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Written and directed by Julia Kwan, Everything Will Be opens as dawn breaks and the long-time merchants of Vancouver’s Chinatown are hard at work preparing for what they hope will be a busy day. But this once-thriving neighbourhood is in flux as new condo developments and non-Chinese businesses gradually move into the declining hub of the Chinese community. Everything Will Be captures this transformation through the intimate perspectives of the neighbourhood’s residents, merchants and new entrepreneurs, who offer their poignant reflections on change, memory and legacy.
Kwan studied film and psychology at Toronto`s Ryerson Polytechnic Univeristy. From there she studied at the Canadian Film Centre and completed her short film Three Sisters on Moon Lake. Her script for Eve and the Fire Horse was given the Charles Israel Screenwriting Prize for best screenplay at the 2001 Writer`s Guild of Canada awards. The film Eve & the Fire Horse went on to win both a Special Jury Prize for World Cinema at the Sundance Film Festival as well as the Claude Jutra Award for best first feature film.
Everything Will Be was produced and executive produced for the NFB by David Christensen. The film had its world premiere earlier this year at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival in Toronto.
In addition to Everything Will Be, the NFB has three animated shorts screening during VIFF. They are:
Jutra. Directed by Marie-Josée Saint-Pierre, this 14 minute film is an innovative portrait of the late Quebec filmmaker Claude Jutra, whose credits included the NFB classic Mon oncle Antoine. In Jutra, the filmmaker is seen in dialogue with himself at various stages of his life, becoming the narrator of his own biography.
The Weatherman and the Shadowboxer is a visually haunting animated 9 minute short from Toronto director Randall Okita. It follows two brothers who share the scars, though not the memories, of an untold history that has driven them to existential extremes.
3e page après le soleil (Third Page from the Sun) runs just 5 minutes but director Theadore Ushev provides an abstract exploration of a number of big issues, from the ephemerality of the digital age to the practice of recycling. Ushev has directed a dozen works for the NFB, including the 2010 animated documentary Lipsett Diaries, winner of the Genie Award for Best Animated Short.
Click here for a link to the Vancouver Interrnational Film Festival and other September 2014 film festivals. |
