Saturday, September 11th Films

==================================================
3 Saturday 11-Sep 11:00am 091111EL Trust (David Schwimmer) (GP) (2:04)
==================================================
Country: USA
Year: 2009
Language: English
Producer: Tom Hodges, Ed Cathell III, Dana Golomb, David Schwimmer, Robert Greenhut, Heidi Jo Markel
Executive Producer: Avi Lerner, Danny Dimbort, Trevor Short, Boaz Davidson, John Thompson
Screenplay: Andy Bellin, Robert Festinger
Runtime: 104
Programmes:

Safe and sound in their suburban home, Will and Lynn Cameron (Clive Owen and Catherine Keener) used to sleep well at night. When their fourteen-year-old daughter, Annie, made a new friend on-line – a sixteen-year-old boy named Charlie – Will and Lynn didn’t think much of it. But when Annie and Charlie make a plan to meet what happens in the next twenty-four hours changes the entire family forever. Charlie is really a forty-year-old serial pedophile (Chris Henry Coffey) and, once Annie’s rape comes to light, it becomes a touchstone event that reverberates through the entire family.

Drama, Family Relations, Crime & Thriller

screening times

Friday September 10 9:30:00 PM ROY THOMSON HALL
Saturday September 11 11:00:00 AM VISA SCREENING ROOM (ELGIN)
Sunday September 19 9:00:00 PM Tiff Bell LightBox 1 Note: indicates Premium Screening.

official description
Annie (Liana Liberato) meets a boy on the internet. He’s cute, he’s her age and he really seems to like her. Her parents have no idea. But then the boy confesses that he’s actually a little older than Annie. Still, her parents are in the dark. By the time this “boy” lures Annie to meet him, she is so smitten with the idea of him that his true identity barely matters. Annie’s parents (Clive Owen and Catherine Keener) find themselves facing every parent’s nightmare.


Trust is a potent drama that cuts to the core of contemporary family life. It marks a major breakthrough for David Schwimmer. After directing a string of Friends episodes, a movie for television and the feature Run, Fatboy, Run (which premiered at the Festival in 2007), Schwimmer has emerged as a confident director skilled at handling risky dramatic material with both sensitivity and precision.


Although the subject of online child predators is something audiences have grown familiar with, Trust consistently rises above expectations. Credit goes to Schwimmer and writer Andy Bellin. Here, genre conventions are turned on their head as the film resists predictability to balance nail-biting suspense with heartrending drama.


Owen and Keener are perfectly cast as the grieving parents who react in profoundly different ways, and Viola Davis delivers another groundbreaking turn as the victim’s therapist. But most impressive are the tour-de-force performances by lesser-known actors Liberato and Chris Henry Coffey. In addition to holding her own alongside an all-star ensemble cast, Liberato’s slow-burning self-realization and climactic breakdown are incredibly raw and authentic. As the architect behind the desolation, Coffey gives a shockingly convincing performance that is equally perverse and plausible.


Trust is a harrowing and cautionary tale that should be considered recommended viewing for parents, and for their teenaged children.

director bio
David Schwimmer was born in Queens, New York and studied at Northwestern University near Chicago. Schwimmer’s directing credits include the feature Run, Fatboy, Run (2007). Trust (10) is his second feature film. Television credits include HBO’s Little Britain USA, and movie made for television, Since You’ve Been Gone (98) . He is a co-founder of Lookingglass, where he has directed or acted in many productions including Our Town, West, The Master and Margarita, The Jungle, Eye of the Beholder, The Odyssey, The Idiot, Of One Blood and his and ensemble member Joy Gregory’s adaptation of Studs Terkel’s book RACE.




full credits
Principal Cast: Clive Owen, Catherine Keener, Viola Davis, Liana Liberato
Producer: Tom Hodges, Ed Cathell III, Dana Golomb, David Schwimmer, Robert Greenhut, Heidi Jo Markel
Executive Producer: Avi Lerner, Danny Dimbort, Trevor Short, Boaz Davidson, John Thompson
Cinematographer: Andrzej Sekula
Editor: Douglas Crise
Sound: David Obermeyer
Music: Nathan Larson
Production Designer: Michael Shaw

Canadian Distributor: VVS
International Sales Agent: Nu Image / Millennium Films
Production Company: Nu Image / Millennium Films

==================================================
6:30pm 0911??F4 The Piano in a Factory (DISC) (1:59)
==================================================
Zhang Meng

Country: China
Year: 2010
Language: Mandarin
Producer: Jessica Kam, Choi Gwang-suk
Executive Producer: Kwak Jae-yong
Screenplay: Zhang Meng
Runtime: 119
Programmes:

To fight for custody of his daughter who loves playing the piano, a steel factory worker decides to forge a piano from scratch. An offbeat ballad of friendship and devotion, The Piano in a Factory is an endearing portrait of China in the early 1990s when the certainty of state-run industry begins to falter.

Children, China, Family Relations, Friendship

screening times

Saturday September 11 6:30:00 PM SCOTIABANK THEATRE 4
Sunday September 12 12:30:00 PM AMC 9
Saturday September 18 9:30:00 PM Tiff Bell LightBox 2 Note: indicates Premium Screening.

official description
An offbeat ballad of friendship and devotion, The Piano in a Factory captures the tempo of changing times with quiet wisdom and a tinge of nostalgia.

