A colourful character who was not only ahead of her time but helped to define it, Peggy Guggenheim was an heiress to her family fortune who became a central figure in the modern art movement. As she moved through the cultural upheaval of the 20th century, she collected not only art, but artists.
James White is a coming-of-age story about a young New Yorker struggling to take control of his reckless, self-destructive behavior in the face of momentous family challenges.
Diana Kennedy is a force of nature, and lives entirely in harmony with it. Along with cooking, she maintains an ecologically sustainable ranch where she has been recycling rainwater, using solar power, and growing her own coffee and corn since the 1970's. A staunch environmentalist with a collection of plastic bags she’s reused for a decade, she is famously prickly about being "green" at home and abroad.
FILMS WE LIKE PRESENTS
HEART OF A DOG
A film by LAURIE ANDERSON
Opens in Toronto at TIFF Bell Lightbox on Friday, October 30, 2015
Also Opening:
Regina Public Film Library on Nov 12th
Vancouver @ Vancity on December 11th
Ottawa @ Bytowne on November 20th
Laurie Anderson's first feature film in nearly 30 years is a goofy, lyrical paean to puppy love and an inimitable meditation on love, memory and language. – Justin Chang, Variety
The purpose of death is the release of life - Laurie Anderson, ‘Heart of a Dog’
Films We Like are pleased to announce that Laurie Anderson’s Heart of a Dog will open theatrically in Canada starting with Toronto on October 30th at the TIFF Bell Lightbox.
"Hello, little bonehead. I'll love you forever." So begins HEART OF A DOG, creative pioneer Laurie Anderson's wryly humourous, wondrous and unforgettable cinematic journey through love, death and language.
Centering on Anderson's beloved rat terrier Lolabelle, who died in 2011, HEART OF A DOG is a personal essay that weaves together childhood memories, video diaries, philosophical musings on data collection, surveillance culture and the Buddhist conception of the afterlife, and heartfelt tributes to the artists, writers, musicians and thinkers who inspire her.
Fusing her own witty, inquisitive narration with original violin compositions, hand-drawn animation, 8mm home movies and artwork culled from exhibitions past and present, Anderson creates a hypnotic, collage-like visual language out of the raw materials of her life and art, examining how stories are constructed and told — and how we use them to make sense of our lives.
With Heart of a Dog, Anderson bursts open the conventions of the documentary format and the essay film in her first feature since the 1986 concert movie Home of the Brave.
LAURIE ANDERSON
Laurie Anderson is one of America’s most renowned — and daring — creative pioneers. She is best known for her multimedia presentations and innovative use of technology. As writer, director, visual artist and vocalist she has created groundbreaking works that span the worlds of art, theater and experimental music.
Her recording career, launched by “O Superman” in 1981, includes the soundtrack to her feature film HOME OF THE BRAVE and “Life on a String” (2001). Anderson's live shows range from simple spoken word to elaborate multi-media stage performances such as “Songs and Stories for Moby Dick” (1999). Anderson has published seven books and her visual work has been presented in major museums around the world.
In 2002, Anderson was appointed the first artist-in-residence of NASA which culminated in her 2004 touring solo performance “The End of the Moon”. Recent projects include a series of audio-visual installations and a high-definition film, “Hidden Inside Mountains,” created for World Expo 2005 in Aichi, Japan. In 2007 she received the prestigious Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize for her outstanding contribution to the arts. In 2008 she completed a two-year worldwide tour of her performance piece, “Homeland,” which was released as an album on Nonesuch Records in June 2010. Anderson’s solo performance “Delusion” debuted at the Vancouver Cultural Olympiad in February 2010. In October 2010 a retrospective of her visual and installation work opened in Sao Paulo, Brazil and later traveled to Rio de Janiero. In 2011 her exhibition of new visual work titled “Forty-Nine Days In the Bardo” opened in Philadelphia, and “Boat,” her first exhibition of paintings, curated by Vito Schnabel in New York.
FILMS WE LIKE
Founded by award-winning documentary filmmaker Ron Mann (Grass, Comic Book Confidential, Altman) Films We Like is a boutique distributor of documentary, independent and international films in Canada. Recent releases include Force Majeure, Finding Vivian Maier, and the Academy Award-winner Ida.
Running time: 75 min.
More information, download press notes, hi-res images, trailer
Media Contact:
Virginia Kelly, Meghan Parnell
V Kelly & Associates
In this radically reimagined American Western set towards the end of the Civil War, Southerner Augusta (Brit Marling, Arbitrage, The East) encounters two renegade, drunken soldiers (Sam Worthington, Avatar and Kyle Soller, BBC’s “Poldark”) who are on a mission of pillage and violence. After escaping an attempted assault, Augusta races back to the isolated farmhouse that she shares with her sister Louise (Hailee Steinfeld, True Grit, Pitch Perfect 2) and their female slave Mad (newcomer Muna Otaru.) When the pair of soldiers track Augusta down to exact revenge, the trio of women are forced to take up arms to fend off their assailants, finding ways to resourcefully defend their home––and themselves––as the escalating attacks become more unpredictable and relentless.
