NorthwestFilmFest and Rainbow Visions: A joyful Blur of Texas Chainsaws, Alberta film, Cruising and Andy Kaufman
Action — and how! Canada's oldest and ever-evolving documentary film festival NorthwestFilmFest is back with a brilliant lineup, covering just about anything you might want to point a camera at.
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Opening with a Blur double feature and closing on a one-two punch of Texas Chain Saw Massacre gushing love, space, ecological issues, the war in Ukraine, and cinematic portraiture, including an Andy Kaufman doc, are all on the weird and wild docket, rolling Thursday through May 15 at Metro Cinema.
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Then, snugged right up to the tail end, May 16 -18 is NWFF's punchy queer sibling, Rainbow Visions Film Festival, features more docs and plenty of classic narrative fiction films, like the much-lauded doc The Secret of Me, William Friedkin's Cruising and a reprise of local documentary Flashback.
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Longtime festival director Guy Lavallee was enjoying voice-stifling laryngitis, so we had to skip our lengthy annual state-of-the-world chat.
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A: We did a very slight re-brand this year, going from NorthwestFest — or, under its full name, the NorthwestFest International Documentary Festival — to NorthwestFilmFest.
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Why? We're getting more and more submissions each year, especially from Alberta-based filmmakers. But we were severely limiting our ability to program these films by restricting them to docs. By simply adding the word 'Film' to the title, it tells filmmakers and audiences what kind of festival this is. It now also has a nice rhythm with our genre festival, NorthwestFEARFest.
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Opening up the parameters a bit resulted in a roughly 65 per cent increase in submissions, with films submitted from 70 countries.
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Q: Your very global fest has an understandably wide range of topics.
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A: At the end of the day, our core programming is really all about films that mean something to us, and that we think will mean something to audiences.
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We've got films about beloved actors and performers, like gregarious leading man George Segal, brilliant and misunderstood cult comedian Andy Kaufman in Thank You Very Much, and the first and only deaf woman to ever be nominated for — and win — an Oscar with Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore.
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There's a whole bunch of films about some of the major issues of the day, including librarians who have become the first responders in the fight against the new book-banning trend in the United States with The Librarians; the fight to save reproductive rights in Zurawski V Texas; a look at the toll captivity takes on elephants — including one particularly well-known local one in Lucy: The Stolen Lives of Elephants.
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Japan Forward
19-06-2025
- Japan Forward
British Food and Music Shine at Tokyo Embassy
The British Embassy in Tokyo came alive on June 12 with the sounds, scents, and flavors of the United Kingdom at British Beats and Bites – A Celebration of UK Food, Drink and Culture. The event brought together diplomats, entrepreneurs, creatives, and media for an immersive cultural experience centered on the UK's evolving identity as a food and music powerhouse. Hosted in the elegant setting of the British Ambassador's residence, the evening showcased everything from classic British cuisine to artisanal drinks. It culminated in a Britpop-infused DJ set by none other than Alex James, the former bassist of Blur and now an ambassador for British food and drink. Opening the evening was Emil Levendoglu, Minister and Deputy Head of Mission, who welcomed guests with warmth and humor. "It's a great pleasure to be welcoming you to a celebration of British food, drink, creativity — and, it turns out, cocktails," he said. Levendoglu described the modern British food scene as "bold, diverse, and globally inspired," noting how it has been shaped by the many cultures that make up contemporary Britain. "From Michelin-starred restaurants to buzzing food markets, our chefs and producers are constantly blending tradition with new ideas," he said, drawing a parallel with Japan's own culinary culture. Beyond food, Levendoglu emphasized the strong cultural ties between the UK and Japan. "This evening is also about the deep and enduring friendship between the UK and Japan, and the cultural ties that bind us together. Not just in food, but also in music, art, and creativity." Those cultural ties came to to life with the presence of Alex James, a man who embodies the crossover between British music and British food. Introduced by Levendoglu as "a very special guest" and "a passionate advocate for British food and drink," James brought not only nostalgia for his days in Blur but a sense of fun and reinvention. Blur bassist Alex James (©JAPAN Forward) Before his DJ set, James offered a heartfelt toast. "I really am delighted to be in Japan again with my family," he said. "And this time I'm not here as a musician — I'm here as a champion of UK food and drink." He went on to share how meaningful it was to see Japanese guests trying his own product, Brittle Pop, for the first time. "Hopefully, we've managed to get people thinking differently and created some new fans of UK food and drink." The crowd greeted the toast, "To the UK, and to Japan, and to food, and to drink, and to music," with a resounding "Kanpai!" Guests were treated to passed canapés like cold-smoked Scottish salmon on buttered toast, vol-au-vents filled with mushrooms, and bite-sized omelettes made with organic vegetables. Heartier