Film Event Society of Temiskaming

Also Screening with Religulous is:

2008-11-03T08:54:00.000-08:00

Farmer's Requiem, by Ramses Madina.

This is a beautiful nine minute meditative documentary about the gradual disappearance of farming culture. Ramses Madina employs striking time-lapse photography and the thoughtful narration of elderly farmer Victor McGregor. Images of dilapidated farms and decaying barns, accompanied by McGregor’s fading voice, haunt the screen.
Add the score of Montreal group Godspeed You! Black Emperor and you've got one gorgeous 9 minutes of Canadian farming!

This will screen directly before Religulous!
(See post below)

RELIGULOUS - Coming November 9th!

2008-10-22T22:25:00.000-07:00

Empire Theatre New Liskeard
Nov. 9th, 7:30pm.

Religulous - Bill Maher travels to Israel, England, the Netherlands, Vatican City, and across America, speaking to people about faith and religion in the very funny documentary RELIGULOUS. Maher, a stand-up comedian who has hosted the talk shows POLITICALLY INCORRECT on ABC and REAL TIME on HBO and has written such bestsellers as DOES ANYBODY HAVE A PROBLEM WITH THAT? and WHEN YOU RIDE ALONE, YOU RIDE WITH BIN LADEN, reaches out to religious leaders as well as regular folk on the street, discussing the existence of God and the importance of organized religion. Maher makes it clear from the start that he is not a fan of religion and does not believe in God, and he has fun skewering people who do--including Christians, Jews, Muslims, and Mormons, rabbis, priests, politicians, scientists, evangelical ministers, and even a preacher whose church is a converted truck. He also visits such places as the Holy Land Experience in Orlando, Florida, where he interviews the actor who plays Jesus in a live show there, and the Red Light District in Amsterdam, notorious for its legalized drugs and prostitution. As he has done on his television programs and in his books, Maher questions literal interpretations of the Bible, seeing it more as a collection of fairy tales. Director Larry Charles (BORAT, CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM) intersperses clips from Hollywood films about religion to punctuate Maher's points, often to hilarious effect. The soundtrack is also used effectively, including such songs as the Doobie Brothers' "Jesus Is Just Alright," Ben Folds's "Jesusland," and Billy Bragg and Wilco's "Christ for President." Like such Michael Moore documentaries as FAHRENHEIT 9/11 and BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE, Maher's RELIGULOUS uses humor--and lots of cynicism and sarcasm--to examine controversial theories and topics that people feel very strongly about, no matter what side of the fence they are on. In addition to making audiences laugh, RELIGULOUS will make them think

Watch the trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qB8fPJ6zds8

The Visitor ... tonight!!

2008-10-19T11:19:00.000-07:00

We've had a great turn-out so far this weekend,
and can't wait to see everyone out to The Visitor tonight
at the Empire at 7:30!

"A deeply moving drama built around longtime character actor Richard Jenkins, The Visitor is a simmering drama about a college professor and recent widower, Walter Vale (Jenkins), who discovers a pair of illegal aliens who were the victims of a real-estate scam living in his New York apartment. After the mix-up is resolved, Vale invites the couple--a young, Syrian musician named Tarek (Haaz Sleiman) and his Senegalese girlfriend (Danai Gurira)--to stay with him. An unlikely friendship develops between the retiring, quiet Vale and the vibrant Tarek, and the former begins to loosen up and respond to Tarek's drumming lessons as if something in him waiting to be liberated has finally been unleashed."

We will be preceding this with a short film from Canada
called "I Met the Walrus"... . . you will love it!!

2008-09-17T11:52:00.000-07:00

Hello Film Fans!
Drew, Josee and Mark would love thank everyone who gave their support to the first season of the Film Event Society of Temiskaming.
With that said... FEST is super proud to launch their second season of film events!!!
SO proud, in fact, that we have lined up a few treats for our patrons.

