Archive
POSSIBLE WORLDS 2006
The inaugural Canadian Film Festival took place Nov. 30th - Dec. 6th 2006 at the Chauvel Cinema, Sydney.
A selection of films went on to tour across Australia, with stops including Canberra, Melbourne and Adelaide, as well as Wollongong, Nowra and Ettalong Beach in regional New South Wales.
The Festival opened with the Australian premiere of Quebec drama Familia. Filmmaker Louise Archambault flew to Sydney to present the fiscreening, which was preceded by a lively Opening Night reception hosted by the Canadian consulate General and the Canadian Tourism Commission.
Six other features had their Australian premieres at the Festival:
- award winning Quebec drama The Novena;
- On The Trail of Igor Rizzi, hot off winning Best Canadian First Feature at the Toronto International Film Festival;
- Superhero comedy Sidekick, introduced by screenwriter and producer Michael Sparaga, a very special guest of the Festival;
- Ron Mann's counter-culture documentary Tales of the Rat Fink;
- Souvenir of Canada, in which author and artist Douglas Coupland attempts to define Canadian identity;
- Bon Cop Bad Cop, Canada's highest-grossing film of all time, went home with the Audience Award for Best Feature.
We invited Toronto's Worldwide Short Film Festival to curate two programs of the best Canadian shorts: Canuck Chuckles and Award Winners.
On World AIDS Day, the Festival featured a special benefit screening of 3 Needles, Thom Fitzgerald's star-studded drama about the global AIDS epidemic.
Following the premiere of Next: A Primer on Urban Painting, we hosted a massive street party featuring live painting by some Australia and New Zealand's biggest names in graffiti.
Our Flashback was a sold-out screening of Mina shum's 1994 comedy Double Happiness, starring the great Sandra Oh.
Audiences packed the cinema for special previews of French-Canadian co-production Heading South and Canada-UK co-production Tideland, from visionary director Terry Gilliam.
Also popular was Aubrey Nealon's coming-of-age drama A Simple Curve and the Audience Award winner for best doc, Midnight Movies - From the Margin to the Mainstream.
The Festival closed with Kino Kabaret, the result of a mad filmmaking workshop which saw six guests from Montreal make a dozen short films with aspiring local filmmakers. The following party capped off a fantastic week of good cinema, familiar yet thrillingly different.