fare included a shepherd's pie station, chicken curry, and roast beef served with ratatouille and gravy. Each dish offered a distinct window into the culinary identity of the UK. The sushi station, featuring kappamaki (thin sushi roll filled with cucumber) and tuna rolls, was a nod to the host country while underscoring the cross-cultural spirit of the evening. For cheese lovers, a curated selection featuring Wales' creamy Perl Las and England's Shropshire Blue, vintage cheddar, and Rutland Red added a tangy punch to the tasting experience. British cuisine at British Beats and Bites (©JAPAN Forward) Drinks reflected the diversity of the UK's four nations, with a showcase of gins and whiskies from England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. Signature cocktails made with spirits from all four nations added flair to the evening, while Belvoir soft drinks provided a refreshing non-alcoholic option. Desserts, including whisky-infused chocolate squares, blueberry custard tarts, and raspberry macarons, were passed around as the party reached its peak. 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Calgary Herald
08-05-2025
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Darin Hagen among winners as Edmonton music, film, books and visual arts awarded $100,000
Article content The $100,000 annual Edmonton Arts Prizes have been awarded, showcasing an impressive range of local talent and vision! Article content Article content Longtime playwright, queer advocate and drag legend Darin Hagen has taken the City of Edmonton Film Prize for his documentary Pride vs. Prejudice: The Delwin Vriend Story, it was announced at a ceremony at Roxy Theatre Wednesday night, while alternative electro-pop artist margø has grabbed its Music Prize cousin for her debut album, who are you when you're alone? Article content Article content Novelist, bookseller and Afghanistan veteran Benjamin Hertwig, meanwhile, won the Robert Kroetsch City of Edmonton Book Prize for his tender, battlefront debut novel Juiceboxers. Article content Article content Besides the honour of recognition by peers, each category winner is awarded $15,000, with $5,000 apiece going to everyone else on the short list. Article content The runners up in each category are Don Depoe/Dept. 9 Studios for Dark Match and Scott Portingale for Emergence for the film prize — the three movies playing NorthwestFilmFest Monday night at Metro Cinema starting at 7 p.m. with Q and As to follow. Article content Celeigh Cardinal's Boundless Possibilities and King Thief's self titled album scored the music prize's runners-up spots, meanwhile, while Gail Fraser's By Strength, We Are Still Here: Indigenous Peoples and Indian Residential Schooling in Inuvik, Northwest Territories, and Marilyn Dumont's South Side of a Kinless River rounded up the books list. Article content Article content Finally, for visual arts, the runners up were Cheyenne Rain LeGrande for mi^kisak and Heather Shillinglaw's MNIDOONS GIIZIS OONHG – LITTLE SPIRIT MOON (NOVEMBER). Article content Article content Last year's winners were HAIDEE's album This Shouldn't Be Typical, Cody Lightning's film HEY, VIKTOR!, Kelsey Stepehnson for Currents — also at Art Gallery of St. Albert, PS — and essayist Jennifer Bowering Delisle for Micrographia. Article content The annual awards honouring 12 of our finest is shepherded by Edmonton Arts Council, in partnership with the City of Edmonton and community partners Alberta Media Production Industries Association, Alberta Music, Audreys Books, CARFAC Alberta, Edmonton Community Foundation and Writers' Guild of Alberta. Article content Deadlines for the 2026 awards are early December for books, late January for the other three prizes.
Vancouver Sun
07-05-2025
- Vancouver Sun
NorthwestFilmFest and Rainbow Visions: A joyful Blur of Texas Chainsaws, Alberta film, Cruising and Andy Kaufman
Action — and how! Canada's oldest and ever-evolving documentary film festival NorthwestFilmFest is back with a brilliant lineup, covering just about anything you might want to point a camera at. Opening with a Blur double feature and closing on a one-two punch of Texas Chain Saw Massacre gushing love, space, ecological issues, the war in Ukraine, and cinematic portraiture, including an Andy Kaufman doc, are all on the weird and wild docket, rolling Thursday through May 15 at Metro Cinema. Then, snugged right up to the tail end, May 16 -18 is NWFF's punchy queer sibling, Rainbow Visions Film Festival , features more docs and plenty of classic narrative fiction films, like the much-lauded doc The Secret of Me, William Friedkin's Cruising and a reprise of local documentary Flashback. Get top headlines and gossip from the world of celebrity and entertainment. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder. The next issue of Sun Spots will soon be in your inbox. Please try again Interested in more newsletters? Browse here. Individual tickets are available, as well as festival passes for each or a combo pass covering both — head to to find it all, including a detailed schedule with ticket links. Longtime festival director Guy Lavallee was enjoying voice-stifling laryngitis, so we had to skip our lengthy annual state-of-the-world chat. Still, he managed to enthuse and inform… Q: First up, NWFF. How many submissions for year 43 — and what else is new? A: We did a very slight re-brand this year, going from NorthwestFest — or, under its full name, the NorthwestFest International Documentary Festival — to NorthwestFilmFest. Why? We're getting more and more submissions each year, especially from Alberta-based filmmakers. But we were severely limiting our ability to program these films by restricting them to docs. By simply adding the word 'Film' to the title, it tells filmmakers and audiences what kind of festival this is. It now also has a nice rhythm with our genre festival, NorthwestFEARFest. Opening up the parameters a bit resulted in a roughly 65 per cent increase in submissions, with films submitted from 70 