First! .... We will be hosting a fun little social event on Friday October 17th in Cobalt's beautiful Classic Theatre. This is a FREE event where you can watch some Oscar winning Canadian short films, have a drink or two (sorry, not free), grab FREE movie swag, and eat free popcorn... yes, that's right: eat FREE POPCORN!
It will also be pretty much the last chance to grab a Season's Pass, which are available NOW at Chat Noir Books, Robertson's (soon).

Second!... Saturday October 18th at Chat Noir Books in New Liskeard, the FEST crew and some friends will be presenting a more musically oriented event during the day. Drop by to see some live bare-bones music performed by the local riff-raff, watch some musical documentaries and/or videos, and bring your friends who couldn't come out the night before so they have an opportunity to pick up their own Season's Pass!!

Third!... The SEASON OPENER! (I'll post the title when it is confirmed). As usual, the 7:30 pm screening will take place at the Empire Theatre in New Liskeard. However, NOT as usual, it will be preceded by a short film. In fact, EVERY film screened this year will be preceded by a different short film! This first one is called I Met the Walrus, a documentary about a 14 year old kid who interviewed John Lennon in Toronto in 1969.
Link: http://www.imetthewalrus.com/

So,,, book it! It is sure to be a Filmtastic Weekend to launch Season Two of FEST!

The Counterfeiters - April 13th

2008-04-01T22:09:00.000-07:00

The Film Event Society of Temiskaming (FEST) presents:

The Counterfeiters,

2008 Oscar winner for the best foreign film

-7:30pm , Sunday April 13, at the Empire Theatre

Single tickets $9, Flexible Season Pass (2-6 tickets) @ $8/screening

Cinema Sundays continues the season every second Sunday of the month until May

Synopsis:

Set in a Nazi concentration camp, this drama centers on history's biggest counterfeit operation. In THE COUNTERFEITERS, prisoners must choose between aiding the Third Reich in their money-making scheme and their own well-being.

The Counterfeiters is the true story of the largest counterfeiting operation in history, set up by the Nazis in 1936. Salomon "Sally" Sorowitsch is the king of counterfeiters. He lives a mischievous life of cards, booze, and women in Berlin during the Nazi-era. Suddenly his luck runs dry when arrested by Superintendent Friedrich Herzog. Immediately thrown into the Mauthausen concentration camp, Salomon exhibits exceptional skills there and is soon transferred to the upgraded camp of Sachsenhausen. Upon his arrival, he once again comes face to face with Herzog, who is there on a secret mission. Hand-picked for his unique skill, Salomon and a group of professionals are forced to produce fake foreign currency under the program Operation Berhard. The team, which also includes detainee Adolf Burger, is given luxury barracks for their assistance. But while Salomon attempts to weaken the economy of Germany's allied opponents, Adolf refuses to use his skills for Nazi profit and would like to do something to stop Operation Bernhard's aid to the war effort. Faced with a moral dilemma, Salomon must decide whether his actions, which could prolong the war and risk the lives of fellow prisoners, are ultimately the right ones.

Watch the trailer here: http://www.sonyclassics.com/thecounterfeiters/

contact info: cinemiskaming@gmail.com

See you at the show!

THE KITE RUNNER - March 9th

2008-02-28T20:24:00.000-08:00

This film is an absolute work of art!

Screening at the Empire Theatre in New Liskeard at 7:30 on March 9th.

One night only! $9 admission.

Based one on of the most acclaimed novels in recent memory, THE KITE RUNNER is a profoundly emotional tale of friendship, family, devastating mistakes and redeeming love. In a divided country on the verge of war, two childhood friends, Amir and Hassan, are about to be torn apart forever. It’s a glorious afternoon in Kabul and the skies are bursting with the exhilarating joy of a kite-fighting tournament. But in the aftermath of the day’s victory, one boy’s fearful act of betrayal will mark their lives forever and set in motion an epic quest for redemption. Now, after 20 years of living in America, Amir returns to a perilous Afghanistan under the Taliban’s iron-fisted rule to face the secrets that still haunt him and take one last daring chance to set things right..

