Season Greetings and Happy Holidays from Kinosmith Inc.

To all fans of Kinosmith Inc.

Many Thanks for all your support and best wishes for the Holidays.

From Kinosmith Inc.

"BALLAST" ON TOP TEN FILMS LIST 2008 BY LA TIMES

"BALLAST" TOP TEN IN LA

Lance Hammer's BALLAST continues it's Top Ten nominations by securing a spot on Kenneth Turan's LA TIMES Top Ten Film List 2008.


Click here for the full list: www.latimes.com

"BALLAST" GETS 6 NOMINATIONS FOR THE SPIRIT AWARDS

Lance Hammer's BALLAST receives 6 Spirit Award nominations

BALLAST, along with FROZEN RIVER and RACHEL GETTING MARRIED topped the list for the most nominations at next February's US Spirit Awards. The Spirit Awards are considered the most prestigious awards to be given in North America.

The 6 nominations include BEST FEATURE, BEST DIRECTOR, BEST FEMALE LEAD, BEST SUPPORTING MALE LEAD, BEST FIRST SCREENPLAY and BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY.

Yung Chang's massively successful UP THE YANGTZE also received a nod for BEST DOCUMENTARY.

More information, check out:

http://www.indiewire.com/biz/2008/12/awards_watch_08_12.html

BALLAST MAKES ROGER EBERT'S TOP FILMS OF THE YEAR!

LANCE HAMMER'S "BALLAST" MAKES
ROGER EBERT'S LIST OF TOP FILMS FOR 2008!

excerpt reprinted from www.rogerebert.suntimes.com

The best films of 2008... and there were a lot of them
by Roger Ebert

In these hard times, you deserve two "best films" lists for the price of one. It is therefore with joy that I list the 20 best films of 2008, in alphabetical order. I am violating the age-old custom that film critics announce the year's 10 best films, but after years of such lists, I've had it. A best films list should be a celebration of wonderful films, not a chopping process. And 2008 was a great year for movies, even if many of them didn't receive wide distribution.

Look at my 20 titles, and you tell me which 10 you would cut. Nor can I select one to stand above the others, or decide which should be No. 7 and which No. 8. I can't evaluate films that way. Nobody can, although we all pretend to. A "best films" list, certainly. But of exactly 10, in marching order? These 20 stood out for me, and I treasure them all. If it had been 19 or 21, that would have been OK. If you must have a Top 10 List, find a coin in your pocket. Heads, the odd-numbered movies are your 10. Tails, the even-numbered.

* * *

BALLAST

A deep silence has fallen upon a Mississippi Delta family after the death of a husband and brother. Old wounds remain unhealed. The man's son shuttles uneasily between two homes, trying to open communication by the wrong means. The debut cast is deeply convincing, and writer-director Lance Hammer observes them with intense empathy. No, it's not a film about poor folks on the Delta; they own a nice little business, but are paralyzed by loneliness. At the end, we think, yes, that is what would happen, and it would happen exactly like that.

for more information on BALLAST, check out:

www.ballastfilm.com

FANTASTIC REVIEW FOR LUNA!

"SAVING LUNA" - Vancouver Sun's fantastic review by Katherine Monk

printed Fri.Dec.5/08 for film's opening at Ridge Theatre, Vancouver, BC

This multiple-award-winning film tells the story of Luna, the lone orca who made a home in Nootka Sound and attempted to befriend humans. Despite the incredibly sad narrative at its core, the filmmakers turn the nauseating details of the story into a valuable metaphor about the dynamic between human beings and the natural world.

A documentary by Suzanne Chisholm and Michael Parfit.

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

It's a story so entirely tragic and nauseatingly sad, that some viewers may look at Suzanne Chisholm and Michael Parfit's movie about Luna -- the lone Orca who tried to befriend humans on B.C.'s Nootka Sound -- as an experience too depressing to relive.

After all, it's not like the three-year saga didn't get ample media coverage when it first unfolded as everyone from First Nations oral historians, to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, to schoolchildren across the province found themselves snagged in the gill net of public opinion.

