MoMA Announces THE ANNUAL CANADIAN FRONT FILM EXHIBITION

The seventh edition of Canadian Front, MoMA's annual survey of new Canadian cinema, includes the New York premieres of eight features made over the last 18 months. The exhibition is organized by Laurence Kardish, Senior Curator, Department of Film, in association with Telefilm Canada, and screens at The Museum of Modern Art from March 17 through 22, 2010.

This year's selection includes two comedies: from Montreal, Émile Gaudreault's surprise hit
Fathers and Guns (2009), and from Toronto, Rob Stefaniuk's vampire musical Suck (2009). Two
narrative features by first-time women filmmakers-Sherry White's Crackie (2009) and Ingrid
Veninger and Simon Reynolds's ONLY (2008)-speak to the anxieties of adolescence. Two dramas
from Quebec confront the idea of mortality from radically different perspectives: Bernard Émond's
The Legacy (2009) deals with caregiving, while Denis Villeneuve's Polytechnique (2009) recounts
a mass murder.

The exhibition also features a pair of nonfiction films: Brigitte Berman's Hugh Hefner:
Playboy, Activist, and Rebel (2010) and Peter Mettler's wordless landscape film Petropolis (2009).
Finally, in memory of the Canadian filmmaker Allan King, who died this year and who was the
subject of a MoMA retrospective in 2007, is a screening of Who Has Seen the Wind (1977), the
director's first dramatic feature.

Canadian Front, 2010 is presented with the support of the Canadian Consulate General in
New York, and Brigitte Hubmann, Project Manager, Telefilm Canada.

No. 11
Public Information: The Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53rd Street, New York, NY 10019
Hours: Films are screened Wednesday-Monday. For screening schedules, please visit www.moma.org.

Film Admission:$10 adults; $8 seniors, 65 years and over with I.D. $6 full-time students with current I.D. (For admittance to film programs only.) The price of a film ticket may be applied toward the price of a Museum admission ticket when a film ticket stub is presented at the Lobby Information Desk within 30 days of the date on the stub (does not apply during Target Free Friday Nights, 4:00-8:00 p.m.). Admission is free for Museum members and for Museum ticketholders.

The public may call (212) 708-9400 for detailed Museum information. Visit us at www.moma.org.

SCREENING SCHEDULE
Canadian Front, 2010
March 17-22, 2010
Wednesday, March 17
4:30 Crackie. 2009. Canada. Written and directed by Sherry White. With Mary Walsh, Meghan
Greeley, Cheryl Wells, Joel Thomas Hynes, Kristin Booth.

Mitsy, a teenager enduring a hardscrabble adolescence with her grandmother, discovers a
dog she wants to love; contemplates sex with a local boy; and, despite her grandmother's
wish never to see her own daughter again, hopes her estranged mother will return to
Newfoundland. Be careful what you wish for. White's debut film sensitively illuminates the
confusion of youth and the dramatic collision of three generations of women. 94 min.
8:00 De père en flic (Fathers and Guns). 2009. Canada. Directed by Émile Gaudreault.
Written by Gaudreault, Ian Lauzon. With Louis-José Houde, Michel Côté, Rémy Girard,
Patrick Drolet, Caroline Dhavernas.

From the whizz-bang opening credits to the happily satisfying ending, Fathers and Guns is
a comic delight. A box office phenomenon in Quebec, the film is packed with Montreal
cops, slimy gangsters and mob lawyers, and, last but not least, fathers and sons who
(supposedly) hate one another. A Hollywood remake is in the works, so grab this rare
chance to see the hilarious original. In French; English subtitles. 107 min.
Thursday, March 18

4:00 La donation (The Legacy). 2009. Canada. Written and directed by Bernard Émond. With
Élise Guilbault, Éric Hoziel, Françoise Graton.
Émond, a Canadian Front veteran, set his moving new work in a Quebec town whose
primary source of employment disappeared a generation ago. When an aging country
doctor who cares deeply about his patients needs to leave his post temporarily, he
advertises for a substitute caregiver. A woman from the city, frustrated by life in a busy
emergency ward, answers his call. This quietly beautiful film chronicles how a newcomer
becomes deeply involved in the lives-and deaths-of a community. In French; English
subtitles. 96 min.

