Lethbridge Independent Film Festival rolls out the red carpet this weekend

By Al Beeber - Lethbridge Herald on September 7, 2024.

Herald photo by Al Beeber Galt Museum CEO Sarah Newstead and Lethbridge Independent Film Festival co-ordinator Tess Mitchell are ready for the two-day event that runs at the Movie Mill today and the museum on Sunday.

LETHBRIDGE HERALDabeeber@lethbridgeherald.com

The Galt Museum and Archives is rolling out the red carpet this weekend for its Lethbridge Independent Film Festival.

The festival runs today and Sunday from 11 a.m. until 11 p.m.

Today’s films will be staged at the Movie Mill where a red carpet will be laid outdoors and Sunday’s offerings are at the museum.

The festival features 30 global premieres from a range of countries including the U.S., UK, Indonesia, Portugal, Brazil, Netherlands, Switzerland, Egypt, Malawi and the Solomon Islands.

Four directors will be doing question and answer sessions for audiences, as well.

Admission to the festival is by donation.

The festival has a total of 41 films including 25 from Canada, said festival co-ordinator Tess Mitchell on Friday.

Eleven films are local, Mitchell noted.

Films bridge global creativity and regional. Some of the premieres will have cast and crew present.

The Q & As will feature Ivan and Ivy MacDonald, who directed the American offering “Bring Them Home” while UK director Aaron Shrimpton will talk about his movie “Arcadia Lasts.”

“Bring Them Home” is about a group of Blackfoot peoples whose mission is to establish the first wild herd of buffalo on their ancestral territory since the species was made near extinct.

It will be festival’s final film Sunday at 7:40 p.m.

“This centerpiece of the festival celebrates the profound connection between iinii, the land, and its people, highlighting the vital importance of our shared efforts to revitalize this sacred relationship and bring iinii home,” says a synopsis on the museum’s website.

Jen Markowitz of Toronto, who directed “Queer Camp,” will discuss her film while a local artist known as Francheska Dynamites will discuss the 2022 film “Francheska: Prairie Queen and do a live performance.

Another highlight will be the showing of the film “Summer Qamp” which was shot in Alberta and tells the story of queer, trans and non-binary teens at a rural camp “get to just be kids in a supportive space, surrounded by counsellors who can relate to their experience,” says a synopsis on website imdb.com

The festival was initially conceptualized a couple of years ago as a local festival, said Galt CEO Sarah Newstead who joined the museum in June.

“One of the things that Tess has done over the last couple of years is expand it into a slightly more international festival” with a focus on local and emerging artists and international films.

The festival, said Newstead, is “part of this sort of planned make Lethbridge a film destination, a place where filmmakers can come” and run their projects.

The festival is a signal to the film community that Lethbridge is ready and interested in film,” added Newstead.

Films will be mostly shown on one screen at time. The festival will open on an outdoor screen at both venues from 11 to noon with programming for younger audiences who can watch National Film Board archive shorts “and just sit and enjoy a sparkly kind of atmosphere of the film festival,” said Mitchell with everyone getting an opportunity to have a red carpet moment.

From noon until 4 p.m. documentaries will be shown outside the museum Sunday on a large wall-mounted screen in a protected garden area.

Indoor screenings will start at 2:30 p.m.

Economic Development is sponsoring the event this year, and Newstead underpins the fact that film festivals are part of improving the economic outlook for filming in the city and area.

Brock Skretting of EDL has been getting the word out about potential filming locations and noted a video of this festival will be made to promote it.

Newstead said one of her goals is to get as many local residents into the museum to see what is being offered.

“One of the things I was really excited about when I heard we were running a festival. . .is it’s an opportunity to get more folks in that maybe wouldn’t visit a museum. We wanted to have a really good component to it on the Galt day to make sure we get some families coming in. And sort of utilizing the museum resources,” Newstead said.

People can look at Galt exhibitions between film showings with the entire space being open.

“It’ll be like a real immersive experience where there’s lots to do,” added Mitchell.

“It’s not only a film festival but it’s actually a film festival at a really cool museum,” said Newstead.

The festival kicks off this morning at the Movie Mill with “The Girl Who Hated Books,” a 2006 animated short about literacy. Four other shorts will be shown before a block of narrative shorts start at noon.

A screening of experimental shorts begins at 2:15 p.m. in which audiences will “encounter playful imagination and dark underworlds as you venture behind the veil.”

Among those will be the documentary “Fire Ravages Satan House” about what the festival calls a “satanic panic in southern Alberta.”

At 4:15, Part 1 of the Lethbridge Pride Fest Series kicks off with “Summer Qamp” and intro “Autistic Joy.”

A curated selection of music videos from local and other bands starts at 6:45 p.m. among them being “Shaela Miller: Mourning Tonight” and “Skinny Dyck: Can’t Change The Colour Of Your Eyes.”

At 7:45 p.m. the festival will screen the Alberta premiere of “A Banquet” about “Widowed mother Holly (Sienna Guillory) is radically tested when her teenage daughter Betsey (Jessica Alexander) experiences a profound enlightenment and insists that her body is no longer her own, but in service to a higher power. “

On Sunday at the Galt, an encore screening of the NFB shorts will staged followed by a documentary shorts outdoor mini fest from noon until 4 p.m. The program will loop so audiences can experience them throughout the afternoon.

Lethbridge Pride Fest Series Part 2 kicks off at 2:30 p.m. in the Akaisamitohkanao’pa Viewing Gallery.

At 5 p.m. the feature presentation “Monster” will be shown, a synopsis calling this Cannes winning film from Japan “a gripping tale of mystery and suspense.