Toronto Star, Canada
Feb 2 2007

Then we take Berlin

Clement Virgo joins a host of Canadian filmmakers ready to make their
mark at next week’s Berlinale film festival

Feb 02, 2007 04:30 AM
Michael Levitin
Special to the Star

BERLIN, Germany-Around this time last year, Clement Virgo wasn’t just
hanging out at the Berlin International Film Festival, watching as
the foreign buyers snapped up rights to his 2005 film Lie With Me.

He was also busy prepping his next film, Poor Boy’s Game, a boxing
drama that digs into themes of race and tribalism in Canadian
communities, which he shot in Halifax in June. Next week he returns
to Berlin for the movie’s world premiere.

At 40, Virgo is hitting his stride as a director internationally –
and he appears to be doing it on his own terms, asking hard questions
"in an honest way, hoping to engage people as well as entertain them.

"We don’t do well in this country when we try to imitate what others
are doing, like creating American-style genre films," Virgo said in
the run-up to the festival.

"We do well when we do very specific, idiosyncratic Canadian films.
That means making films about things we know – and when we do that, I
think those films translate well and resonate around the world."

Virgo is part of a stellar lineup of Canadian directors set to show
their works at the prestigious Berlinale, which runs Feb. 8 to 18.

Among the nine features and two short films to be presented, three
are world premieres. Another eight films, including Ian Iqbal
Rashid’s recent Sundance sensation How She Movs, will be screened
separately through Telefilm’s Perspective Canada-Berlin initiative in
the hopes of finding international distributors.

After an impressive showing here last year (with Marc Evans’s Snow
Cake opening the competition and Claude Gagnon’s Kamataki widely
praised), Canadian filmmakers are waiting to see if their works
create another stir in Berlin this time around – possibly even from
some of the newcomers in the field.

"I didn’t do this film as a way of making a political statement,"
said 36-year-old Gariné Torossian, whose family immigrated to Canada
from Lebanon in 1979.

Torossian’s first feature film, Stone Time Touch, starring Arsinée
Khanjian (Sabah, Ararat), explores issues of Armenian identity and
the meaning of homeland.

A resident of Toronto, Torossian has shown 19 short films
internationally, including Girl From Moush (1994), which won Best
Experimental Film at the Melbourne Film Festival. But nothing she’s
done to date compares to the "diversity of communities in Armenia,
the extremes and the complexity of history since the genocide" she
feels she captured visually in her latest effort.

"The theme of identity and imagination has concerned me from the
beginning of my work. I feel Canadian and the more I connect with
other places the more Canadian I feel. (But) Armenia was always the
destination," Torossian said. "This film was mostly about
understanding the homeland that we imagine – and finally seeing it
for real."

As for Canada’s more recognizable names on the Berlin circuit, Bruce
McDonald is here with his world premiere, coming-of-age story The
Tracey Fragments starring Ellen Page, which opens the Panorama
program of the festival.

Driven by a rockin’ and rollin’ musical score, Fragments is based on
the novel by Vancouver author Maureen Medved and represents a virtual
comeback for McDonald, who has struggled through filmmaking mishaps
over the last six years.

Not to be forgotten: it was in Berlin where the Kingston-born
McDonald saw his first feature, Roadkill, premiere in 1989.

Another headliner is Sarah Polley, who turns from acting to directing
with her first feature, Away From Her.

Julie Christie stars in this film adapted from a story by Alice Munro
about a couple coming to grips with Alzheimer’s disease. Having made
an unexpected splash last month at Sundance, the film’s European
premiere may be what launches the 28-year-old Canadian star’s career
internationally.

Creating a different sort of stir is Guy Maddin with an experimental
silent film about his remembered childhood, Brand Upon the Brain!

For its European premiere on Feb. 15, the film will be performed at
the historic Deutsche Oper Berlin featuring a live orchestra and
narration by Isabella Rossellini.

Other Canadian flicks to watch for include Catherine Martin’s
meandering journeys of In the Cities and The Spirit of Places; Salif
Traore’s Faro, about a man’s return to his African village; John
Price’s short View of the Falls from the Canadian Side; Andrew
Currie’s Fido (Bill Connolly) about a zombie-infested town; Reg
Harkema’s Monkey Warfare; Robert Favreau’s A Sunday in Kigali; and
Jennifer Baichwal’s Manufactured Landscapes, about photographer
Edward Burtynsky’s pursuit to document China’s vast industrial
revolution.

If Telefilm’s executive director Wayne Clarkson is right – that
Canadian cinema with its "sense of wide-eyed adventure and whimsy …
has what it takes to light up the world’s screens" – then it’s safe
to expect not only the German public’s approval, but a jump in global
sales when Canadian films hit Berlin next week.

"We’re seeing a new generation," Virgo said, citing the boost that
innovative filmmakers like Atom Egoyan, David Cronenberg and Denys
Arcand gave to Canadian cinema in the early 1990s.

Nowadays, directors are "more savvy, thinking locally but also
globally.

"We are on the verge of a renaissance. And I’m hoping to be part of
that movement."