To wrap up their Winter 2023 International Film Series, in collaboration with the Film Circuit of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) and sponsored by Laurysen Kitchens Ltd. and RBC Wealth Management, the Rotary Club of Ottawa-Stittsville will be showing two final films in the upcoming months.
The two final films will screen on April 24th and May 29th at Landmark Cinemas in Kanata at 4:00 pm and 7:00 pm.
On April 24th, the Iranian film No Bears will be shown with English subtitles. In this film, we witness the conflict between modern practices and ancient superstitions, and the result is sometimes comedic, sometimes tragic.
Rotary Club Film series subscribers were introduced to Hit the Road director Panah Panahi in the fall series. For the winter series, the Rotary Club committee has selected a film made by his father, Jafar Panahi, recipient of top prizes at the Venice and Berlin film festivals.
In July of 2022, Panahi was sentenced to six years of prison by the Iranian judiciary. When he created No Bears, he was already under a filmmaking and travel ban. But the defiant Panahi refused to be silenced. m
In No Bears, Panahi plays himself, directing a film remotely from a village (Joban) near the Turkish border, while at the same time filming day-to-day activities within the village. Panahi’s film crew is across the Iranian border in Turkey, creating a film that focuses on Bakhtiar and Zara, a couple trying to flee Iran for Paris. Meanwhile, in Joban, Panahi is drawn into a local issue among the villagers that focuses on a dispute between two men who are both trying to marry a local girl.
This film has already won the special jury prize at Venice, and the award for cinematic bravery at the Chicago International Film Festival.
On May 29th, the Rotary Club will be screening the National Geographic Documentary, The Territory. This documentary focuses on a three-year period beginning in 2018 when Jair Bolsonaro was elected President.
In one of his campaign speeches, Bolsonaro declared that, with his election, “there won’t be one more inch of Indigenous reserve”. In response, lndigenous peoples living in “The Territory” (a 7,000-square-mile region in the state of Rondônia) organized to protest the seizure of their land by settler farmers.
The filmmakers refer to “The Territory” as “an island of rainforest surrounded by farms”. It is the sovereign land of the Uru-eu-wau-wau and other Indigenous groups. The Uru-eu-wau-wau partnered with cinematographer Alex Pritz in the making of this striking and compelling documentary that follows the struggles between the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau and the settlers.
Each film has been carefully selected by the Rotary Club for your enjoyment, and proceeds go towards a wide variety of Rotary Club projects and donations both within the community and around the world.
Some of the organizations that have received recent financial support from our club are the Stittsville Food Bank, the Richmond Food Bank, the Catholic Centre for Immigrants (in support of Afghanistan, Syrian, and Ukrainian refugees), Water First (a program to train indigenous water quality assurance workers) and ShelterBox (a Rotary International affiliate that provides temporary housing for refugees, including those from Ukraine).
To order your series or a single pass, please contact Charles Mossman (charcz@yahoo.com) for 4:00 pm passes, or Elke Harder (Elke@EFHarder.com) for 7:00 pm passes. Passes are $30 each and allow entry for both films. It’s also important to note that these films deal with mature subjects and are therefore not suitable for children.
For information about the Rotary Club, visit their website here or check out their Facebook page.