Category: Film
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This escape room will blast you back into the past to your favourite 90s films
By Ivonne Flores Kauffman The Tape Escape team. (CanCulture/Georgio Zikantas) Looking for something unusual to do this summer? The Tape Escape, a mix between an escape room experience and immersive theatre, offers audiences the opportunity to decide the fate of movie characters by solving a set of puzzles before the time is up. Resembling the…
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Classic Canadian Cinema: Crash (1996)
By Federico Sierra Catherine Ballard has sex with her flying instructor. James Ballard has sex with his camera operator. Catherine and James then come home to have sex with each other. They’re a married couple in an open relationship, and describing their affairs and fantasies while they are having sex is the pinnacle of their…
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Behind the screen: Indigenous filmmakers fight for better representation
By Bree Duwyn Indigenous representation in North American films have included a long and devastating history of stereotyping and generalization. Misrepresentation is typically portrayed in many Western films. In these films, Indigenous people have been wrongfully portrayed and described as drunk, violent, savage and exotic. For example, Disney classics such as Pocahontas and Peter Pan…
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The Divided Brain: The documentary that will change the way you experience life
By Ivonne Flores Kauffman Photo courtesy The Divided Brain trailer On April 9, The Divided Brain made its Canadian premiere at the Isabel Bader Theatre in downtown Toronto. The film, directed by Manfred Becker and produced by Canadian Vanessa Dylyn, seeks to explain how the human brain works and the importance it has regarding the…
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Canadian films have a lot to say about climate change
Climate change, endangered species and Canadian wildlife — these films have it all By Devon Harvey On April 22nd, Earth Day is celebrated worldwide. The purpose of this day should be to reflect on how our way of life impacts the planet. What better way to do it than spending the day watching Canadian productions…
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Asian women making their mark in Hollywood
By Severina Chu Growing up as a Chinese-Canadian, it was often a struggle to see characters I could relate to on screen. Either casted in stereotypical roles or not casted at all, the image of Asian women that was pushed by the media made me want to stray away from my culture. When Hollywood fails…
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Alita: Battle Angel – A cyborg girl’s redeeming tale of humanity
By Federico Sierra Based on Japanese artist Yukito Kishiro’s manga, Alita: Battle Angel tells a futuristic story of a young cyborg (with a human brain and heart in a robotic body) who wakes up without a memory of her identity. Much like the half-human, half-robot protagonist, Alita: Battle Angel is a hybrid of a movie…
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Trouble in the Garden: Indigenous Indie film brings attention to Sixties Scoop
By Bree Duwyn A dancing scene from Trouble in the Garden (Courtesy of @troubleinthegardenthefilm on Instagram). Award winning writer and director Roz Owen tackles important Indigenous issues in her latest film, Trouble in the Garden. The film opened theatrically in Toronto at Imagine Cinemas Carlton Cinema and in Calgary at the Plaza Theatre throughout the…
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The Oscars 2019: Canadians dominate the best short film category
By Devon Harvey The Academy Awards are back on Feb. 24 and this year Canadians are dominating the short film categories. Bao, Weekends, and Animal Behaviour are some of the short films that are contesting to take home the gold. Usually a majority of the awards are filled with American nominees, but this year Canadians…
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Review: The European Short Film Festival at Carlton Cinema
By Ivonne Flores Kauffman The European Short Film Festival took place on Jan. 31 at the Imagine Cinemas Carlton Cinema in Downtown Toronto. The festival featured seven short films from six European nations (France, Germany, United Kingdom, Denmark, Czech Republic), each film different from the others. Mental health, fear, death and hope were some of…
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5 Canadian films to watch on Valentine’s Day
By Ivonne Flores Kauffman The Fireflies Are Gone (2018) This film directed by Sébastien Pilote follows the story of Léonie (Karelle Tremblay), a teenager who is desperate to graduate from high school and leave the industrial town where she lives. V-day sucks when you are single. However, instead of spending all day feeling miserable for…
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Review: The Breadwinner
By Adriana Fiorante The Breadwinner (2017) is an animated co-production between Canada, Ireland and Luxembourg about a young girl, Parvana (Saara Chaudry), surviving the Taliban’s seizing of her hometown, Kabul. In the plot, Taliban soldiers Idrees (Noorin Gulamgaus) and Razaq (Kawa Ada) take Parvana’s father (Ali Badshah) to prison for committing the crime of keeping…
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5 Canadian films to get you in the holiday spirit
By Nadia Brophy It’s that time of year again – the one that gets you seated by a warm fireplace, curled up in a blanket with hot cocoa in hand, eyes glued to the TV screen. Ladies and gentleman, it’s Christmas time, and I’d like to gift you with a curated list of some Canadian…
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Student Creatives: The Filmmaking Journey
By: Nadia Brophy Across all creative industries, there is a journey artists must take to establish themselves, meet their personal goals and create content they are proud of. Three film studies students at Ryerson University gave CanCulture a behind-the-scenes look into how their creative journeys have been progressing thus far. Students Tyler Hall, Hayden Salter…
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Review: The Mandy Experience at Revue Cinema
