film talks at the westdale

Movies have the power to change the way we look at the world. Hollywood is amid a reckoning about how its films influence society. The historic Black Lives Matter movement has ignited discussion and action about ending harmful stereotypes and creating inclusive stories representing all facets of the human and global experience in the movies.

So much has been written and discussed how movies have desensitized us to violence, sexism, racism, classism, xenophobia, and all manner of ill will towards our fellow human beings.

The movies, of course, have also done us a lot of good. Great films have the power to raise awareness, change our outlook, and make us think in a way we haven't before. We have the opportunity, through the movies, to walk a mile in another's shoes. So many documentaries have successfully educated us to be more empathetic and compassionate, and select narrative movies have also achieved this feat.

In our Movies that Mattered Film Talk series, we will present narrative movies from different decades that managed to achieve commercial and critical success while profoundly challenging audiences to look at the world differently.

The movies were screened in person at The Westdale in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. We invite you to watch MODERN TIMES (1936) at home before watching the Film Talk.

Where you can watch MODERN TIMES (1936):
https://www.justwatch.com/ca/movie/modern-times

The recording of the Movies that Mattered Film Talk series was supported by the Ontario Trillium Foundation.

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Movies have the power to change the way we look at the world. Hollywood is amid a reckoning about how its films influence society. The historic Black Lives Matter movement has ignited discussion and action about ending harmful stereotypes and creating inclusive stories representing all facets of the human and global experience in the movies.

So much has been written and discussed how movies have desensitized us to violence, sexism, racism, classism, xenophobia, and all manner of ill will towards our fellow human beings.

The movies, of course, have also done us a lot of good. Great films have the power to raise awareness, change our outlook, and make us think in a way we haven't before. We have the opportunity, through the movies, to walk a mile in another's shoes. So many documentaries have successfully educated us to be more empathetic and compassionate, and select narrative movies have also achieved this feat.

In our Movies that Mattered Film Talk series, we will present narrative movies from different decades that managed to achieve commercial and critical success while profoundly challenging audiences to look at the world differently.

The movies were screened in person at The Westdale in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. We invite you to watch GENTLEMAN'S AGREEMENT (1947) at home before watching the Film Talk.

Where you can watch GENTLEMAN'S AGREEMENT (1947):
https://www.justwatch.com/ca/movie/gentlemans-agreement

The recording of the Movies that Mattered Film Talk series was supported by the Ontario Trillium Foundation.

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Join Fred Fuchs and Jeffrey Bender to discuss Denis Villeneuve 's INCENDIES (2010)

Director: Denis Villeneuve
Starring: Lubna Azabal, Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin, Maxim Gaudette, & Rémy Girard

Genie Awards: Eight including Best Motion Picture
Academy Award nomination: Best Foreign Language Film
BAFTA nomination: Best Film not in the English language
Toronto International Film Festival: Winner for Best Canadian Feature Film.

When notary Lebel sits down with Jeanne and Simon Marwan to read them their mother's will, Nawal, the twins are stunned to receive a pair of envelopes - one for the father they thought was dead and another for a brother they didn't know existed.

With Lebel's help, the twins piece together the story of the woman who brought them into the world, discovering a tragic fate forever marked by war and hatred as well as the courage of an exceptional woman.

In Arabic and French with English subtitles

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Director Zacharias Kunuk joins Fred Fuchs and Jeffrey Bender to discuss his revolutionary film ATANARJUAT: THE FAST RUNNER (2001)

Director: Zacharias Kunk
Starring: Natar Ungalaaq, Sylvia Ivalu, Peter-Henry Arnatsiaq, and Lucy Tulugarjuk

Cannes Film Festival: Caméra d'Or (Golden Camera)
Genie Awards: Six including Best Motion Picture
In 2015, a poll of filmmakers and critics in the Toronto International Film Festival named it the greatest Canadian film of all time
This adaptation of an ancient Inuit legend was filmed in Inuktitut and directed by Inuit filmmakers - making ATANARJUAT the first feature film of its kind.

Set in Igloolik, in Nunavut, this is "a powerful drama, not a documentary," reminds the director Kunuk. "It demystifies the exotic, otherwordly aboriginal stereotype by telling a universal story." The clothes, spears, kayaks, sunglasses, and dwellings were all painstakingly researched. "We show how our ancestors dressed, how they handled their dog teams, how they argued and laughed.. confronted evil and fought back."

In Inuktitut, with English subtitles.

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Join Jeffrey Bender, Fred Fuchs and special guest Greg Klymkiw. Greg is a journalist, screenwriter, filmmaker & teacher who has worked in the Winnipeg film industry for decades. He's known Guy Maddin for over 30 years and produced his first three feature films.

