The First Winter
Curated by writer, literary director and counterculture enthusiast Ralph Elawani, with the support of Leslie Supnet, filmmaker and executive director of the Winnipeg Film Group, this program aims to celebrate a local film scene of national importance. Around the Winnipeg Film Group, a cinematic way of life has crystallized, not only illustrated by the achievements of a certain Guy Maddin, but also by an exceptional Dave Barber who has long been the soul of the WPG. We will pay tribute to him at the program’s opening, before inviting you to discover films rarely screened together, works that are wild, radical, playful, wacky, absurd, surreal, sometimes extraordinary, and often extravagant. Between animation, experimental film, documentary, and artisanal fiction, this heritage program is also radically oriented towards the future of cinema. It is a question to the viewer, like a plea from out of nowhere, or rather from Winnipeg.
In the presence of filmmakers Leonard Yakir and Ryan McKenna
Preceded by short film Main Street Soldier
World War II veteran Ray LeClair relives his marches through a haze of alcoholism on Winnipeg's Historic Main Street. The film draws from Ray's two battlefields, war and the street.
A young man impregnates a vacationing Canadian in Portugal and must face the inhospitable prairie landscape and its hopeless denizens when he emigrates to join her.
Winnipeg Film Group
The Winnipeg Film Group (WFG) is an artist-run film education, production, distribution, and exhibition centre in Winnipeg, Manitoba, committed to promoting the art of Canadian cinema, especially independent cinema. While specializing in short films, WFG's collection ranges from works one-second shorts to full-length features, with films spanning various genres including narrative drama and comedy, animation, documentary and experimental, as well as hybrids of genres. The organization has been noted for spearheading and playing a key role in the development of a distinctly Winnipeg-based style of filmmaking, which often draws on unconventional, experimental and avant-garde styles of filmmaking — such as Guy Maddin's frequent use of the visual language of old silent films — to tell surreal and anti-authoritarian stories.
Presented in collaboration with