Steelworker Chen (Wang Qian-yuan) has a passion for music and plays the accordion in a local band with a close group of friends. When his estranged wife (Jang Shin-Yeong) returns one day after years of absence, she demands a divorce and sole custody of their daughter. Chen is at a loss. He doesn’t mind divorcing a woman who has become a stranger, but he can’t bear to part with his daughter. Chen has worked hard to give her a respectable life and has taught her his love of music. When asked if she’d rather stay with her father or go with her mother, the girl gives a practical, devastating answer: she’ll go with whomever can provide her with a piano.

Chen cannot afford such a luxury item, but the piano becomes his last hope to save what little is left of his family. With the help of his loyal friends and the support of his lover – the singer in his band – Chen concocts several plans to fulfill his daughter’s wish, from sneaking her into the local music school at night to drawing a fake piano. He even tries to steal the instrument from the school – anything to keep her near him. Nothing works for long, until Chen looks around his fading steel factory town and hits on the perfect solution.

The Piano in a Factory is an endearing portrait of a moment when the certainty of state-run industry begins to falter. Simple in its measured and assured direction, The Piano in a Factory establishes Zhang Meng as one of the most vibrant voices in Chinese cinema today.

Giovanna Fulvi

director bio
Zhang Meng was born in northeastern China and graduated from the Central Academy of Drama, Beijing. As director of the Changchun Film Studio, he made his directorial debut with the feature Lucky Dog (07), followed by his first documentary feature, Mr. Zhang and His Dog (08). The Piano in a Factory (10) is his third feature film.



full credits
Principal Cast: Wang Qian-yuan, Qin Hai-lu, Jang Shin-yeong
Producer: Jessica Kam, Choi Gwang-suk
Executive Producer: Kwak Jae-yong
Cinematographer: Shu Chou
Editor: Gao Bo
Sound: Lee Sang-yu
Music: Young-Mook Oh
Production Designer: Wang Sho

International Sales Agent: Etoile Pictures
Production Company: Liao Ning Studios/Etoile Pictures

==================================================
9:45pm 0911??V7 Sensation (CWC) (1:47)
==================================================
Tom Hall

Country: Ireland
Year: 2009
Language: English
Producer: Katie Holly, Kieron J. Walsh

Screenplay: Tom Hall
Runtime: 107
Programmes:

Sensation details the relationship between Tipperary farmer Donal Duggan and a veteran Kiwi escort. They begin as client and call girl, evolve into something like lovers, then business partners and finally co-defendants.



screening times

Saturday September 11 9:45:00 PM VARSITY 7
Monday September 13 5:30:00 PM AMC 5
Thursday September 16 9:30:00 AM VARSITY 7 Note: indicates Premium Screening.

official description
As is often the case with twenty-six-year-old man-boys, Donal Durkan (Domhnall Gleeson) is sexually unfulfilled. Living on a desolate farm in Tipperary, Ireland with his invalid father, he’s had little-to-no contact with the outside world, let alone the opposite sex. Donal’s mother passed away when he was only a toddler, and other than his dad he has one friend, Karl (Patrick Ryan), who lives on the farm, sponging off of Donal.

Boiling with lust, Donal’s mind is completely preoccupied with images of the nude women featured in the pornographic magazines he keeps buried in a field next to a herd of sheep. His life is pretty uneventful, leading to his overall disenchantment and indifference towards everything around him. Serial masturbation seems to be his one and only pleasure.

Upon returning from a mid-day jaunt to enjoy his stash, Donal discovers that his father has suddenly passed away. Now on his own, Donal attempts to lose his virginity by hiring a prostitute to help him get out of his rut. And so he meets Kim, an aging Kiwi escort. After engaging in a strictly sexual encounter, their relationship soon progresses into a lusty romance, then to a business enterprise between two partners. Through these exploits, Donal and Kim provide each other with a sense of love and belonging that neither experienced beforehand.

Take a dash of Hal Ashby’s Being There and Harold and Maude, combined with the bleaker sensibility of Todd Solondz’s Happiness and you get the darkly comedic tone of Tom Hall’s Sensation. In a country where sexual material was often repressed (a large number of nudie magazines, including Playboy, were banned in Ireland until the late eighties), Hall uses today’s internet era to make provocative statements about Ireland’s modern-day sex trade industry and, by extension, the shifting balance of power between men and women.

Michèle Maheux

director bio
Tom Hall was born in Dublin. He attended Sandford Park School and briefly studied film at the Dun Laoghaire College of Art and Design. In 1995, he co-founded High-Hat Productions. His first feature film as co-writer and director was November Afternoon (97), which he followed up with Park (99) and the short film Zonad (03). Sensation (10) is his latest feature.



full credits
Principal Cast: Domhnall Gleeson, Luanne Gordon, Patrick Ryan, Kelly Campbell, Owen Roe
Producer: Katie Holly, Kieron J. Walsh
Cinematographer: Benito Strangio
Editor: Nathan Nugent
Sound: Robbie Flanagan, Dan Birch
Music: John Carney
Production Designer: Tamara Conboy

Production Company: Bl!nder Films/Riverpark Films