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

 by Keith and Heather Nicol

    On Friday evening, February 5^th we headed down to the Sid Williams Theatre in Courtenay, B.C.  to check out the first night of the 25^th World Community Film Festival. There was a huge turnout for the films “How to Change the World” and “There you go” that opened the festival.  Like many of the films in this festival these two films focused on social and environmental issues.  On Saturday, February 6^th the festival organizers showed 25 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 seven films as part of a family programme.  Overall we saw several films and enjoyed them all. We saw a variety of films on Saturday including :”Bikes vs Cars”, “Nefertiti’s Daughters” “Following the Ninth” and “Jumbo Wild” which were all well attended. The finale on Saturday evening- “Ania” and “Haida Gwaii” played to a sold out crowd at the Sid Williams Theatre! Many of these films had won awards at other film festivals and our only complaint is that we couldn’t see more of the films being presented. But we hope to see the many films we missed through the World Community lending library.

Films were shown in several venues including the Native Sons Hall

      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 Nanaimo, 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/ 

The bazaar was also well attended with numerous booths and food