Whether you loved or hated the idea of an orca seeking human company, the story resonated across generational lines and tugged at something deeper, perhaps even primal, in the human psyche.

Because Parfit and Chisholm explore this psycho-spiritual element to the strange encounter, Saving Luna is more than a simple retelling of a very sad marine mammal tale. It's a thoughtful and often provocative exploration of humanity's larger relationship to the natural world.

It's also deeply personal.

Co-director and narrator Parfit tells us in the opening frames that he and his partner Chisholm intended to stay in Nootka Sound for a mere three weeks after they were asked to write a story about the little killer whale who refused to leave.

The veteran team, with several National Geographic projects under their belt, imagined they would be able to keep their professional distance and remain objective observers in the denouement.

Yet, after three years covering the story and moving into the community, Parfit and Chisholm crossed the line and became participants in the drama. They literally let Luna into their hearts and minds, as everyone around them picked sides.

Casual sailors were frightened by the orca's love of nudging boats. First Nations people saw the whale as the reincarnation of their ancestral chief. And fishers swore to put a bullet in the whale's blowhole when no one was looking.

As the tensions swirled, the federal government found itself unable to come up with a consistent plan. At one point, a DFO representative says the only humane thing to do is ignore the whale for his own good, but the policy was impossible to enforce.

Despite the apparent goodness of their intention to help the whale, DFO looked ill-prepared and wishy-washy -- and given the department's history of species culling (this is the same department that once mounted a giant knife to the prow of vessels to cut BC's now non-existent basking sharks in two), as well as the controversial idea of live marine mammal capture -- there's little doubt as to who comes off as the central villain in the piece.

DFO probably had the most power to help Luna, but red tape, egos, jurisdiction and a growing media circus prevented the creation of a comprehensive and workable policy.

Moreover, other specialists in cetacean behaviour were full of doubts about the establishment school of thought, and began to question previous assumptions about why some whales want to hang out with us landlubbing two-leggeds.

As Parfit and Chisholm watched the "tug-of-whale" unfold, their central focus was always Luna, and watching him pulled in one direction to the next pushed them into an emotional corner.

Their hearts were aching for the whale, and one day, when Luna came up to greet Parfit, he decided to break the law -- and his own code of journalistic objectivity -- and actually look into the eye of the orca. He even stretched his hand into the icy waters of Nootka Sound to stroke the creature.

When Parfit describes the moment on film, and tells us about the sensation of touching Luna's warm skin in the cold ocean, it sends a shiver down your spine because the connection between man and creature is suddenly undeniable.

Along with breathtaking cinematography, the filmmakers talk about the web of life, interconnectedness and the pitfalls of anthropomorphism. More than anything, they ask us to consider the "wall between humans and the natural world" in the hopes we may one day renegotiate the existing contract and see ourselves as an inherent piece of the puzzle, instead of removing ourselves intellectually from the world of "beasts."

From what this movie tells us, the animals have far more to teach us than we could possibly teach them. And little Luna, whose life came to a violent end after an encounter with a tug boat propeller, may have offered us the most valuable lesson of all by making us care about a life so different -- and yet so strangely similar to our own.

reprinted from Canwest News Service

www.savingluna.com

SAVING LUNA CREATES WAVES IN VANCOUVER

"SAVING LUNA" HAS A STRONG OPENING WEEKEND IN VANCOUVER

Suzanne Chisholm and Michael Parfit's award winning documentary SAVING LUNA produce some strong numbers at the box office this past weekend (Dec.5-7/08) in Canada. LUNA grossed over $7,300 in 3 days for it's opening at the Ridge Theatre in Vancouver making it the top grossing Canadian film per screen in Canada.

Amazing reviews and critical audience buzz helped propel LUNA to hold for a second week at the Ridge Vancouver.

Tickets can be purchased online at:
www.festivalcinemas.ca

THE ART STAR AND THE SUDANESE TWINS wins Best Documentary Award!

"ART STAR" WINS OUT WEST!

Pietra Brettkelly's controversial doc THE ART STAR AND THE SUDANESE TWINS has just won the Best Documentary Award at the Whistler Film Festival, British Columbia, Canada!

