Fill your fall with local film festivals

Film screenings in New Westminster and Coquitlam

By Cheryl Minns, Arts Editor

With last month’s Vancouver International Film Festival now in the past, it’s time to start exploring this month’s film festivals. This week, two popular film festivals will be gracing local venues with the NewWest FilmFest appearing at Landmark Cinemas in New Westminster on November 5–7, and the Geocaching International Film Festival taking place at the Evergreen Cultural Centre in Coquitlam on November 8.

The NewWest FilmFest, formerly the New West Doc Fest, promises an exciting three days packed with popular, thought-provoking films that have toured major film festivals. The festival will also include Q-and-A sessions, short films, and a tour of CG Master School of 3D Animation & VFX.

“Our goal is to offer New Westminster and nearby communities a chance to see world-class cinema in a theatre near them,” said Deni Loubert, who works with the festival.

“College students should recognize many of these films as they have generated a lot of hype in the last year. They include This Changes Everything, based on the latest Naomi Klein book of the same title; Laura Poitras’ documentary on Edward Snowden, Citizenfour; and Jon Stewart’s directorial debut drama, Rosewater.”

One of the films playing on November 7 is a Canadian film called Borealis by Sean Garrity. It follows an unemployed gambler, Jonah (Jonas Chernick), and his teenaged daughter, Aurora (Joey King), as they go on a road trip to see the Northern Lights before Aurora’s failing vision leaves her completely blind.

Another film playing that night is Sebastian Schipper’s Victoria. This German heist thriller has won numerous awards and gained a great deal of attention because the entire film is shot in one continuous take.

For more information on the festival or to purchase tickets, go to NewWestFilmFest.ca

The Geocaching International Film Festival celebrates all things to do with geocaching, which is a treasure hunt created by participants on Geocaching.com. Geocachers hide objects in different locations around town and then post information about their hidden caches for other geocachers to find.

The 16 short films featured in GIFF are only four minutes long or less, and capture geocaching around the world. There will be short films from Australia, Germany, Japan, Portugal, Romania, Turkey, and Vietnam as well as two films from Canada, three from the UK, and four from the USA.

The managing director for Metro Vancouver Geocaching, who goes by his geocaching nickname Catapult Jeff, describes the short films as “wild, crazy, and fun loving.” They include titles such as Geo-Caching Freak, THE BEST GEOCACHING FILM OF ALL TIME EVER! and How to Geocache like a Ballerina. The films were selected for the festival from hundreds of submissions by geocachers.

“I don’t believe you have to be a geocacher to enjoy GIFF,” Jeff said. “I think it would certainly give an interesting view on the geocaching world.”

For more information on the NewWest FilmFest or to purchase tickets, go to NewWestFilmFest.ca, and for more information about GIFF, check out the official Geocaching website or the Metro Vancouver Geocaching website at MVGeocaching.com