Film

A Night with Patricia Rozema

This years festival sees a different format to the film. Firstly, you’ll be glad to hear that there is no more waking up at the crack of dawn on Sunday morning after a night out at the aLAF Club to drag yourself over to the IFI. This year we have dedicated a whole night to film, which will now take place on Thursday 31st March, in the Savoy Cinema.

The format of the night will include a screening of Patricia Rozema’s directorial debut ‘I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing’, and will be followed by an interview and question and answer session.

I've Heard the Mermaids Singing

"I've Heard the Mermaids Singing" is a quietly amusing and fresh tale told from the point of view of Polly (Sheila McCarthy), a self-admitted "organizationally impaired" temporary secretary. In her videotaped confession, she tells us how she got caught up in a voyeuristic fascination for her new boss, the beautiful and ambitious Curator (Paule Baillargeon) of the Church Gallery, an art gallery in downtown Toronto. Polly, innocent beyond her years, witnesses many things quite beyond her ken: pseudo intellectual "art talk" and the sexual relationship between the Curator and a young woman named Mary (Ann-Marie McDonald).

Polly responds to her discoveries through her hobby of amateur photography. After expeditions around the city, snapping pictures of her various new obsessions, she develops her pictures in her bachelorette bathroom. In the little red womb of her bathroom, she spaces off and slips into the black and white worlds inside, worlds where she can fly, walk on water and hear mermaids singing.

1987, 81 minutes, Director: Patricia Rozema, Script: Patricia Rozema, Cinematography: Douglas Koch, Cast: Sheila McCarthy, Paule Baillargeon & Ann-Marie McDonald, Original Score: Mark Korven Producers: Alex Raffé & Patricia Rozema

Biography of Patrica Rozema

Director, producer, writer. Born in Kingston, Ontario 1958.

Raised in Sarnia, Ontario by Dutch Calvinist parents, Patricia Rozema is one of Canada’s most accomplished and internationally recognized filmmakers. Throughout her narrative feature film work she has maintained an elegant female consciousness while drawing male characters with compassion. Most notably, Rozema has established herself as an exceptional and distinctly sensual visual artist. Her films are characterized by self-referential narration, idiosyncratic protagonists who are often struggling artists, formal adventurousness, and the use of fairy tales, mythology and poetry as structuring notions.

Rozema’s debut feature is one of Canada’s most celebrated and circulated success stories. I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing, a serious comedy about a socially inept Girl Friday (with a standout performance by Sheila McCarthy) was made for a mere $350,000 and was not only remarkably successful critically, but commercially. The film went on to win the coveted Prix de la Jeunesse at Cannes in 1987 and was recently voted as one of the top ten Canadian films of the century and is scheduled for re-release by Miramax.

Rozema followed up this success with White Room, an ambitious and dark contemporary tale of fame. Then, with the semi-autobiographical When Night is Falling, Rozema crafts a lyrical lesbian love story involving a Christian professor and a circus performer. Her subsequent project, the richly textured “Six Gestures,” part of the Yo-Yo Ma: Inspired by Bach series was awarded a Prime Time Emmy. Rozema’s next two films, however, would exit from Canadian production. Mansfield Park (U.K.) is a sophisticated revisionist adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel and Happy Days, an Irish production, is a filmed version of Samuel Beckett’s absurdly despairing play in which a woman lives partially buried in a mound.

Films: “Passion: A Letter in 16mm” 1985 (d/co-p/sc); I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing 1987 (d/co-p/sc/ed); White Room (d/exp/sc/ed); Montreal vu par… 1991 (co/d); When Night is Falling 1995 (d/sc); Curtis’s Charm 1996 (exp); “Six Gestures” 1995 (d/sc); Mansfield Park 1999 (d/sc); Happy Days 2000 (d); “This Might Be Good” 2000 (d/sc); A Wrinkle in Time 2002 (exp).