7:00 Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist, and Rebel. 2010. Canada. Directed by Brigitte
Berman. With Hugh Hefner, Gene Simmons, Mike Wallace, Reverend Jesse Jackson.
The film, whose title says it all, argues that Hefner not only rebelled against pervasive
social norms when he self-financed the first issues of Playboy, but also took an active role
in the fight for racial integration and abortion rights. Berman, who has made many
documentaries for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, won a 1986 Academy Award
for Artie Shaw: Time Is All You've Got. 124 min.
Friday, March 19

4:00 Polytechnique. 2009. Canada. Directed by Denis Villeneuve. Screenplay by Villeneuve,
Jacques Davidts, Éric Leca. With Sébastien Huberdeau, Karine Vanasse, Evelyne Brochu,
Maxim Gaudette.
In 1989, a decade before Columbine, the unthinkable happened in Montreal: a twentyfive-
year-old gunman, who claimed "feminists" had destroyed his life, entered the École
Polytechnique with a rifle and killed fourteen female students. This compellingly
dispassionate black-and-white film, Villeneuve's third, serves as a memorial of sorts for
the victims, and describes what followed for the survivors. The film was named Best
Canadian Film of 2009 by the Torotno Film Critics. In French; English subtitles. 76 min.

6:00 Petropolis: Aerial Perspectives on the Alberta Tar Sands. 2009. Canada. Directed by
Peter Mettler. "
Located beneath 4.3 million hectares of boreal forest in Alberta, Canada, the tar sands are
a mixture of sand, clay, and a heavy crude oil called bitumen that is either mined in open
pits or extracted from underground by injecting superheated water" (Petropolis-film.com).
Mettler, one of Canada's leading media artists, aerially filmed a mining area the size of
England, and his images speak far louder than words. Made for Greenpeace Canada. 43
min.

7:15 Suck. 2009. Canada. Written and directed by Rob Stefaniuk. With Stefaniuk, Jessica Paré,
Iggy Pop, Malcolm McDowell, Henry Rollins, Alice Cooper, Paul Anthony, Mike Lobel.
Stefaniuk, whose first feature, Phil the Alien, was shown in Canadian Frontl, 2005, returns
with his newest genre mashup. Suck follows the curious journey of a Canadian rock band
who achieve celebrity by becoming vampires, a move that seriously complicates the
musicians' itinerary. How can they travel by day? And how can the undead get past the
U.S. Department of Homeland Security? Laden with super-cool rock ‘n' roll cameos, Suck
is as peppy and lively as a recently nourished creature of the night. 90 min.
Saturday, March 20

1:00 De père en flic (Fathers and Guns). (See Wednesday, March 17, 8:00.)

3:15 ONLY. 2008. Canada. Written and directed by Ingrid Veninger, Simon Reynolds. With
Veninger, Reynolds, Jacob Switzer, Elena Hudgins Lyle.
ONLY is a modest, luminous jewel of a film. Made on a ridiculously low budget and starring
family and friends, the film follows a sweet, openhearted relationship that develops
between two lonely tweens in a backwater Ontario town. The filmmakers are both actors,
and Veninger co-wrote the script to Nurse. Fighter.Boy., which was featured in last year's
Canadian Front. 74 min.

5:30 Crackie. (See Wednesday, March 17, 4:30.)

8:00 La donation (The Legacy). (See Thursday, March 18, 4:00.)
Sunday, March 21

1:00 Polytechnique. (See Friday, March 19, 4:00.)

2:45 Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist, and Rebel. (See Thursday, March 18, 7:00.)

5:00 Who Has Seen the Wind. 1977. Canada. Directed by Allan King. Screenplay by Patricia
Watson, based on the novel by W. O. Mitchell. With Brian Painchaud, Helen Shaver,
Gordon Pinsent, José Ferrer.
"A sweet, generous reverie of a movie about growing up on the prairies of Saskatchewan
during the Depression. It touches on all of the topics obligatory in small-town fiction,
including life, death, hypocrisy, bigotry, all as they are observed by one little boy....[The
film has] the effect of an unretouched memoir" (Vincent Canby, The New York Times). 100
min.

Monday, March 22
4:00 Petropolis: Aerial Perspectives on the Alberta Tar Sands. (See Friday, March 19,
6:00.)
5:00 ONLY. (See Saturday, March 20, 3:15.)
7:00 Suck. (See Friday, March 19, 7:15.)