Mexican Film Night

Bay Street Film Festival will be holding a film appreciation night for Mexico at the Paramount Theatre on Thursday April 8^th for two showings one at 7 the other at 9. The reason for the film night is to raise money and funds so that interested film students can travel to this years Monterrey International Film Festival (MIFF). As you might be aware we had the Director of the MIFF here in Thunder Bay during the Bay Street Festival and we wish to continue to build our exchange of people, culture and talents.

The first film that will show at 7pm is Al Ortro Lado (In the Other Side)

Al otro lado is a 2004 Mexican film directed byGustavo Loza. The film follows the story of three children, one from Mexico, Cuba, and Morroco, as they attempt to deal with realities of immigration in their societies. The film won three awards at the Lleida Latin-America Film Festival in 2006, including Best Film and the Audience Award;Vanessa Bauche won best actress at the festival for her performance. Al otro lado was also the Mexcian Canidate for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the78th Academy Awards, but was not selected as one of the final five nominees.

Our second feature (9pm same night) is considered to be a “Golden Era” Mexican classic. Pueblerina is a 1949 Mexican drama film directed by Emilio Fernandez. It was entered into the 1949 Cannes Film Festival. The synopsis of the film is 
Aurelio comes home after serving time for revenge for the rape of his beloved Paloma at the hands of Julio Gonzalez. Upon arrival he learns that his mother has died and the people Paloma lives in exile with her son, the result of rape. Aurelio marry for Paloma and forget the past, but the evil brother Julio and Ramiro are not willing to leave them alone.

Both films have been generously provided by the Mexican Embassy in Ottawa to help further our goals of building a film exchange between Canada and Mexico. If you are interested in learning about Mexican Film, hearing about how you could attend the 2010 MIFF in August, then please attend. Dr. Batia Stolar, English Professor at Lakehead University will introduce the films. For further information please email; pmorralee@morvision.on.ca.

Leith Dunick, tbnewswatch.com
Aspiring filmmaker Matt Popowich.


Here is a bit of a dated article about home town rapper and young filmmaker. The music video is reaching 300,000 hits now! Please add your comments to update this piece!
Thanks
Kelly

T.Bay tribute goes viral
By Leith Dunick, tbnewswatch.com

From Current River to Westfort, Jordan Burnell’s hip-hop tribute to his hometown has gone viral.



My Home Town, posted to YouTube Thursday morning by aspiring filmmaker Matt Popowich, takes the 22-year old rapper throughout the city, exposing Thunder Bay landmarks while he sings the praises of the place he grew up in.

"Standing atop Mount McKay, feeling proud to say I’m from Thunder Bay," he sings in the video, which by 11 a.m. on Friday had been viewed more than 24,700 times, equivalent to about one-in-four city residents.

That also makes it the most viewed YouTube music video in Canada for Feb.5.



"I want to hear my whole city sing with me," he raps a few verses later.

Burnell, who ironically moved to Toronto for school two weeks ago, said the attention the song and video have received has caught him by surprise.

Within hours he had 36 friend requests on Facebook, where the video is being posted and reposted by anyone and everyone who ever had a connection to Thunder Bay.

"I was like, what’s going on? It’s nuts," he said, reached by phone on Friday morning at his Toronto apartment. "Last night when I went to bed it was at 6,000 (views), and then my dad just called me from T.Bay and said it’s at 20,000 or something like that."

The song, set to the sampled beat of Adele’s Home Town, references anything and everything Thunder Bay, from Terry Fox and Finnish pancakes to Crystal beer, mill closures, our love of hockey and even Uncle Neil himself.

"The same place Steve Stills met Neil Young, you can still hear him in your ear drums, Superior by nature, you may think it sounds cliché, but me, I just think it sounds T. Bay."

Burnell, who is studying audio engineering at Recording Art Canada, said his imminent departure is the main reason he decided to write the track.

"I was just driving through Thunder Bay one day, just out to get coffee, and I went to Hillcrest Park. I just looked out over the city and said, ‘I’m not going to see this for awhile,’" he said, noting the idea had been in the back of his mind for awhile, but it had never manifested itself beyond a few scattered thoughts.

Even though Burnell is a seasoned musician, a member of the local group Burnz N Hell that opened for the Swollen Members in November, he said it wasn’t easy putting those thoughts to paper and then sharing them with the world on the Internet.

"I’m not going to lie. I was nervous. You’re talking about your hometown and people have mixed views on where they’re from. It seems like people think I hit the nail on the head with that one," he said.

Of course Popowich, who did the video for free, hoping for a little publicity for his fledgling company, Westfort Films – for which he serves as the self-titled "dude who created it," had a hand in the success.

Filmed over the course of 13 hours, a timeframe that included a clandestine visit to AbitiBowater’s paper mill before security marshaled them off the property, Popowich said the ideas just started flowing as soon as he heard the songs and its Thunder Bay references.
"It comes to you naturally, you know. Let’s get a shot of Terry Fox, Mount McKay.

Then, for a couple of hours me and my buddies just drove around and we just looked around town and whatever screamed Thunder Bay out to us, we just made sure we got a nice shot out of it."

And what does scream Thunder Bay to Popowich, 21, a Westgate grad who hopes to enter film school within the next couple of years?

"Pretty much everything you see in the video. We just drove around and looked at stuff that struck a chord with us. I tried to shoot as many locations that I knew people would recognize, especially people from out of town, like university students, who would see the Hoito and say, ‘I’ve been there, that’s deadly."