Golden Globe-nominated director Marc Forster (STRANGER THAN FICTION, FINDING NEVERLAND and MONSTER’S BALL) brings to life Khaled Hosseini’s bestseller with a globally diverse cast and crew, mixing a remarkable group of non-actors from Afghanistan and Central Asia with an accomplished international cast. The result is a journey into a new world - through a universal human story that speaks to anyone who has ever yearned for a second chance to make a change and find forgiveness.

DreamWorks Pictures, Sidney Kimmel Entertainment and Participant Productions present THE KITE RUNNER, a Sidney Kimmel Entertainment and Parkes/MacDonald Production released by Paramount Classics. Directed by Marc Forster, screenplay by David Benioff (TROY, STAY) and based on Khaled Hosseini's best-selling book, THE KITE RUNNER. The film is produced by William Horberg (COLD MOUNTAIN, THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY), Walter F. Parkes (GLADIATOR, CATCH ME IF YOU CAN), Rebecca Yeldham (THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES) and E. Bennett Walsh (KILL BILL). The executive producers are Sidney Kimmel, Laurie MacDonald, Sam Mendes and Jeff Skoll.

The Kite Runner

official website (awesome): http://www.kiterunnermovie.com/

EMOTIONAL ARITHMETIC - FEB. 10th

2008-01-28T17:56:00.000-08:00

The february installment of the Cinema Sunday series is a screening of the profound new canadian film Emotion Arimthmetic.

In our troubled times of polarized politics and debilitating war, this extraordinary film from an emerging Canadian filmmaker asks how we will heal the emotional wounds that linger after great upheaval. A magical cast in an idyllic locale reflects on an earlier time when the world was in even greater peril. Three people were brutally separated then; now they must find the strength to face tragedy and reclaim the friendships that transformed their lives.

Melanie Winters (Susan Sarandon) is a survivor of Drancy, a transit camp set up outside Paris during the Nazi occupation. Now comfortably middle-aged, she is married to David (Christopher Plummer) and dotes over her son, Benjamin (Roy Dupuis), and grandson, Timmy (Dakota Goyo). Her life’s work has been to bear witness to what she experienced. Melanie’s life in Quebec’s picturesque Eastern Townships is turned upside down when she discovers that Jakob (Max von Sydow), a Polish dissident who saved her life in the camp, is still alive. She excitedly arranges for him to visit, but he brings an unwelcome surprise. As a boy, Christopher (Gabriel Byrne) was at the camp with Melanie; they both felt the first stirrings of love amid the horrors of Drancy. Christopher’s arrival shatters Melanie’s insulated existence, allowing complex desires to resurface.

These memories make for the mathematics of the film’s title. Melanie is faced with the limitations of facts and figures to describe atrocity with any adequacy. The men question her obsessive chronicling and attempt to draw Melanie out of her fixation on the past. Emotional Arithmetic is a film about personal transformation and, as such, places extraordinary demands on its actors. What a pleasure, then, to see vivacious Sarandon, growling Plummer and gently modulated Byrne play off one another, recreating a love triangle none of them ever wanted. But, even with all this extraordinary talent, it is the elegant, powerful presence of von Sydow, one of cinema’s finest actors, that imbues Emotional Arithmetic with its lasting moral weight. Given Barzman’s focus on humans overwhelmed by tragedy, one cannot help but recall von Sydow’s collaborations with the late Ingmar Bergman, and the great questions that master’s work continues to ask.

Watch the trailer
HERE

CINEMA SUNDAY #1 - JANUARY 13th

2007-12-10T12:02:00.001-08:00

MY KID COULD PAINT THAT

FEST will be screening this wonderful documentary on January the 13th, 2008, marking the first official CINEMA SUNDAY screening!! Here is a synopsis of the film:

