Only When I Dance, part of GlobalFest’s lineup of internationally acclaimed films.
DETAILS
If you’re like the majority of Calgarians, when you think of GlobalFest, you think fireworks — specifically, the international fireworks competition that lights up our southeast skyline at the tail end of August. It may come as a surprise that the GlobalFest Film Festival has been running along with the main festival for six years now. Last year, it was moved a month ahead of the main events, and this year, it’s moved ahead considerably farther. It’s hard to compete with fireworks.
“Over the recent couple of years, it was decided that there was enough interest and there was enough audience in Calgary to develop it as an element of the program on its own,” explains festival producer and programmer Angel Cheng. “We saw an opportunity there to reach our GlobalFest audiences with a different medium. We decided it was a smart move to move it to Kensington and to the Plaza.”
In this year’s festival, titled Exposed, Cheng has assembled a compelling program of documentaries that span not only the globe but politics, human right struggles, gender identity and art both public and private. “I wanted to choose films that represented issues that affected us as Calgarians or as Albertans,” Cheng says. “Because Calgary has grown into such a global community, there definitely are influences from around the world, because that’s where culturally our backgrounds are. But how do you make them work within the environment and culture we live in and find that balance and that identity?”
The festival’s opener, Official Rejection, speaks directly to Alberta’s independent filmmakers whose dream of the Kevin Smith Clerks fairy tale contrasts with the increasingly competitive and convoluted reality of distributors and festivals. Smith appears in the film and producer, animator and star Scott Storm will attend the screening.
Queer China, Comrade China illuminates the struggling gay rights movement in communist China. “Up until 1997 sodomy was illegal and people got arrested for it and put in jail,” Cheng says. “As close as 2001, into the new millennium, they finally took sodomy off the list of mental disorders, it’s mind-boggling.”
Roadsworth: Crossing the Line follows a Montreal stencil artist whose metaphorical asphalt assaults landed him in legal difficulty and begged the question, “Who owns public space?” And New Zealand’s Assume Nothing colourfully explores the not-so-black-and-white issue of gender identity, while Brazil’s Only When I Dance, explores ballet as a refuge and escape from the poverty, racism and violence of the slums overlooking Rio de Janeiro.
Increasingly, Albertans are seeing the arts as an integral part of their lives and themselves as a part of the larger global community. As Calgary grows, so does GlobalFest, both in size and relevance. “I believe in community and I see a lot of wonderful talent in this city, in filmmaking,” says Cheng. “I think that it needs to be more strongly supported amongst ourselves. Growing up in Alberta, I know very well in some places the arts have been very much a type of underground culture, whereas now, there’s no excuse to ignore it. There’s no excuse to not be involved, because it’s not an underground thing anymore, it’s accessible to everyone. It doesn’t have this veil of mystery or exclusivity around it anymore.”
Post the first comment: (Login or Register)