By: Ben Cohen Grade: A Mandy (2018) is an unforgettable orgy of laughter and gore. In it, Italian-Canadian director Panos Cosmatos flings an apoplectic Nicholas Cage into a psychedelic 80s arthouse body horror setting and has him shred his way out with a battle axe. Revue Cinema on Roncesvalles Avenue in Toronto was the perfect…
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The Witching Hour at imagineNATIVE Film Festival
(Karly Cywink/CanCulture) By: Karly Cywink Walking into the screening, you can feel the atmosphere of Indigenous culture all around you; jokes, greetings, and the overall lightheartedness of the people. This is what imagineNATIVE Film Festival is all about; connecting communities through their love of Indigenous cinema and art. The 19th annual festival held in Toronto…
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The Evolution of YouTube Comedy at Buffer Festival 2018
By: Severina Chu With the tastes, stars and expectations on YouTube constantly evolving, comedy content creators are looking to assert their place on the platform. At this year’s Buffer Festival, 21 comedy content creators gathered at the St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts on Sept. 29 to premiere their new projects. They discussed how the…
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Buffer Festival 2018: LGBTQ+ Creators Challenge Expectations and Prioritize Creative Freedom
Stef Sanjati (StefSanjati) (CanCulture/Nina Jeffery) By: Tess Stuber The Buffer Festival 2018 LGBTQ+ screening offered creators a chance to share new content that branches out from their regular work. Many artists decided to pursue their own visions, despite the expectations and pressures placed on them as LGBTQ+ creators. “There’s a pressure to always represent the…
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Meet the 6th Annual Buffer Festival Content Creators
By: Nina Jeffery Joey Richter, Brian Rosenthal, and Corey Lubowich (Team Starkid). Team StarKid, a musical theatre ensemble, began in 2009 when a group of friends from the University of Michigan posted the Harry Potter parody musical, A Very Potter Musical on YouTube. The show became a viral hit and was the first college theatre…
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TIFF Review: Clara – Manic Pixie Dream Girls IN SPACE
By: Ben Cohen Grade: C The typical penultimate chapter – right before the reboot – in many franchises and genres is the port over to outer space. It’s a desperate move, taken by someone working on a worn-out, assembly line plot structure. Think Jason X, Dracula 3000, Moonraker, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the…
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TIFF 2018 Review: Firecrackers
By: Andrea Josic Grade: A- At surface level, Firecrackers seems to explore everything that young adults in quiet, rural Ontario towns dream about: a way out. Far from a simple, coming-of-age story about two best friends, Firecrackers is a film that explores the challenges young women face while navigating a patriarchal world. Director Jasmin Mozaffari,…
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TIFF 2018 Review: Edge of the Knife
By: Isabelle Kirkwood Grade: A Edge of the Knife is a 2018 Canadian drama film co-directed by Gwaai Edenshaw and Helen Haig-Brown. It is the first feature film spoken only in dialects of the Haida language. Set in 19th-century Haida Gwaii, it tells the classic Haida story of the traumatized and stranded man transformed to…
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TIFF 2018 Review: Giant Little Ones
Grade: B- By Julianna Perkins Giant Little Ones, a new film from Canadian director Keith Behrman, successfully completed its world premiere at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. Giant Little Ones is the latest from Behrman, who’s previous film Flower & Garnet won the 2002 Canadian Screen Award for Best First Feature. It’s clear the…
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TIFF 2018 Review: First Man
By Luke Elisio Damien Chazelle’s First Man is one small step towards Oscar gold, one giant leap for the director’s already impressive resume. The biopic, starring Canada’s leading man Ryan Gosling, recounts the personal and professional life of astronaut Neil Armstrong leading up to the legendary 1969 Apollo 11 mission to the moon. For those…
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22 Blockbusters You Never Knew Were Filmed in Canada
By Brent Smyth While Canada may not have its own version of Hollywood, many blockbusters choose their northern neighbours to film key scenes and even entire movies! Whether to save money or the incredible scenery, here are the top 22 films to have been shot in Canada, and just wait for 16 and 21. #1-…
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Notable Canadian Oscar Winners throughout History
Oscar-season is officially over and this year brought Canada’s fair share of homegrown nominees. Let’s take a look back through the history of the Academy Awards to look at Canada’s most notable winners. 1. Mary Pickford Mary Pickford of Toronto won the second Best Actress award in Oscar history (however the first award for an…
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Classic Canadian Film Reviews: Dead Ringers (1988)
By: Mark McKelvie Adapted from the novel Twins by Bari Wood and Jack Geasland, the psychological body horror drama Dead Ringers is an unsettling account of sibling connection taken to the extreme. Elliot and Beverly Mantle (both played by Jeremy Irons) are two identical twins and phenom gynecologists working in Toronto in the 1980s. They have…
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Here are your 2018 Canadian Oscar Nominees
Photo courtesy of ABC/Tyler Golden By: Sara Jabakhanji The 2018 Oscars are right around the corner and this year has quite the list of Canadian contenders. Guillermo del Toro’s “The Shape of Water” is leading with 13 nominations in numerous categories. The Ontario-shot film is nominated for best picture and has a cast and crew…
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Long Life, Happiness & Prosperity: A Peek into the Chinese-Canadian Milieu
By Julianna Perkins Grade: B- In this 2002 feature-length drama, director Mina Shum succeeds in crafting an intimate portrait of the Chinese community in Vancouver. More than that, though, Shum captures the everyday realities of Chinese-Canadian immigrant life and uses them to weave a story of precocious youthfulness, stubborn old age and strained family dynamics.…