The Windsor International Film Festival: Elbows Up, and Please Turn Off Your Phones

By Jim Slotek

WINDSOR, ONTARIO – Last Friday was Day 2 of the 10-day Windsor International Film Festival. And it was hard to miss the “international” part in the line around the vintage Capitol Theatre for the film I Play Rocky.

Many of the folks waiting to see the crowd-pleasing, Oscar-favoured movie-about-a-movie (starring Anthony Ippolito as a young Sylvester Stallone) were Americans. They’d driven in, not just from Detroit across the river, but from farther flung parts of Michigan.

Anthony Ippolito in WIFF feature I Play Rocky

The atmosphere was jovial, and afterward, everyone seemed to agree it was worth both the drive and dealing with Customs.

“The situation between Canada and the U.S. is something you see on the news in Toronto, but for us, it’s daily life,” says WIFF chief programmer and long-time marketer Vincent Georgie. He estimates some 12-14% of WIFF’s tickets are sold to Americans.

But then Windsor has a long history of give-and-take with its Michigan neighbours. In the WIFF Local Shorts series, Windsor filmmaker Michael Evans’ The Ann Arbor Blues Festival in Exile chronicles a 1974 event early in the history of the legendary blues event when it was run out of town by Ann Arbor, Michigan council for rampant drug use.

That three-day event ended up taking place in an open-air amphitheatre at Windsor’s St. Clair College. Acts included James Brown, B.B. King, John Lee Hooker and Sun Ra. By the movie’s account, four-fifths of the hippie-ish crowd were American – not counting the ones who were turned away at the border for pot possession or past drug convictions.

Call it a cheeky “buy Canadian” jibe, but on WIFF’s opening night, before the screening of the Adam Driver/Miles Teller thriller Paper Tiger, Georgie announced on-stage “Never mind the 51st State, we have 51% Canadian content.”

Vincent Georgie

True enough. On Sunday, WIFF gave out its coveted $25,000 prize for the best Canadian movie, which went to Matthew Rankin’s crazily hallucinatory political documentary Ladies and Gentlemen, Brian Mulroney. Runners-up included recent Toronto International Film Festival features Julian and Run Terry Run, and Canada’s submission for an International Oscar, Nina Roza.

Programming that featured on recent world-stage festivals like Cannes, TIFF and Sundance is part of WIFF’s approach, coming as it does on the cusp of awards season. Even Torontonians can have trouble scoring tickets to TIFF. For many from farther away, it’s easier and cheaper to see potentially Oscar-bound movies in Windsor (there are even $5 student tickets, and free screenings of WIFF’s Best Canadian and People’s Choice awards), often before they’ve been released in theatres.

Georgie says he sees about 600 movies a year to come up with the 200-plus he programs at WIFF.

Touted films that are still playing the festival this week include Sunday’s closing film The Debut, with Julianne Moore and Paul Giamatti, the Cannes Palme d'Or winner Fjord (Saturday and Sunday), Palme D’Or nominee Club Kid (Saturday), the TIFF People’s Choice Award winner La Bola Negra (Friday and Saturday) and the Sundance favourite The Only Living Pickpocket in New York (Sunday).

As well, WIFF gives nods to past classics, with specials screenings of Carrie, A Clockwork Orange, and As Far As I Can Remember… The Story of Goodfellas,the first feature documentary about Martin Scorsese’s film. Goodfellas co-star Lorraine Bracco join directors Lisa Downs and Ashley Pugh Monday, Nov. 2 for a spotlight award event for the latter.

The festival – whose motto is, “When the movie’s over, the discussion begins” – retains its spot on the film buff food-chain. And its secondary motto could just as well be, “I saw it there.”