July: Atlin Festival + Firehall Films - Giant and Northern Shorts
June 15, 2009
HEADS UP- YFS presents films at Atlin Arts and Music Festival in the venerable Globe Theatre.
Friday July 10
4pm Kid-friendly films
7pm Picturing the Yukon 09: reconciliation films
The Man who Always Lives in the Bush (Mary Jane Moses), Shipyards Lament (Andrew Connors), Tending Toward Silence (Arlin McFarlane), My Own Private Lower Post (Duane Ghastant' Aucoin)
8:45pm Act of God. New feature doc from Manufactured Landscapes director, Jennifer Baichwal.
Saturday July 11
10:30am Here Is What Is. Feature doc by Daniel Lanois
3pm Picturing the Yukon 09: New works. 12 new Yukon films and media art works.
7pm Anvil! The story of Anvil. Encore screening.
9pm Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years. Ground-breaking and eye-opening 1988 doc by Penelope Spheeris.
Wednesday July 15 , 8pm
Old Firehall (First Ave & Main Street)
Giant
See the trailer!
Dir. George Stevens, USA, 1956, 201 min
Starring Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor and James Dean (in his last role). Texan rancher Bick visits a Maryland farm to buy a prize horse and falls in love with the owner's daughter Leslie. They are married immediately and return to his ranch. The story of their family and its rivalry with cowboy Jett Rink unfolds across two generations. An epic film that was #82 (between Modern Times and Platoon) on the 1998 American Film Institute's 100 years... 100 movies, best of American cinema.
A companion film to August's feature, Brokeback Mountain, based on the essay 'Death of the strong, silent type: The acheivement of Brokeback Mountain' (download the PDF here) by Christopher Sharrett, in Filmint Journal. Also part of a series of revisionist westerns being presented as 2009 Firehall Films.
Doors open at 7:30pm
Tickets $7/$5 YFS Members
Thursday July 16
Old Firehall
7pm Circumpolar short films
Films, as seen at the dawson city intl short ff from, Iceland, Norway, Alaska, Yukon, NWT and Russia. Programmed by DCISFF coordinator, Dan Sokolowski.
Frozen Poem, Last Stop for Miles, Dog, Varde, Repeated Crimes, Drum Practice, Tell Us the truth Josephine, and Sikumi (on the ice).
9pm Picturing the Yukon 09: Reconciliation Films
The Man who Always Lives in the Bush (Mary Jane Moses), Shipyards Lament (Andrew Connors), Tending Toward Silence (Arlin McFarlane), My Own Private Lower Post (Duane Ghastant' Aucoin)
Tickets $7/$5 YFS Members
YFS gratefully acknowledges the support of On Yukon Time, Lotteries Yukon and Yukon Tourism of Culture.
Firehall Films presents Kurosawa's Yojimbo
May 22, 2009
A cinema classic from Japan!
Sunday, June 7, 8pm
Old Firehall (First Ave & Main Street)
Yojimbo See the trailer!
Dir. Akira Kurosawa, Japan, 1961, 110 min
Kurosawa’s anti-hero ‘western’ Yojimbo stars Toshiro Mifune as a crafty ronin who comes to a town divided by two criminal gangs and decides to play them against each other to free the town. This picture, shot in widescreen 'Tohoscope', was a direct influence on director Sergio Leone and the spaghetti western genre.
Sponsored in part by Janus Films/The Criterion Collection.
Co-presented with the Japanese Canadian Association of Yukon.
Refreshments and door prizes.
Doors open at 7:30pm
Tickets $7/$5 YFS or JCAY Members
Anvil documentary- May 7 Firehall Film
April 22, 2009
Thursday, May 7, 8pm — Anvil! The Story of Anvil
Old Firehall, Main and 1st
$7/$5 YFS Members
At 14, Toronto school friends Steve "Lips" Kudlow and Robb Reiner made a pact to rock together forever. They meant it.
Their band, Anvil, went on to become the "demigods of Canadian metal," releasing one of the heaviest albums in metal history, 1982's Metal on Metal. The album influenced a musical generation, including Metallica, Slayer, and Anthrax, that went on to sell millions of records. But Anvil's career took a different path - straight to obscurity.
Director Sacha Gervasi has concocted a wonderful and often hilarious account of Anvil's last-ditch quest for elusive fame and fortune. His ingenious filmmaking may first lead you to think this a mockumentary, but it isn't. Gervasi joined the legendary heavy-metal band as a roadie for a tour of Canadian hockey arenas, so he has intimate insight into the members' eccentricities. It's fascinating to see the reality of their day-to-day lives as they struggle to make ends meet, take a misguided European tour, and engage in antics on the road - which is not always lined with fans. Gervasi even finds a softer center to this raucous film, introducing us to band members' ever-supportive, but long-suffering, families.
