Calgarians take part in sharing stories this week with the launch of this year’s WordFest, the 2nd Annual Home Movie Day and Glenbow Museum’s one minute video challenge.

WordFest starts up again with 60+ literary events featuring 11 Albertan authors, 57 authors with Canadian ties as well as writers from Australia, France, the United Kingdom, Mexico, Pakistan, Sierra Leone and Spain.

This year’s festival includes the collective creation of a 150 metre-long poem, the inclusion of Web 2.0 events, the expansion of the Spanish language events as well as the expansion of Festival des mots, the francophone and Francophile component of the festival.

It also includes Book Rapport, a highly popular educational program that brings students together with popular children's authors to stimulate literacy and encourage a love of reading and writing.
Calgarians can share their own stories during the 2nd Annual Home Movie Day this Saturday. The “bring your own film” event, running in over 50 cities worldwide, allows people to see their home movies projected on the big screen.

At the Glenbow Museum’s So Called Real Life Launch Party, local filmmaker Sandi Somers, one of Glenbow’s artists-in-residence, will debut a one-minute video to kick off Glenbow’s public one-minute video challenge about the reality of life at home.

The contest celebrates the museum’s new exhibit, Real Life, which features work by Ron Mueck, including an uncannily lifelike 800 pound baby, and by Guy Ben-Ner, whose videos and installations include members of his own family acting out scripted narratives situated somewhere between reality and fiction.