Vancouver directors show work in Greetings From Isolation Film Festival, to April 5

Short films, made at home, range from documentaries to video diaries and fictional stories of lockdown

Anne Marie Fleming’s short film “Vancouver April 2020 18:59:30 PT”.

You can stream the Isolation Film Festival for free here, from March 18 to April 5.

A STRONG contingent of Vancouver filmmakers has joined the 91-strong force from across Canada whose work is featured in the Greetings From Isolation Virtual Film Festival. The event marks the one-year anniversary of COVID lockdown.

Among the BC names with shorts shot at home in the fest are Anne Marie Fleming, Robert Dayton, Simon Davidson, Rob Leickner, Lindsay McIntyre, Blaine Thurier, Ana Valine, and Jay Cardinal Villeneuve.

The directors were commissioned by veteran Toronto programmer Stacey Donen to create a living archive of this moment of unprecedented pandemic uncertainty. Each filmmaker used a phone or personal camera in their living space, with no budget attached. The range is fascinating: genres span fiction, documentary, essay, and video diary, with portraits going from the intimate and personal to the highly experimental. Put together, they’re a moving and thought-provoking time capsule of a beyond-strange year. And though the films only last minutes apiece, set aside an hour or more to head down a rabbit hole with them.

The fest interweaves the short films with panels and interviews into 13 different programs available online.

Other filmmakers taking part include Matthew Rankin (The Twentieth Century), Brett Story (The Prison in Twelve Landscapes), Alan Zweig (A Hard Name), Katerina Cizek (Highrise), John Greyson (Lilies), Yuqi Kang (A Little Wisdom) Ali Kazimi (Continuous Journey), and Peter Lynch (Project Grizzly).

Donen programmed Canadian cinema for the Toronto International Film Festival from 1999 to 2006, and from 2009 to 2011 he was the artistic director of the Whistler Film Festival.

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