After a standing ovation at the World Premiere screening at the 2015 SXSW Film Festival and at Hot Docs 2015 where it had its Canadian Premiere, Toronto based distributor Films We Like announces that director Jessica Edwards’ MAVIS! will open in theatres in Canada starting Friday, November 13 at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema.
Q has called Natalie Merchant "among the most compelling and distinctive voices of the last decade," while Vogue has said she is "one of the most successful and enduring alternative artists to emerge from the Eighties intact and uncompromised." Her career began in 1981 when, as a college student, she joined the seminal alternative rock band 10,000 Maniacs, which signed to Elektra Records in 1984. As lead vocalist, lyricist, and sometimes pianist, Merchant released six critically acclaimed studio albums with the band, including the platinum-certified In My Tribe (1987), Blind Man's Zoo (1989), Our Time in Eden (1992), and MTV Unplugged (1993).
Since her surprise hit single, “O Superman” in 1981, Laurie Anderson’s work has defied categorization, and with Heart of a Dog, Anderson takes us on a wry, wondrous and unforgettable cinematic journey through love, death and language.
James White is Josh Mond’s feature film debut as a director. He has worked as producer on a number of films including the award-winning Martha Marcy May Marlene for which he was recognized with an Independent Spirit Award nomination and shared the Los Angeles Film Critic Association New Generation Award.
Familiar to TIFF audiences for his rapturous dreamlike films - such as Cannes Palm D’or winner Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall his Past Lives (2002) - Cemetery of Splendour is set in a rural hospital where its patients are being treated for mysterious sleeping sickness. Magic, healing, romance and dreams are all part of a caregiver’s path towards deeper awareness and the world.
One of the most important directors in both Russian and world cinema, Alexander Sokurov is considered by many to be the spiritual heir of the great Andrei Tarkovsky.
Johnson’s debut feature documentary also captures a Purdy revival as a grassroots movement rallies to preserve his legendary A-Frame cabin as a writing retreat. Built by Purdy and his wife Eurithe in 1957 in Ontario’s Prince Edward County, the A-frame was a hangout for the pioneers of CanLit, including Margaret Lawrence, Margaret Atwood and Michael Ondaatje. In this rustic salon, nourished by Al's wild grape wine, a cultural community took root. Now, 15 years after the poet’s death, the cabin becomes an unlikely beacon for a creative renaissance.
A sewage worker’s dead body is found inside a manhole in Mumbai. An ageing folk singer is arrested and accused of performing an inflammatory song, which may have incited the worker to commit suicide. The trial unfolds in a lower court, where the hopes and dreams of the city’s ordinary people play out. Forging these fates are the lawyers and judge, who are observed in their personal lives beyond the theatre of the courtroom.
China’s economic development began to skyrocket in the 1990s. Living in this surreal economic environment has inevitably changed the ways that people deal with their emotions. The impulse behind this film is to examine the effect of putting financial considerations ahead of emotional relationships. If we imagine a point ten years into our future, how will we look back on what’s happening today? And how will we understand “freedom”?
Amidst the vexing stagnation of quarter-life crises, Allie (Clare McNulty) struggles to prepare for the Peace Corps, while Harper (Bridey Elliott) awaits checks from her father to fund her artistic dreams. But the two friends quickly shun responsibilities for the day when a pair of good-looking guys invite them along for a carefree Fort Tilden afternoon. As the two young women board their fixed-gear bicycles and embark on a lengthy journey to the beach, they quickly realize that, akin to their confusing, transitioning lives, they neither know where they’re going nor how they plan to get there.
Told entirely in Ukrainian Sign Language without subtitles, The Tribe is a haunting drama whose wordless dialogue speaks volumes. A deaf teenager enters a boarding school for the hard of hearing where he becomes part of a student gang involved in crime and prostitution. His love for one of his charges will unwillingly lead him to break all the unwritten rules within the tribe’s hierarchy, with tragic consequences.
Eden is an affecting trip into the ‘90s Parisian electronic dance movement experienced through the eyes of DJ groups Cheers and Daft Punk who, together with their friends, plunge into the ephemeral nightlife of sex, drugs, and endless music.
One of folk and rock’s most respected artists, Neil Young—under the pseudonym Bernard Shakey—has also been making films for over four decades, from concert movies Journey Through the Past (1974) to the fiction feature Greendale (2003).
Like a modern day Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, Sam and Jonathan, two travelling salesmen peddling novelty items, take us on a kaleidoscopic wandering through human destinies. A trip that shows us the beauty of single moments, life’s grandeur, the pettiness of others, the humour and tragedy that is within us, and the frailty of humanity.
Petzold’s highly anticipated film “Phoenix” reunites him with his muse, the exquisite Nina Hoss who also starred in his films “Barbara”, “Yella” and “Jericho” and can currently be seen on screen with Philip Seymour Hoffman in “A Most Wanted Man”. It was 2012’s “Barbara” that won Petzold not only the Director Silver Bear at Berlin but propelled him onto the world stage.
