BY VICKI GILHULA
It's nice work if you can get it. Heather Campbell's job at
Cinéfest is to take care of the actors, directors, producers
and other film industry VIPs.
She has met actors Gordon Pinsent and Sarah Polley, as well as
Patrick Warburton, who played Puddy on Seinfeld. Last year she
escorted Laszlo Barna, one of the top television and film
producers in Canada, around town.
And this year, her job will be particularly challenging. She
will accompany handsome actor/director Paul Gross to the
Cinéfest opening party Saturday, Sept. 13 at Dynamic Earth.
For the first time at the festival, a film will be screened at
the opening party. Patricia Rozema's 1988 film, I Heard
Mermaids Singing, will be screened. It was the film shown in
1988 when Cinéfest organizers were testing their idea that a
festival that promoted Canadian-made films could work in
Sudbury. The first festival was held in September 1989 and it
was heralded as an instant success.
Gross will also attend the Sunday night (Sept. 14) gala showing
of his new film Passchendaele, which is also the opening film
at the Toronto International Film Festival. It is a love story
set during the First World War. A soldier, played by Gross, is
sent fight in the third battle of Ypres in 1917. Some of the
heaviest fighting of the First World War took place at
Passchendaele, Belgium, and 14,000 Canadians died in the mud
there. The movie is written and directed by Gross.
His wife, actor Martha Burns, is in the cast of the movie
Blindness, which will also be shown at this year's Cinéfest.
Based on Nobel Prize winning author Jose Saramango's book, it
is about a plague that causes everyone to go blind in a city.
The screenplay was co-written by Don McKellar, who was one of
the first VIPs to visit Sudbury in the festival's early days.
McKellar acted in director Bruce McDonald's 1989 film Roadkill,
which is about a band touring Northern Ontario. It is set in
Sudbury. It was such a hit at the first festival, organizers
are bringing it back for the 2008 festival.
The list of gala presentations are a mixture of comedy and
drama with a bit of history thrown in for good measure.
Happy Go Lucky, a British comedy about a very happy teacher,
Poppy, is the Monday evening gala (Sept. 15).
Tuesday's gala (Sept. 16) is not so funny. The film 50 Dead Men
Walking tells the real-life story of a British spy in the Irish
Republican Army.
The Wednesday gala (Sept. 17) is the French comedy La Fille de
Monaco. Audiences will laugh at this movie about a French
lawyer who becomes obsessed with a television weather reporter.
On Thursday (Sept. 18), audiences will be treated to a history
lesson. Set in 1951, Stone of Destiny tells the true story of
four Glasgow University students who retrieved the 400- pound
Stone of Scone, the ancient coronation stone of the Scots that
was seized by the conquering English almost 700 years
earlier.
There are two gala films Friday evening (Sept. 19). C'est Pa
Moi, Je le Jure (It's Not Me) is a French-Canadian film about a
10-year-old boy set in 1968 (7 p.m.).
Rachel Getting Married will be shown at 9:30 p.m. This is an
American film about the family black sheep who returns home for
her sister's wedding. It stars Debra Winger and Anne Hathaway.
One Week will be the Saturday (Sept. 20) gala. This is an
English-Canadian film about a young man who is diagnosed with
terminal cancer and decides to go on a cross-country trip from
Toronto to British Columbia. (Watch for the Big Nickel.)
The closing gala will Deepa Mehta's Heaven on Earth (Sept. 21),
the story of a young woman who travels from India to Canada to
marry a man she has never met.
Mehta has attended Cinéfest several times before when her
earlier films were shown, and she is expected to attend the
closing reception.
"The guests who attend Cinéfest enjoy it," says Campbell.
"They love Sudbury because of the fresh air; they like how they
can go around without a lot of paparazzi."
Campbell, a frequent contributor to Northern Life, says she can
be "a little bit nervous" meeting VIPs but she tries to engage
them in personal conversations.
"On the 30-minute ride from the airport, we talk about family
and personal things.
"They are people too, and they have complicated lives like
all of us. The people who have made it are exceptionally
gracious and that is partly the reason they did (make it),
because they know their fans drive their success."
For more information, phone the Cinéfest office at 688-1234 or
visit
www.cinefest.com
.
