Telefilm Canada is pleased to announce that Canada will be well represented at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. In addition to seven top-flight short films, the line-up includes Shake Hands With the Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire, a powerful feature-length documentary by Gemini Award-winning filmmaker Peter Raymont, inspired by Lt.-Gen. Dallaire’s best-selling book. Produced by White Pine Pictures in association with CBC/Radio-Canada, the film will be competing in the prestigious World Cinema Documentaries section. The 2005 Sundance Film Festival takes place in Park City, Utah, January 20-30.
Canadian cinema is always well positioned and highly regarded at Sundance, and Telefilm Canada is a Sundance Institute Associate.
Encouraged by the resounding success of last year’s inaugural opening of the Canada Lounge at Sundance, Telefilm Canada, in partnership with the Department of Canadian Heritage Trade Routes program, is once again spearheading the Canadian business and press centre. Designed to foster visibility and business opportunities for the Canadian film industry, the Canada Lounge is a vital hub for American and international professionals seeking to meet Canadian filmmakers and talent and to obtain information on the domestic industry.
A much anticipated film premiere and a major book launch
Lieutenant General (ret.) Roméo Dallaire was the commander of the United Nations peacekeeping mission stationed in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide. Shake Hands With the Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire (World Sales: Films Transit, Montréal) explores his life as a hero guided by compassion and a man of tortured conscience. Battling the world’s indifference, Lt. Gen. Dallaire was forced, in the end, to watch helplessly as an entire country became engulfed in flames and thousands of people lost their lives.
The documentary is based in part on the best-selling book Shake Hands With The Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda, for which Roméo Dallaire recently won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction.
Filmmaker Peter Raymont and Lt.-Gen. Dallaire will be at the Sundance Film Festival to participate in a host of events following the film’s premiere on January 22, including;
- The World Is Watching, a panel moderated by John Anderson, chief film critic for Newsday, about the urgency of documentaries and their potential to affect change. (January 23)
- A book signing at the Canada Lounge, organized in collaboration with the American publisher Avalon Publishing Group, to coincide with the U.S. launch. (January 22)
Lt.-Gen. Dallaire is currently a Fellow at Harvard University’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. The mission of the Carr Center is to train future leaders for careers in public service, and to make human rights principles central to the formulation of good public policy in the United States and throughout the world.
Canadian shorts at Sundance
The seven short films selected are: From Cherry English by Jeff Barnaby; Pizza Shop by Mark Mainguy; Stronger by Debra Felstead; Through My Thick Glass by Pjotr Sapegin (Canada-Norway); Tongue Bully by Annie Bradley; Ryan by Chris Landreth; and Waiting for the Man by Rob Stefaniuk.
Canadian films also screening at Park City’s Slamdance
The Slamdance Film Festival defines itself as the “independent alternative” to Sundance, to which it runs concurrently. This year the Festival will be presenting from Canada four features (Amelia by Edouard Lock; Ill Fated by Mark Lewis; Male Fantasy by Blaine Thurier; and Phil the Alien by Rob Stefaniuk) and five shorts (Birdlings Two (a US-Canada coproduction) by Davina Pardo; Patricia Grey by Anne Koizumi; Sheol by Rubén Möller; Magda by Chel White; and Man Feel Pain by Dylan Akio Smith).
