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Powell River Film Festival: Bringing a world of film to the Sunshine Coast

Powell River Film Festival February 15 -19, 2017.

The festival kicks off with Rama Rau’s League of Exotique Dancers, a provocative and eye-opening “backstage tour” of the golden age of Burlesque through the colourful lives of unforgettable women who made it glitter. Photo courtesy Powell River Film Festival.

The Powell River Film Festival kicks off its 16th year. Enter to win our excursion package.

The annual Powell River Film Fest brings a world of film to the Sunshine Coast community. This year’s selection is a mosaic of films as diverse as we are. Canadian filmmakers are well represented in the collection of 11 feature films screened from Wednesday February 15 until Sunday the 19th.

The festival kicks off with Rama Rau’s League of Exotique Dancers, a provocative and eye-opening “backstage tour” of the golden age of Burlesque through the colourful lives of unforgettable women who made it glitter. The evening is complemented by live jazz from the period by local band PST.

Spanish auteur Pedro Almodóvar (Talk to Her, All about My Mother, Volver) is renowned for his ability to move effortlessly from high drama to high farce, exploring the contradictions of human needs and desire through a range of styles and tones. His latest feature, Julieta, screens on Thursday the 16th, relocating a series of Alice Munro stories to the beautiful coast of Spain.

Friday’s late night feature is GIMME DANGER, Jim Jarmusch’s chronicle of the story of The Stooges, one of the greatest rock-n-roll bands of all time.

The film presents the context of the Stooge’s emergence musically, culturally, politically, historically, and relates their adventures and misadventures while charting their inspirations and the reasons behind their initial commercial challenges, as well as their long-lasting legacy. A live performance by the Women’s Punk Rock Choir rocks the house.

Saturday is blocked out with documentaries that are certain to make you think. The beauty and complexity of our North is highlighted in KONELĪNE: our land beautiful, a sensual, cinematic celebration of northwestern British Columbia, and all the dreamers who move across it.

Also on our Saturday bill is Angry Inuk, where Inuit director Alethea Arnaquq-Baril joins a new tech-savvy generation of Inuit as they campaign to challenge long-established perceptions of seal hunting. Though most commercial sealing is conducted by Inuit in the Arctic, anti-sealing activism has created a perception of the industry that denies their central role in the sealskin market.

A highlight of the Festival is Tai Uhlmann & Theo Angell’s documentary The End of the Road. Lund sits at the end of the Pacific coastal highway, at the most northern point of the Sunshine Coast.

In the 1970s, the end of the road served as a new beginning for a rag-tag group of Americans (and Canadians too) looking to escape the impacts of a Nixon administration and the war machine in Viet Nam. For those curious about the origins of an alternative lifestyle in Lund, this film comes complete with a treasure trove of Super 8 film and archival photos shot by the hippies themselves.

The Powell River Film Festival brings a world of film to the Sunshine Coast. These are just a few of our titles – for the complete schedule, including synopses and trailers, visit www.prfilmfestival.ca

Enter to win our excursion package. The package includes 1 night’s accommodation at the Courthouse Inn; and return transportation for two via Pacific Coastal Airlines or BC Ferries and tickets to our Saturday night party and premiere screening on February 18 of The End of the Road with a live performance by Rick Scott. 

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