VIFF’s Canadian Images is renowned as one of the most comprehensive showcases of Canadian films, and the program’s 2005 lineup lives up to that reputation. Canadian Images programmer Diane Burgess has this year culled a total of 96 titles from more than 700 submissions: 28 features (including six docs), eight mid-length docs and 60 shorts.

Burgess estimates the number of submissions has more than doubled in the six years she’s been with VIFF, largely due to the increased accessibility of digital technology to filmmakers and a burgeoning local film community.

‘This year there are quite a few impressive first features from B.C.,’ Burgess says. ‘It’s been a rough year or two for the B.C. film industry, so it’s good to see such a strong showing in indigenous films.’

Seven of the 10 first features screening in Canadian Images are from B.C. Opening the program is Aubrey Nealon’s A Simple Curve, a drama about a young man raised in B.C.’s majestic Slocan Valley by hippie draft-dodger parents (see story, p. 36).

Vancouver director Dylan Akio Smith follows up his acclaimed short Man Feel Pain with The Cabin Movie, a darkly humorous take on desire and monogamy, as six friends gather in a secluded cabin and play bizarre games to revitalize their sex lives. The making of Smith’s first feature, in collaboration with screenwriter/coproducer Kris Elgstrand and actor/producer Brad Dryborough, is almost as bizarre and comedic as the film itself.

In January 2005, the trio, who collectively call themselves The Whatever Institute, challenged themselves to write, plan and make a feature film to be shot in 10 days for $10,000. It actually took them 12, but they managed to take the film from the start of principal photography to its world premiere at Toronto in less than four months.

‘Getting the film onto 35mm blew the budget,’ says Smith, who secured $130,000 from Telefilm Canada. At TIFF, Smith was looking to establish some buzz ‘so we could go straight to film on our next project.’ At press time, The Cabin Movie had not picked up a distributor, although Smith says interest had been shown. At VIFF, he adds, ‘we’re going to pack the house with friends and family and celebrate.’

Writer/director Julia Kwan, who won the audience award for Three Sisters on Moon Lake at the 2002 Toronto Worldwide Short Film Festival, marks her feature debut with Eve & the Fire Horse, a tale of two Chinese-Canadian sisters who turn to Catholic, Buddhist and Chinese superstitions to try to control their destinies.

Kwan says she did not go to the Toronto fest with any expectations other than to see 20 films. ‘But we have had positive meetings with London and U.S. sales reps,’ she says, adding that she’s more nervous about screening at VIFF. ‘This is the first time my parents will see one of my films, and yes, I’m still looking for their approval.’

Making its world premiere is The Score, a groundbreaking musical drama that explores the implications of the human genome research project. Director Kim Collier, a founding artistic director of the local Electric Company Theatre, collaborated with Trish Dolman and Leah Mallen of Screen Siren Pictures to bring the play to the screen. The stage version premiered in Vancouver in 2000, and Screen Siren optioned the work to adapt it for broadcast on CBC’s Opening Night.

‘It came together fast – two years. The key was financing from CBC and Genome Canada,’ says Dolman, who is excited about the fest screening. ‘We’re reaching [the science] community, which normally doesn’t go to a film festival. We’re bringing them to a new world.’

Collier, who has never made any type of film, ‘not even a two-minute short,’ says she is grateful for the CBC airing, but feels the film is best-suited for the big screen.

Among the other B.C. first features unspooling at VIFF is The French Guy, an absurdist comedy from Ann Marie Fleming (known for her short films and the doc The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam), starring Babz Chula and Tygh Runyan.

Desolation Sound is a psychological thriller from Scott Weber (the short Lift), starring Jennifer Beals, Ed Begley Jr., Da Vinci Inquest’s Ian Tracey and B.C.’s stunning Sunshine Coast landscape.

Finally, Paper Moon Affair is writer/director David Tamagi’s intense drama about a mysterious Japanese woman abandoned by her Chinese husband in a Pacific Northwest fishing village. It’s also the inaugural production for Vancouver’s Fairchild Group.

These filmmakers will vie for the $12,000 Citytv Western Canada Feature Film Award, and, for the first time, there will be a $5,000 Bravo!FACT Award for best young Western Canadian director of a short. There is a strong B.C. showing among this year’s shorts, which include student films from the University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver Film School and the Emily Carr Institute.