Please check out further info on this award at: 

http://www.whistlerfilmfestival.com/index.php/General-Media/News-Releases.html

KinoSmith plans on releasing this film in selective theatres across Canada in the spring 2009. 

More info on the film can be found at either: 

www.kinosmith.com 

or 

www.theartstarandthesudanesetwins.com

Eye Weekly - FLicKeR

 

Directed by Nik Sheehan. (STC) 72 min. Opens Nov 28 at the Bloor Cinema.

Reprinted from: Eye Weekly 

Toronto director Nik Sheehan’s biodoc on visionary painter and writer Brion Gysin doubles as a cogent yet appropriately trippy primer on how the activities of a few freaks who drifted between Paris and Tangier in the ’50s came to have a vast cultural influence. It was Gysin who led the Beats to Morocco after the British-born, Alberta-bred artist first joined Paul Bowles there in 1950. And it was Gysin who pioneered the literary cut-up technique that would be popularized by his pal William S. Burroughs.

What interests Sheehan most of all in FLicKeR is another of Gysin’s innovations, the Dream Machine. This mysterious contraption offered the prospect of a drugless high. Though Sheehan has his own custom-made, the film also shows how low-cost versions can be jimmied up with a light bulb, some construction paper and a record player. (An additional record player may also be employed to spin Pink Floyd’s “Echoes” or the astral music of your choice.) Iggy Pop, Marianne Faithfull and Genesis P-Orridge are just three of the countercultural icons we see experiencing the machine’s effects on camera — alas, none report having visions of Karl Rove being sodomized by a mountain goat. In any case, Sheehan succeeds at renewing interest in an artist whose influence far outweighs his fame.

Now Magazine: Flicker Review - Dream on

Flicker

Dream on

By Susan G. Cole 

Reprinted from Now Magazine

Who can resist the idea of a drugless high?
Nik Sheehan asks just that in Flicker, a fascinating exploration of the Dream Machine and Brion Gysin, the artist/poet/mystic who promoted it in the early 60s.

Get close to the Dream Machine – a metal cylinder with cut-?outs that revolves around a light bulb – close your eyes and experience a soothing, sometimes hallucinatory effect that Gysin and cohort William Burroughs believed could permanently alter human consciousness.
Sheehan, with his own Dream Machine in tow, visits Gysin’s old friends, including Marianne Faithfull and filmmaker Kenneth Anger – who respond to the sight of the contraption as if it were the Holy Grail – and new fans, too, like DJ Spooky and Iggy Pop. The wide range of creative people hot for the Dream Machine testifies to its allure.

Sheehan’s not sure if he wants to make a movie about the Dream Machine or about Gysin’s art, philosophy and influence, but that’s all right. The hallucinatory images, the quick cuts, the split focus all reflect the era in which Gysin worked and dreamed.

Yes, there will be a Dream Machine at the Bloor for you to check out. It didn’t exactly blow my mind, but then neither did LSD. So who knows? It could work for you.

FLicKeR

FLicKeR

A film by Nik Sheehan

Reprinted from: http://www.spotlighttoronto.com/musings/?p=2443

The “light fantastic” takes on a whole new meaning in director Nik Sheehan’s phantasmagoric FLicKeR – the story of an artist who invented a drug-free way to achieve altered states of mind – through dancing pulses of light. The feature was produced by Maureen Judge of indie production company Makin’ Movies Inc.

FLicKeR, which was awarded a Special Jury Prize for a Canadian Documentary at the 2008 Hot Docs Festival and has wowed audiences at festivals in Canada and around the world, is the story of the influential Canadian artist and mystic Brion Gysin (1916-1986) and his amazing invention, the dream machine, which he believed would revolutionize human consciousness.

Featuring greats like William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin (in archival footage), singer Marianne Faithfull, rocker Iggy Pop, Sonic Youth guitarist Lee Ranaldo, singer/artist Genesis P-Orridge of Psychic TV, poet John Giorno, filmmaker Kenneth Anger, and artist/turntablist DJ Spooky, FLicKeR is a hypnotic documentary that asks fundamental questions about an individual’s freedom to dream and create.

