After hopping art galleries for Art Walk and the East Side Studio Crawl (an extension of Art Walk in Inglewood/Ramsay) on Saturday, I was back at the Calgary International Film Festival on Sunday. The Joe Media / NFB Best of Alberta Shorts Awards package screened at the Uptown Stage and Screen at 6:30pm. I got the very last ticket to the sold out show. (Don't tell the guy who was behind me.) Ten short films from across Alberta were screened (...ahem, mostly Calgary). The quality of the work over all was very strong and only the tip of the iceberg in the independant film scene in Alberta.The atmosphere in the theatre was of a congenial nature both on and off the screen. On screen, were numerous actors I have seen in the last year in both the community and professional theatre world of Calgary, such as personal favourite, Grant Reddick, in the film, Promise (2008), by David and Kirsten Bolton. 

Calgary Arts Development invested in two of the ten films through our Special Project Grant Program: Curse of the Piano by Michael Peterson (2007), a story inspired by a piano in the one-of-a-kind Cantos Music Foundation collection and City of Noise (2008) by Mitch Barany set to music by local Calgary Band, The Summerlad. 

The Joe Media NFB Best of Alberta Shorts Award went to The Real Place animated and directed by Cam Christiansen, starring the brilliant and inspiring, Alberta's own playwright, John Murrell. The work was written by One Yellow Rabbit's Blake Brooker with acting by Michael Green and Denise Clark. The film was made to commemorate Murrell's recent Governor General's Lifetime Artistic Achievement Award.

There are still six more days left at Calgary International Film Festival so don't miss out! More good news is that Calgary has three art house cinemas (The Globe Cinema, The Plaza Theatre and The Uptown Stage and Screen) numerous film festivals (Calgary Underground Film Festival, Fairy Tales International Queer Film Festival, and Calgary $100 Film Festival to name a few), not to mention the one year old Calgary Cinematheque Society and three long time running artist-run centres dedicated to film, animation and video (respectively, Calgary Society of Independant Filmmakers, Quickdraw Animation Society, and EMMEDIA.) There is LOTS of film to see all year round. Why not start this week?