In the span of only a few months, 4-year-old Marla Olmstead rocketed from total obscurity into international renown – and sold over $300,000 dollars worth of paintings. She was compared to Kandinsky and Pollock, and called “a budding Picasso.” Inside Edition, The Jane Pauley Show, and NPR did pieces, and The Today Show and Good Morning America got in a bidding war over an appearance by the bashful toddler. There was talk of corporate sponsorship, with the family

fielding calls from The Gap and Crayola. But not all of the attention was positive. From the beginning, many faulted her parents for exposing Marla to the glare of the media and accused the couple of exploiting their daughter for financial

gain. Others felt her work was, in fact, comparable to the great Abstract Expressionists – but saw this as emblematic of the meaninglessness of Modern Art. “She is painting exactly as all the adult paintings have been in the past 50 years, but painting like a child, too. That is what everybody things but they don’t dare to say it,” said Oggi, the leading Italian weekly. Through no intention of her own, Marla revived the age-old question, ‘what is art?’ And then, five months into Marla’s new life as a celebrity and just short of her fifth birthday, a bombshell dropped. CBS’ 60 Minutes aired an exposé suggesting strongly that the paintings were painted by her father, himself an amateur painter. As quickly as the public built Marla up, they tore her down. The New York Post asked whether “the juvenile Jackson Pollock may actually be a fullfledged Willem de Frauding,” the Olmsteads were barraged with hate mail, ostracized around town, sales of the paintings dried up, and Marla’s art dealer considered moving out of Binghamton. Embattled, the Olmsteads turned to the filmmaker to clear their name. Torn between his own responsibility as a journalist and the family’s desire to see their integrity restored, the director finds himself drawn deeper and deeper into a situation that can’t possibly end well for him and them, and could easily end badly for both.

official website and trailer: http://www.sonyclassics.com/mykidcouldpaintthat/

Thanks to all!

2007-11-30T12:27:00.000-08:00

Well we had as good of a turn-out as we could have hoped for, considering the two days of heavy snowfalls which preceded the screening, not to mention the haste with which we threw all of this together.

So to those who came out, thank you dearly. The Jane Austen Book Club proved to be a fantastic movie (and not just for the ladies... there was a great sub-plot of the philosophically human depth of science-fiction literature). The way that each individual characters' romantic plots were a mirror reflection of the plots within the Jane Austen books they were reading was not as linear and obvious as they could have, and this kept the movie fresh. It was wonderfully paced, not allowing for much downtime or wallowing, but instead (because of the reading they were doing of books which study human relationships) they were able to recognise where they were in life from a third person perspective and thus move on, improving their situations. In a world where the majority of reading goes to tabloid cinicism and self-help drivel which just gives one the suggestions of other people, it's refreshing to see a film which recommends reading quality literature which may be an escape, but within this escape you develop such a rich sense of humanity you almost subconsciously better yourself, on your own terms, and this in turn improves all that is around you, by example as well as perspective. Being influenced to become a little more sensitive to your potentials within humanity through intelligent and engaging literature, as opposed to being influenced to complain about yourself and humanity by a media which does nothing but complain about humanity. How refreshing indeed!

So, again, , thank you to all who came and helped put all this together. . . including:

The Empire Theatre-Dave Dymond

Chat Noir-Paul and Jenn

Kelly Ouimet

The Toronto International Film Festival Group

The Temiskaming Speaker-Sue Nielsen

Jeff Addison-graphics

FIRST FILM!!!

2007-11-27T12:45:00.000-08:00

Hello ladies and gentlemen!
We are excited to announce our official launch!

We will be holding our series premiere with The Jane Austen Book Club at the Empire Theatre in Temiskaming Shores on Thursday, November 29th.

A pre-show get together at Chat Noir Books will offer many door prizes, as well as season's passes at X-mas sale prices!

Season pass - $42 for 6 films (regular price $48)
Admit 1 ticket - $9

Tickets are available at Robertson's and, of course, at Chat Noir.

Event starts at 6:30
Film starts at 7:30

The film trailer and additional info can be found here:

http://www.sonyclassics.com/thejaneaustenbookclub/

The Weekender 20 Questions interview can be found in the arts and entertainment section here:

http://weekender.northernontario.ca/

We are looking forward to this wonderful film.
Hope to see you all there!