The concept is simple – a bright light is placed inside a rotating cylinder with patterned holes until a pulse of between 8-13 Hz is achieved. This is the exact frequency of alpha waves in the brain – the brain waves associated with creativity and dreaming. Subjects report seeing shapes and images, sometimes full-blown hallucinations.

Gysin saw his machine as a replacement for the television and the cinema, where everyone could make “their own spiritual movies.” It was to be “the drugless high.” He and his friends tried to market the machine, attempting to place it in every suburban living room. The forces of control soon put a stop to their plans, but the dream machine continues to intrigue everyone who encounters it.

Gysin was involved with the Paris surrealist artists of the 30s, worked in counter-espionage in WWII, and saw himself as a reincarnation of a 10th Century King of the Assassins. His friendship with Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones led to the wide influence of Moroccan Jajouka music, a major influence on rock musicians.

FLicKeR has played to wide critical acclaim at the following festivals: Hot Docs, Atlantic International Film Festival, Vancouver International Film Festival, Corona Cork Festival, Leipzig International Documentary Festival, Sheffield Documentary Festival, and Copenhagen International Festival. San Francisco Weekly critic Michael Fox called it a “rare documentary that jumps beyond informative and entertaining into the realm of mind-expanding, FLicKeR blends revelatory biography, energizing philosophy, and seductive trances.”

KINOSMITH is an independent Canadian film distribution & marketing company founded in February 2007 by distribution veteran Robin Smith. With a mandate to bring critically-acclaimed Canadian and international films to audiences across the country, the company also provides marketing advice to productions in development and in the can. Its current roster of theatrical releases includes: Up The Yangtze; Tuya’s Marriage; Alice’s House; All Together Now; and The Tiger’s Tail. Upcoming releases include Triage: Dr. James Orbinski’s Humanitarian Dilemma; Ballast; FLicKeR; Confessions Of A Porn Addict; and The Art Star And The Sudanese Twins. http://www.kinosmith.com/

Opens in Toronto on Friday, November 28, 2008
The Bloor Cinema
506 Bloor Street West

www.flickerflicker.com

Now Magazine - BALLAST - 4/5 Star Review

Ballast 

By: Norman Wilner 
Reprinted:

Ballast sets as its dramatic locus a man, a woman and a child. All three live in a small town somewhere in the Mississippi Delta, though not all together. How they relate to one another, and the complicated nature of that connection, is something you really don’t want to know before you see the film.

Ballast is a difficult film to review; if I go into the details of the plot, you’ll be denied the experience of putting them together for yourself. But while that statement suggests that the movie is a puzzle to be solved, it isn’t any such thing. Indeed, it’s one of the most direct and uncomplicated dramas you’ll see this year – and one of the most poetic.

Steeped in racial history and Southern culture, Ballast is a distinctly American drama constructed with European tools. It wouldn’t be out of place among the observational dramas of Robert Bresson or the vérité social studies of the Dardenne brothers.

What I will say is that writer-director Lance Hammer gets terrific performances out of his non-professional cast, and his minimalist approach to narrative somehow winds up speaking dramatic volumes. And if Ballast ultimately doesn’t break any new ground in American cinema, it does what it does exceptionally well.

 

Eye Magazine - Director Lance Hammer balances weight and wisdom with his modern Mississippi drama

 BY Adam Nayman   November 19, 2008 09:11

Director Lance Hammer balances weight and wisdom with his modern Mississippi drama
The title of Ballast refers to the extra weight taken on by ships to help them stay upright — and dumped once the boat reaches port. The fact that one can take Lance Hammer’s remarkable first feature as being as much about the need to take on weight as the need to discard it speaks to the movie’s exquisite balancing act between starkness and generosity, reserve and emotion, hope and despair.

