Valerie Buhagiar opens Female Eye
by Staff
(June 12, 2018 – Toronto, ON) If we refer to Valerie Buhagiar as venerable, we’re not referring to her age but to her deep experience both in front of and behind the camera. Her acting for film or television amounts to more than 50 credits in a career that dates to the mid-1980s. By the early ‘90s she was stretching her talents as a director, screenwriter and producer. In other words she’s been there, done that and deserves the recognition for an amazing body of work.
Her first film as a writer-director-producer was The Passion of Rita Camilleri, which was completed in the spring of 1993 and went on to win awards from the Golden Knight International Film and Video Festival
and the Chicago International Film Festival. Her most recent film is titled It’s Hard to Be Human, and it will open the 2018 Female Eye Film Festival (FeFF) which kicks off on June 26 and runs until Canada Day, July 1, at The Carleton Cinema.
It’s been quite a year for FeFF Founder & Executive Director, Leslie Ann Coles, including a fire at the chosen festival venue causing a last minute scramble to find a home for this year’s event.
It’s Hard to Be Human is a 75-minute drama based on a stage production titled A Dream Play that was written in 1901 by Swedish playwright August Strindberg and first performed in Stockholm on April 17, 1907.
The film begins with Agnes (Nina Gilmour) in the emergency room. She is in that space between life and death and the film interweaves her true-life story with this dreaming, almost-dead world. Agnes is an 18-year-old delinquent who just can’t figure out the point of it all – life on earth, that is. Her brother, Oscar, is a cop. Her Father (God) is a busy man, a torn husband and too tired to father anyone. Her Mother self-medicates and lives to die. Peter, her best friend, is an addict and a poet. Larry, her lover, strives for duty, marriage and the norm, because that’s where his happiness is. And then there’s Victoria, an enlightened spirit who emanates heaven.
Dreamlike, visceral, and at times surreal, It’s Hard to Be Human elegantly poses the age-old questions of what it means to be human and how to have a connection with the Divine in a fallibly human world.
The Female Eye will close with the American film Snapshots from Director Melanie Mayron. In it three women and three mysteries collide one weekend at a vacation spot near a lake. The three generations convey an intimate story of love lost, love found and love everlasting. Costars include Piper Laurie, Brooke Adams and Emily Baldoni.
Click here for more information about the 2018 Female Eye Film Festival.
