Be sure to see the World Community Film Festival when it comes to town

by Keith and Heather Nicol

    On Friday evening, February 6^th we headed down to the Sid Williams Theatre in Courtenay, B.C.  to check out the first night of the 24^th World Community Film Festival. There was a huge turnout for the films “Becoming Bulletproof” and “Reaching Blue” that opened the festival.  Like many of the films in this festival these two films focused on social and environmental issues.  On Saturday, February 7^th the festival organizers showed 19 other films in four venues that dealt with a wide variety of social, environmental and economic consequences of human activity at both local and international levels. They also showed nine films as part of a family programme.  Overall we saw several films and enjoyed them all. We thought “The man who stopped the desert”, “American Revolutionary-The evolution of Grace Lee Boggs”, ”Bulletproof” and “Damnation” were particularly good. We hope to see the many films we missed through the World Community lending library.

There were several venues for the festival including the Native Sons Hall shown here

 World Community which is headquartered in the Comox Valley is to be commended for organizing this event. And a great aspect of this event is that it travels to a variety of B.C. and other Canadian locations over the coming months. We have already told some of our friends in Kamloops, Duncan and Vancouver the dates that it will be in their communities. In addition to the films,  World Community also organized a Saturday Bazaar and evening banquet for the event. Overall we were very impressed with the festival and the organizers must feel encouraged by the large turnouts for the films. For more information on World Community and the travelling film festival see: http://www.worldcommunity.ca/ 

    

Heather (right) chats to Lucas Schuller with the Cumberland Museum at the bazaar