Set in a small, unnamed Mississippi Delta town in the throes of a bleak winter, Ballast — which took the Best Director prize at Sundance — centres on Lawrence (the massive Micheal J. Smith Sr.), a former DJ turned convenience store owner shattered by the death of his identical twin brother Darius. The film opens with Lawrence’s attempted suicide and then crosscuts between his lonely convalescence and the lives of his estranged sister-in-law Marlee (Tarra Riggs) and her 12-year-old son James (JimMyron Ross). Both Marlee and James are too preoccupied with their own day-to-day struggles (tenuous employment in her case; gang violence in his) to mourn Darius, who is revealed to have been a deadbeat dad. It gradually becomes clear that the only real hope for healing lies in Lawrence’s willingness to step into the wreckage of his late twin brother’s life — which means, in some sense, becoming his own purposeful doppelgänger: the father James never knew.

“The idea of finding purpose by being of use to somebody is something that informs my ethical and spiritual view of the world,” Hammer says during a recent interview. “I don’t have children, but I’ve always thought that the great joy of being a parent is being useful to a child and protecting them for the future. What is a child, really, but potential? It’s an open road. It can go badly, or it can go very well. Your role is to protect that potential. That’s hope.”

Hammer, a former Hollywood art director with a background in architecture, acknowledges the correspondences between Ballast’s intertwined themes of forgiveness and utility and those of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s 2002 masterpiece The Son, which Hammer considers to be “a perfect film.” The director is less convinced, however, that his debut owes any real stylistic debts to the Belgian brothers’ oeuvre, as so many reviewers have suggested in their coverage of the film.

He’s correct on this point: Ballast doesn’t look like a Dardennes joint. In fact, its aesthetics scan as a novel mix of realism (location shooting, natural light) and a kind of rough-hewn expressionism that manifests in varied, beautifully oblique compositions and elegantly ragged cutting patterns (there’s that exquisite balance again).

The film’s editing strategies seem to be Hammer’s preferred subject of discussion, not only because he cut the film himself over a period of two years, but because he believes he only really located the film after the cameras stopped rolling.

“Continuity editing is something that’s very archaic,” he says. “We’ve moved beyond that. The human brain works in a way that’s very fragmentary, so I wanted to be able to use staccato cuts to play with rhythm — to play with acceleration and deceleration. And because our shooting process was so intuitive, we had so much improvised material that we kind of ended up finding the story in editing.”
The director is also eager to defer credit for Ballast’s visual impact to his cinematographer, Lol Crawley, whose work foregoes the kind of easy lyricism that skews so many well-meaning indies towards beauty-in-desolation fatuousness. “Every image had to have a human being doing something in it,” Hammer explains. “Even if they’re just doing nothing. I cut out all the more obviously lyrical stuff because it seemed superfluous or gratuitous, and because it didn’t really say anything about the Delta.”

This idea of “saying something about the Delta” has been a sticking point for the film’s few detractors, who’ve grumbled that a white, Los Angeles–based filmmaker has no business making a film about Mississippi’s black underclass. (The main characters are all African-American, which is not a small detail but also hardly the point of the film.)

“It’s bullshit,” says Hammer, who developed the script after spending time in the region, and cast the film largely with members of the local community. “That’s basically asking for [artistic] segregation, which is racist and stupid.”

For the most part, however, he’s has been very pleased with the critical reaction to Ballast, especially in his capacity as the film’s distributor. (Hammer opted out of an agreement with IFC Films earlier this year.)

“Because we don’t have a lot of money to spend, what critics have said [provides] the core of our marketing effort,” he says. “It’s expensive to buy an ad in a major daily newspaper, but a good review is free. We got a great review from Manohla Dargis in The New York Times that took up half a page, and a full page ad [there] costs something like $130,000. So that’s just smart marketing.

“Making your first film independently is about making a lot of mistakes and learning,” he continues. “That’s how the film was developed, how it was written, how it was produced and how post-production happened. So it follows that the distribution should be handled in the same way — with that same wonderful naïveté. Why wouldn’t you present the film to the world in the same way that you made it?”

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ballast opens tonight at the Carlton Theatre
See Showtimes http://www.cinemaclock.com/aw/ctha.aw/ont/Toronto/e/Carlton.html

BALLAST OPENING AT THE CARLTON CINEMA!