MY WINNIPEG (2007)

Director: Guy Maddin
Starring: Darcy Fehr, Ann Savage, Louis Negin, Amy Stewart, Brendan Cade, and Wesley Cade

Roger Ebert named MY WINNIPEG the tenth best film of the decade
In 2015, the Toronto International Film Festival placed MY WINNIPEG in the Top 10 Canadian Films of All Time
Toronto Film Critics Association Best Canadian Film

With MY WINNIPEG, iconoclastic filmmaker Guy Maddin continues in the freewheeling, genre-bending tradition that has made him one of Canada's most consistently intriguing and internationally respected artists. MY WINNIPEG is a documentary (or docu-fantasia, as he describes it) about his hometown. Equal parts mystical rumination and personal history, city chronicle and deranged post-Freudian proletarian fantasy, MY WINNIPEG - which is framed as a goodbye letter - blends local myth with childhood trauma. A deliriously layered provocation, MY WINNIPEG is outrageous, informative and wildly entertaining.

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Join Fred Fuchs, Jeffrey Bender, and Karen Robins from the Alzheimers Society of Brant, Haldimand, Norfolk, Hamilton, and Halton to discuss AWAY FROM HER (2006)

AWAY FROM HER (2006)

Director: Sarah Polley
Starring: Julie Christie, Gordon Pinsent, Michael Murphy, Sarah Polley, Kristen Thomson, and Olympia Dukakis

Genie Awards: Seven, including Best Motion Picture
Academy Award nominations: Best Actress (Julie Christie), Best Adapted Screenplay (Sarah Polley)
Based on Alice Munro's short story "The Bear Came Over the Mountain" from the 2001 collection Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage. AWAY FROM HER was Polley's feature directorial debut.

Married for almost 50 years, Grant (Gordon Pinsent) and Fiona's (Julie Christie) serenity is interrupted by Fiona's increasingly frequent memory lapses. When it is no longer possible for either of them to ignore the fact that she is being consumed by Alzheimer's, the limits of love and loyalty are wrenchingly redefined.

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THE SWEET HEREAFTER (1997)
Director: Atom Egoyan
Starring: Bruce Greenwood, David Hemblen, Ian Holm, Sarah Polley, and Caerthan Banks


• Cannes Film Festival: Grand Prix
• Genie Awards: Seven, including Best Motion Picture.
• Academy Award nominations: Best Director (Atom Egoyan) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Atom Egoyan)
• Toronto International Film Festival critics named The Sweet Hereafter one of the top 10 Canadian films of all time.


Following a tragic schoolbus accident, opportunistic lawyer Mitchell Stephens descends upon a small town. With promises of retribution on behalf of the grieving community, Stephens sets to work on a class-action lawsuit. But beneath the town's placid surface, he discovers a tangled skein of deceit and forbidden desire that mirrors his own troubled life. Everyone, it seems, has secrets to keep. Through a skillful weave of past and present, Atom Egoyan explores the human spirit and its capacity for grief, loss and redemption.


Fred Fuchs and Jeffrey Bender discuss the film.

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Director: Peter Bogdanovich
Writers: Buck Henry, David Newman
Stars: Barbra Streisand, Ryan O’Neal, Madeline Kahn

The accidental mix-up of four identical plaid overnight bags leads to a series of increasingly wild and wacky situations.

When Peter Bogdanovich got the opportunity to make a film with Barbra Streisand, who had seen and admired the writer-director’s 1971 hit The Last Picture Show, his key idea was to showcase her in a picture inspired by ’30s and ’40s screwball comedies like Bringing Up Baby (1938). The result was the 1972 hit What’s Up, Doc?, a movie beloved by audiences – but not by Streisand, even though she’s superb as ditzy-genius college dropout Judy Maxwell, who meets bumbling, mild-mannered “musical archaeologist” Howard Bannister (Ryan O’Neal) and turns his life upside-down, sideways, and back-to-front.

Find out where to watch WHAT'S UP, DOC? (1971): https://www.justwatch.com/ca/movie/whats-up-doc

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The Lady Eve, is a pure-gold gold-digging farce in which Barbara Stanwyck’s beautiful con artist Jean Harrington and her similarly unscrupulous ‘colonel’ father (Charles Coburn) set out to fleece explorer, snake expert, and heir to the Pike Ale fortune Charles Pike (Henry Fonda) on an ocean cruise.

Rent THE LADY EVE (1941) on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPFsEXHTWBI

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