countries. Q: Your very global fest has an understandably wide range of topics. A: At the end of the day, our core programming is really all about films that mean something to us, and that we think will mean something to audiences. So you've got pop culture covered by showing films about the Dateline NBC news 'sting' phenomenon, To Catch a Predator with Predators and board game fanatics with The Hobby: Tales From the Tabletop. We've got films about beloved actors and performers, like gregarious leading man George Segal, brilliant and misunderstood cult comedian Andy Kaufman in Thank You Very Much, and the first and only deaf woman to ever be nominated for — and win — an Oscar with Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore. There's a whole bunch of films about some of the major issues of the day, including librarians who have become the first responders in the fight against the new book-banning trend in the United States with The Librarians; the fight to save reproductive rights in Zurawski V Texas; a look at the toll captivity takes on elephants — including one particularly well-known local one in Lucy: The Stolen Lives of Elephants. Plus, the story of the activists who have been trying for decades to Free Leonard Peltier, and the continued endangerment of resident orca whales in The Snake and the Whale. We've managed to snag a number of bona-fide crowd pleasers, including the inspirational story of astronaut Sally Ride in Sally; Speak — a peek behind the scenes of youth speech competitions; Micro Budget, an outrageous mockumentary in the vein of The Office; and the rousing Haida basketball film Saints and Warriors. Q: Does Trump's incomprehensible film tariff announcement give you concern? A: I try to keep my politics to myself when representing the film festival, because we want to make sure everyone knows they are welcome to attend. But in this case, I'm just going to be honest. Even for him, this is beyond stupid. What exactly are you proposing a tariff gets applied to? A film is not a good, it's an intellectual property. I'm convinced more and more he doesn't actually understand what a tariff is. Q: Tell us about the opening and closing-night double features. A: For opening, we were looking for something a little different, and this Blur opportunity — Blur: To the End — just fell into our laps. With this double feature, audiences will get to see an absolutely fantastic behind-the-curtain doc about one of the UK's all-time biggest bands, followed by the full concert Live at Wembley. Filmmaker Alexandre O Philippe's films have long been staples of this festival. With closing night's Chain Reactions, he takes a film that's been part of our cultural lexicon for 50 years and has other artists and filmmakers talk about how what Texas Chain Saw Massacre has meant to them — artistically, creatively, culturally — in these beautifully unhurried monologues. Stephen King, Patton Oswalt, Karyn Kusama and more discuss and dissect the film in ways you may never have thought of before. The film is an incredibly thoughtful work of art, and we're thrilled to have Philippe in attendance for the screening. And it felt borderline criminal to not then screen Tobe Hooper's 1974 classic afterwards, so we're showing it. Q: Can you talk more about the local content — Pride Vs. Prejudice, Dark Match, Stolen Lives? A: When we saw the support last year for some of the locally made films, coupled with the fact that our Alberta film submissions quadrupled this year, we knew there was an audience. I like to have a theme, and so we partnered with AMPIA to screen all three of this year's Edmonton Film Prize finalists. The ceremony itself takes place May 7, and on May 12 we'll be screening all three, complete with Q&As with the filmmakers. The following evening, we're presenting a tremendous package of Alberta Made Shorts, many of which will have the film teams in attendance. Q: What should we look for at Rainbow Visions? A: We've stolen one of our most popular features from FEARFest: the retro screening. We're ramping it up this year, with a brand new, 4K restoration of Lisa Choldenko's classic, High Art; a family-friendly screening of 2007's effervescent musical, Hairspray; a Saturday night screening of 1981's glorious camp classic, Mommie Dearest; and we revisit 1980's most controversial film, William Friedkin's gritty crime thriller, Cruising, a film once very much maligned by the gay community — even causing nationwide protests upon its release — has very much been re-examined and newly appreciated over the years, partly because 45 years later, it is such a time capsule of a very specific time, place and culture that just doesn't exist any more. For the newer films, I can't speak highly enough about Sabbath Queen or Parade, and I'm super stoked to be able to present an encore screening of Flashback, the doc about Edmonton's legendary, influential, iconic '80s nightclub. The filmmakers will be here for a Q&A, we'll have a DJ going, some makeup demos going on in the lobby. It's going to be an absolute blast! And our major headliner screening on Saturday night, an absolutely hilarious, charming, crowd-pleasing coming-of-age comedy called Griffin in Summer. With supporting turns from such heavyweights as Melanie Lynskey and Owen Teague, it's young star Everett Blunck, who absolutely steals the show with his star-making performance. I absolutely adore this movie. It's going to be an amazing year! PREVIEW NorthwestFilmFest/Rainbow Visions When May 8-15/May 16-18 Where Metro Cinema (8712 109 St.) Tickets $10-$16/show, $22/double feature; passes $99/$79-$129/combo at fgriwkowsky@ @ l Bookmark our website and support our journalism: Don't miss the news you need to know — add and to your bookmarks and sign up for our newsletters here. You can also support our journalism by becoming a digital subscriber. Subscribers gain unlimited access to The Edmonton Journal, Edmonton Sun, National Post and 13 other Canadian news sites. 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