Event: BALLAST opening at the Carlton Cinemas Toronto on Friday Nov.21st
Host: KinoSmith
Start Time: Friday, November 21 at 10:00am
End Time: Thursday, November 27 at 10:00pm
Where: CARLTON CINEMAS

"Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film four stars out of four, saying the film "inexorably grows and deepens and gathers power and absorbs us." He also noted that the film made him cry, a rare occurrence for Ebert whilst watching a film."

In the cold, winter light of a rural Mississippi Delta township, a man's suicide radically transforms three characters' lives and throws off-balance what has long been a static arrangement among them. Marlee is a single mother struggling to scratch a living for herself and James, her 12-year-old son, who has begun to stumble under drug and violence pressures. So when the opportunity to seek safe harbor at a new home arises, she grabs it, though the property is shared by Lawrence, a man with whom Marlee has feuded bitterly since James's birth. With circumstances thrusting them into proximity, a subtle interdependence and common purpose emerge for Marlee and Lawrence as they navigate grief, test new waters, and tentatively move forward.



BALLAST is one of those rare films that maximize the medium through an aesthetic of understatement. Every frame is deliberately and beautifully composed, every cut artfully and economically executed not only to transmit a quietly gripping story but to reveal characters' layered emotional experiences and the specific textures and sensations of their locales. Because it is grounded by three exquisitely nuanced performances, it's not surprising that BALLAST is the product of intensive collaboration with local nonactors organically connected to the material. First-time director Lance Hammer is a distinctive voice with a remarkable sensitivity to the topography of human relationships and a powerfully cinematic social-realist vision.

-Caroline Libresco SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL

Showtime and Listings

Roger Ebert's Review

Official Website

102.1 THE EDGE TO HOST “CONFESSIONS” SCREENING

Come the end of November, The Edge 102.1 FM will be giving away tickets to a premiere screening of CONFESSIONS OF A PORN ADDICT and a chance to meet director and star, Spencer Rice aka Spenny from KENNY VS. SPENNY. The Premiere screening is on December 3 at the Bloor Cinema in Toronto.

CONFESSIONS OF A PORN ADDICT opens on December 5 at the Bloor Cinema in Toronto.

-----------

Synopsis of the film:

MARK TOBIAS (Spencer Rice, Kenny vs. Spenny) had it all: a good job, a beautiful wife, and a particularly unhealthy addiction to pornography. His wife, Felice (Lindsey Connell), finally got fed up with the competition and left him, causing Mark’s addiction to spiral out of control, until one day he was caught with his pants down—literally. Now, with the help of his Porn Addicts Anonymous sponsor, Bob (Mark Breslin), Mark is determined to prove to the world that he’s given up porn for good.

Filmed in Toronto and Los Angeles, and featuring music by artists such as Major Maker, Andre Ethier, and Mohawk Lodge, CONFESSIONS OF PORN ADDICT is a hilarious mockumentary about voyeurism, obsession, and life in the San Fernando Valley.

The film was executive produced by Peter Williamson and Ira Levy of Breakthrough Films & Television in association with The Movie Network and Movie Central.

EXPERIENCE A NEW HIGH!

EXPERIENCE A NEW HIGH!

Kurt Cobain, William S. Burroughs, Marianne Faithfull, Genesis P-Orridge, John Giorno, Iggy Pop, Kenneth Anger and DJ Spooky are all known users of the “dream machine”. The subject of the HotDoc award-winning film FlicKeR (yes, this is spelt right), the “dream machine” is presently touring downtown Toronto bookstore storefront windows providing passer-by’s the opportunity to get lost in it’s hypnotic gaze.

Check one out at the following stores:

THIS AIN’T THE ROSEDALE LIBRARY - 86 Nassau Street, in the heart of Kenningston Market, Toronto (on display now until November 22)

PAGES BOOKSTORE – 256 Queen Street West, Toronto (on display from November 23 to 30)


FLicKeR opens November 28 at the Bloor Cinema in Toronto.

“BALLAST” RELEASE DATE LOCKED IN TORONTO

The 2008 winner of the Sundance Dramatic Directing Award, Excellence in Cinematography Award and FIPRESCI Prize, BALLAST, has been confirmed to open at the Carlton in Toronto on November 21.

