This week, Reel Sunday (Aug. 2) presents two short films that are sure to inspire the artists among us.
The Real Place: Puccini's famous aria from the opera Tosca, Vissi d'arte, vissi d'amore ("I lived for art, I lived for love") provides a fitting summation of playwright John Murrell's life and work. Since the age of 13 Murrell has peopled his life with the creations of his own imaginings.
"In opera and in Shakespeare, in locations that were both natural and supernatural, I have escaped the limitations of my own mind," he says.
Born in Lubbock, Texas, John Murrell became a playwright in, of all places, an Alberta high school. Caprice and serendipity have marked his work ever since.
Animator Cam Christiansen gives Murrell's imagination free rein, suspending the laws of time and space, to create a visual accompaniment to the playwright's fights of poetic fancy.
Despite its more fantastic elements, Murrell's work is grounded in a profound appreciation for the real. History and place play a critical role in his work, where everyone from Sarah Bernhardt to Walt Whitman puts in an appearance.
But behind the spectacle, the masque, and the play itself, is a man happily creating his own world.
Trudeau's Other Children: Musicians Vineet Vyas, Mei Han and Asif Illyas are part of one of the greatest social experiments the world has seen: multiculturalism.
Nearly 40 years ago, under the eye of visionary prime minister Pierre Trudeau, Canada began turning itself into the world's first truly multicultural state -a place where people from all nations could be at home.
But the genesis for Trudeau's idea came decades earlier, when he was a young man travelling through the chaos of the post-war Middle East and Asia.
Vineet Vyas is a renowned tabla player who splits his time between Canada and India. An accomplished traditional musician, zheng player Mei Han is also an audacious innovator and improviser.
And Asif Illyas -born in Sri Lanka, raised in England, and living in Halifax -is frontman for boundary-breaking contemporary pop band Mir.
In Trudeau's Other Children, award-winning filmmaker Rohan Fernando places the stories of Mei, Vineet and Asif in juxtaposition with archival footage and excerpts from Trudeau's journals. The result offers unique insights into the origins and practice of Canada's multicultural policy -and a film as powerful, layered and subtle as the best of their music.
Reel tickets are $7 or $5 for seniors and NFB members. It's free to become an NFB member, simply visit www.nfb.ca and receive10-flick passes $50. Doors open at 12:30 p.m.