At its core, ANVIL! THE STORY OF ANVIL is a timeless tale of survival and the unadulterated passion it takes to follow your dream, year after year. Anvil rocks - it has no other choice."
- John Cooper
(from the Sundance Film Fest 2008 Catalog)
>>Film shorts before Anvil! were produced in Yukon Film Society’s intensive training program, Mise-en-scène.<<
die dixie, die – don’t die
Dir. Ian Basso, 9 min, 2009
When insurance agents buy policies on themselves to meet the sales quota, they learn that the uninsured life is not worth living.
Love, Emma
Dir. Arlin McFarlane, 10 min, 2009
Alice is a teenager more interested in tunes and texting than dead relatives she never knew. But a story her late great grandmother leaves behind in a dollhouse wrenches Alice out of her programmed world.
Firehall Films for April: Winnipeg filmmaker, Deco Dawson
April 2, 2009
Wednesday, April 8 — Short films by Deco Dawson
8pm, Old Firehall
$7/$5 YFS Members
YFS hosts Winnipeg-based avant-garde filmmaker, Deco Dawson. A collaborator with Winnipeg’s Royal Art Lodge and Guy Maddin, Deco was named one of the top 25 young independent filmmakers in North America by New York’s Filmmaker magazine. Screening to be followed by an artist talk.
The Last Moment 29 min, 2007
A multi-fractured, multi-genre narrative which uses five styles of film history — Film Noir, Dogme 95, Late-era Hitchcock, Tarantino and 60s New Wave — to explore the final moments of a man’s life and the ill-fated relationship woes that have lead up to his death.
The Fever of the Western Nile 7 min, 2003
Summer passings observed the enigmatic West Nile malady steal its way into the minds and forests of Winnipeg wanderers, casting its feverish amnesia spell; immobilizing wooded creatures collectively.
FILM(dzama) 23 min, 2001
This entirely fictional biography of the internationally celebrated visual artist Marcel Dzama is motivated by the sheer magic, humour and disobedience of Dzama’s work, coupled with the the stylistically obstinate themes common to Dawson’s work. FILM(dzama) is an attempt to rekindle the surrealist cinema made popular in the 1920s by Salvador Dali and Luis Buñuel and Man Ray.
Dumb Angel 9 min, 2005
Inspired by fragments of Gus Van Sant’s Last Days, Dumb Angel features 17-year old preternaturally talented rock drummer Anders Erickson, the undisputed incarnation of The Who’s Keith Moon. Equal parts short film, improvised performance, documentary, music video, experimental film and audio composition, Dumb Angel presents an odd examination of fame, talent and television celebrity.
Monday, April 13 — Master Class with Deco Dawson
Redirecting: Film History as Contemporary Cinematic Inspiration
Deco Dawson will present a number of clips from film history that he has found inspirational, cutting edge and timeless. In many instances very courageous, imaginative and unique pieces of work have been created out of synch with contemporary movie making of the time. These hidden gems, often snippets, scenes or characters are forgotten and buried away only to be rediscovered by new filmmakers scouring the cinematic archives. Deco will discuss how merely discovering these troves can lead to the re-imagining of current projects and injecting them with a new life.
Examples include the works of Norman McLaren, Arthur Lipsett, Busby Berkeley, Michel Gondry as well as oft overlooked techniques such as multiple exposures, optical printing, day for night photography and everything the film noir filmmakers ever attempted.
7pm to 10pm, Old Firehall, Free Admission
RSVP: td@yukonfilmsociety.com
Firehall Films for March
February 28, 2009
Saturday March 7
Firehall Films
YFS salutes the 10th Anniversary of the Dawson Intl Short Film Festival
Eighteen short films from the first 10 years of the Yukon's landmark International short film festival. Programmed by co-founder and festival director, David Curtis. Featuring work from Australia, Norway, Iran, Romania, Poland, Ireland, and across Canada.
7pm - Program 1: Humans + Animals, 100 mins
I Could Have Been Human, Business, Tommy, My Indian Bum, At The Quite Hotel, The Terms, La Photo, A Shift in Perception, Shipyards Lament
9pm - Program 2: Loadstars, 105 mins
Mushum, Mumuring Sound of Running Water, Aydaygooay, A Life to Live, Drift, Help, Trygve With His Heart In the Mailbox, My Name is Pochsy, Crummy 841
ONE NIGHT ONLY.
The Yukon Film Society gratefully acknowledges that funding for this website is made possible through the Yukon Film and Sound Commission.
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