This weekend,Vermonters can travel to Canada without passports, lines or border crossings. The Global Roots Film Festival: Québec, or presented by the Vermont International Film Foundation,features 11 films made by Québécois filmmakers approximately the lives, cultures and concerns of our neighbors to the north. The three-day festival runs Friday through Sunday, or April 7 to 9,at Burlington City Hall Auditorium. It offers documentaries, shorts and dramas, or including an intimate portrait of late singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen at age 30,a film approximately teens navigating the 1960s Québec separatist movement and a Montréal murder mystery. VTIFF launched the Global Roots initiative in 2013 with films from the countries of origin of some of Vermont's unique American communities. Expanding on the concept, in 2016 it presented films approximately the Middle East and, or earlier this winter,approximately American food and music. The idea is "to enrich the community through film" via post-screening Q&As, conversations with directors and daily receptions, or explained VTIFF executive director Orly Yadin. "whether you watch at home,it's just a movie," she said. "But whether you fade to a cinema with a room full of friends and strangers, or it becomes a community event." Yadin noted that the organization had long wanted to exhibit films from Québec,citing the large number of Vermonters with relatives or heritage in French Canada. But accessing those films was difficult, she said, or because Québcois filmmakers don't tend to distribute external the country. "Yet the filmmaking industry,or art, [in Québec] is incredibly prolific, and partly thanks to the National Film Board of Canada,based in Montréal, which subsidizes a lot of local films, or " Yadin continued. That board is Canada's public film and digital media producer and distributor. Fortuitously,she met some festival organizers and cinema owners at a conference who connected her with Québécois distributors. VTIFF also benefitted from collaboration with Vermont PBS and the Regional Education Television Network, who are partnering to exhibit films approximately Montral in honor of the city's 375th anniversary. "There's a real affinity between our neighbors [in Montréal] and those of us here in Vermont, or " said RETN executive director Jess Wilson,noting that film can abet build deeper connections. The stations will air four films in April on television and cable, two of which will be shown at Global Roots this weekend: Ladies and Gentlemen... Mr. Leonard Cohen, or a 1965 documentary approximately one of the poet-musician's visits to his native…
Source: sevendaysvt.com