A few films from the NFB(National Film Board of Canada) will be shown in theaters in select cities nationwide this month.
A Man Imagined will be a part of the very first Semaine de la critique de Montréal (Montreal Critics’ Week), taking place from January 13 to 19, 2025, at the Cinémathèque Québécoise and Cinéma Moderne.(more information below)
Sons will be in Vancouver on Saturday, January 18, at 2 p.m., at The Cinematheque, Vancouver ticket link (more information below)
Followed by a discussion with Next Gen Men executive director Jake Stika
Sons will also be in Toronto on Thursday, January 23, at 7 p.m., CSI Spadina, suite 101, Toronto ticket link
Followed by a discussion with Justin Simms and Next Gen Men director of programs Jonathon Reed.
Three National Film Board of Canada (NFB) co-productions have been named to Canada’s Top Ten—a list of the country’s finest feature-length and short films in 2024, as chosen by the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).
These acclaimed films will screen in February at TIFF Lightbox, with directors in attendance. More information coming soon.
A Man Imagined Un homme imaginé
Brian M. Cassidy and Melanie Shatzky
2024 | 62 min, Documentary, English
Awards and Festivals
Official Selection International Film Festival Rotterdam, Rotterdam, Netherlands (2024)
Official Selection DOXA Documentary Film Festival, Vancouver, Canada (2024)
Official Selection International Festival Signs of the Night, Bangkok, Thailand (2024)
Official Selection Guanajuato International Film Festival, Guanajuato, Mexico (2024)
Official Selection Calgary International Film Festival, Calgary, Canada (2024)
Directors’ Choice Award Tallahassee Film Festival, Tallahassee, USA (2024)
A bracingly intimate and hallucinatory portrait of a man with schizophrenia surviving amidst urban detritus and decay. Pushing at the limits of non-fiction cinema, A Man Imagined follows 67-year-old Lloyd as he sells discarded objects to motorists and passersby. Unfolding along psychological lines, the film reveals the existential solitude of a man at once gentle and marred by a storied past.
A Man Imagined Trailer(click here)
The NFB will be part of the very first Semaine de la critique de Montréal (Montreal Critics’ Week), taking place from January 13 to 19, 2025, at the Cinémathèque Québécoise and Cinéma Moderne. The newly minted festival will host the Montreal premiere of Brian M. Cassidy and Melanie Shatzky’s “documentary fable” A Man Imagined (Un homme imaginé) in its opening program. Montreal is the filmmakers’ hometown and the film’s shooting location. Capturing the day-to-day life of a decades-long street survivor, this bold film had its world premiere at the International Film Festival Rotterdam and was an official selection at several festivals around the world, including the DOXA Documentary Film Festival in Vancouver. It was also the Director’s Choice Award winner at the Tallahassee Film Festival. Quote “Together, over a period of two-and-a-half years, we crafted an intimate and immersive portrait of a man with a rich inner life who is routinely overlooked and often feared… We offer A Man Imagined as a testament to survival.” – Brian M. Cassidy and Melanie Shatzky, filmmakers.
"The filmmakers would like to express gratitude to their collaborator, Lloyd, for his unwavering commitment and dedication to the making of this film."
Sons (Fils)
Justin Simms 2024 | 70 min Documentary English
Set against the backdrop of his son’s first five years of life—from cooing infant to hurricane of a boy—filmmaker Justin Simms looks at modern masculinity through the lens of fatherhood as he asks an increasingly urgent question: How do we teach our boys to be better men?
(Justin, newborn Jude, and Justin's wife Willow)
How do we teach our boys to become better men?
Newfoundland director Justin Simms tries to answer this vital question throughout his National Film Board of Canada (NFB) feature documentary Sons, which premieres January 20 on nfb.ca and the NFB’s streaming platform for smart TVs.
Set against the backdrop of his son’s first five years of life—from cooing infant to hurricane of a boy—Simms looks at modern masculinity through the lens of fatherhood in his deeply personal 70-minute documentary.
Community screenings
The NFB will also present Sons at community screenings in Toronto and Vancouver supported by Next Gen Men, a Canadian nonprofit dedicated to creating a future where boys and men experience less pain and cause less harm by changing how the world sees, acts and thinks about masculinity.
It’s a boy!
It’s March 2016 and St. John’s filmmaker Justin Simms has just become a dad.
But his joy is tinged with unease.
Little Jude enters the world at a time when traditional notions of masculinity are being contested as never before. How can Simms teach his boy to be a good man?
With Sons, eight eventful years in the making, the Newfoundland-based filmmaker confronts the challenge with imagination and creative flair, crafting a big-hearted documentary essay on parenting, patriarchy—and the pain and pleasure of guiding boys through the turbulent cultural waters of the early 21st century. Woven throughout is luminous informal footage of Jude’s early years, charting his trajectory from helpless newborn to hurricane of a boy, obsessed with dinosaurs and superheroes.
Anchoring his enquiry in his home turf, a vibrant neighbourhood in downtown St. John’s, Justin enlists the help of family, friends and an engaging gang of fellow dads, all grappling with the challenge of parenting boys. “Masculinity can be beautiful,” observes one participant, “but it needs a new story now.”
Making inventive use of archival imagery, Simms evokes a traditional maritime culture where men frequently were separated from their families, and in a series of soul-bearing conversations with his own father, he explores how “masculinity” can always be questioned, always be reimagined.
Quotes
“I began to be haunted by the question, How do we lose so many of our boys to the dark side of masculinity? And perhaps a more important question: What can I do as a father to better model the kind of behaviour and empathetic worldview that I so wish for Jude and his cohort to absorb?”–Justin Simms
“Every dad hopes his son makes a better father than he did. Sons offers a touching, personal, and introspective work that uses one filmmaker’s vulnerability to mine a question many people need to answer.”–Pat Mullen, POV Magazine.
Comments
Post a Comment