movie monthly

The 16-day Vancouver International Film Festival gets underway on 1st October. If previous years are anything to go by, you can expect a programme bursting at the seams with world cinema, documentary, music and arthouse work from across the globe. In particular, with the Earth Summit in Copenhagen coming in December, expect festival artistic director Alan Franey to field a strand of hard-hitting environmental documentaries when the full VIFF programme goes live on 12th September.

Before the economic levees burst, letting loose a wave of bank failures and bailouts, it seemed like the future of the planet was actually of vital importance to politicians. But as the recent side-lining of climate change at the G20 meeting showed, right now politicians are bent on firming up the old world order rather than laying the foundations for a low-carbon future.

A look at movies opening in March 2009

In recent years there has been a spate of documentaries on the subject of water: its increasing commodification and the greed, corruption, and mis-management surrounding it.

In October, I was in Toronto for a screening of my film You Never Bike Alone at the Planet in Focus Film Festival. One of the films that I managed to catch there by another BC filmmaker was 49 Megawatts.