houses a state of the art small cinema). I remember watching movies at the four-screen former Palace Theatre on Ouellette Ave., since turned into the (ironically) now-closed Windsor Star newsroom. In fact, I even collected two seats from the old Palace when they were giving them away during renovation. The festival, started under the auspices of people like Peter Coady and Mark Boscariol, continued to grow and grow, and eventually re-established on a solid footing under Vincent Georgie and a host of government grants and private sector institutional funding (thanks especially Toldo Foundation and LiUNA625) that it now has the trappings of a newfound Windsor industry, presenting films on a year-round basis. It rivals festivals in much larger cities and in fact often outshines them in terms of volume, seminal titles and ease of access. Why would I want to go to the Toronto festival and deal with the circus-like atmosphere and hard to see films when I can watch many of the same features two-month later here, in a more intimate and people-scaled environment? In some ways WIFF's growth has been surprising, since so many people, often natives, used to put Windsor down as "lunch bucket uncultured town.” The joke’s on them. Not only the festival one of the most attended in Canada but it has partly enabled growth of a filmmaking industry, with numerous local cineastes displaying their wares through festival fixtures like this year’s four editions of Local Shorts and the Mark Boscariol 48-Hour Flockfest.   

Notes on last night’s Opening: I hadn’t seen so many people dressed-up since I was at a wedding five years ago. I loved it! ..Vincent Georgie is certainly to be congratulated for how he took the festival to another level after its first years under a different leadership and he was the logical keynote speaker....Among Georgie’s remarks was a Land Acknowledgement, the de rigueur newish and political  “woke” value signal which has permeated  public arts – and other - institutions and which to my mind is vacuous and won’t do a thing to help Indigenous people.....I was puzzled by the choice of the opening film, Shepherds, by Sophie Deraspe of Quebec. A kind of bohemian back to the land tale of an ad man who eschews the corporate world – and Canada – for a lifestyle of rural shepherding in France, as it was cliched and lacking the oomph I would have liked from a gala.  

My top picks for this festival: Maria (Pablo Larrain) - the Maria Callas story starring Angelina Jolie,  Bonjour Tristesse, a remake of the 1958 film starring David Nevin and Deborah Kerr (based on the Françoise Sagan novel) this time starring Chloë Sevigny and directed by Durga Chew-Boss; A Different Man, Aaron Schimberg’s dark comedy starring The Apprentice’s Sebestian Stan (who played Donald Trump); Firebrand (Karim Aïnouz) - intrigue in the bloody court of Henry VIII; It’s Raining Men (Caroline Vignal) –  the perfect vehicle for French star Laure Calamy; Anora, the current sensational hit by Sean Baker crossing a Brooklyn sex worker with a Russian oligarch; The Battle of St. Leonard ( Félix Rose), a documentary about a seminal event in Quebec’s language wars and as a native Quebecer I lived through it; and Conclave (closing film), Edward Berger’s  acclaimed hit starring Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci and John Lithgow.