Synopsis:

In the cold, winter light of a rural Mississippi Delta township, a man's suicide radically transforms three characters' lives and throws off-balance what has long been a static arrangement among them. Marlee is a single mother struggling to scratch a living for herself and James, her 12-year-old son, who has begun to stumble under drug and violence pressures. So when the opportunity to seek safe harbor at a new home arises, she grabs it, though the property is shared by Lawrence, a man with whom Marlee has feuded bitterly since James's birth. With circumstances thrusting them into proximity, a subtle interdependence and common purpose emerge for Marlee and Lawrence as they navigate grief, test new waters, and tentatively move forward.

BALLAST is one of those rare films that maximize the medium through an aesthetic of understatement. Every frame is deliberately and beautifully composed, every cut artfully and economically executed not only to transmit a quietly gripping story but to reveal characters' layered emotional experiences and the specific textures and sensations of their locales. Because it is grounded by three exquisitely nuanced performances, it's not surprising that BALLAST is the product of intensive collaboration with local nonactors organically connected to the material. First-time director Lance Hammer is a distinctive voice with a remarkable sensitivity to the topography of human relationships and a powerfully cinematic social-realist vision.

Visit their official website: http://www.ballastfilm.com/

“TRIAGE” HOLDS FOR SECOND WEEK IN TORONTO

Patrick Reed’s TRIAGE: DR.JAMES ORBINSKI’S HUMANITARIAN DILEMMA had a successful Toronto opening at the AMC at Yonge and Dundas in Toronto and has had it’s run extended until November 20.

You can also check it out in Vancouver starting November 21 at Cinemark’s Tinseltown Cinemas, in Calgary starting November 28 at the Plaza Theatre and in Ottawa from December 5 to 9 at the Bytowne Cinema.

“YANGTZE” HITS THE EAST COAST!

UP THE YANGTZE, the 3rd highest grossing Canadian theatrical documentary of all time, will be making a tour of the east coast of Canada in November. The select screenings will take place in Annapolis Royal, NS, Fredericton, NB and Liverpool, NS. Check out www.filmcircuit.ca for exact details.

“TKARONTO” GETS OPENING NIGHT!"

Shane Belcourt’s critically acclaimed TKARONTO (www.tkaronto.net) will be the opening night screening for the WINNIPEG ABORIGINAL FILM FESTIVAL and will screen on November 19 at 7pm at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. Visit their website for more festival information (www.aboriginalfilmfest.org).

TKARONTO will also be opening Calgary at the Plaza Theatre starting on November 21 and in Saskatoon at the Broadway Theatre from November 28 to December 4.

WATCH A FILM WITH THE FISH!

WATCH A FILM WITH THE FISH!

The film that keeps winning awards (most notably the Black Pearl Audience Award at the Middle East International Film Festival), SAVING LUNA is now set to open at the Ridge Theatre in Vancouver on December 5.

We are working closely with our friends at the Vancouver Aquarium on promoting this opening and plan to host a special premiere screening at the Aquarium on December 3. Stay posted for details on this event and check back to take advantage of special coupons that will be offered for both the film and the Aquarium!

Tiger's Tail

The Tiger's Tail

Director:John Boorman

Supplier: Outsider Pictures

Synopsis: The Tiger's Tale is a black comedy thriller about a successful businessman in contemporary boom-time, 'Celtic Tiger' Ireland, whose live begins to unravel when he encounters his doppelganger.

The film tells the story of Liam O'Leary an Irish property developer of humble origins who has made it big and fast on the back of the Celtic Tiger. His hubris has led him into a scheme to build a national stadium but a rival developer has connived to thwart his plans. Wildly over-extended, Liam finds himself struggling in a receding market. Stressed and over-stretched, he seems on the verge of a mental breakdown, to his horror, he sees his DOUBLE.

Is this a harbinger of his death? His neglected wife, Jane is distressed by his erratic behaviour and treats his claim to have seen his Double as a hallucination. He confronts his Double and discovers a shocking truth that makes him ask the question "Who Am I?"

Website:http://www.thetigerstail.com/