Annual Canadian Front Film Exhibition at MoMA Presents Eight New York Premieres

NEW YORK, NY.- 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.

"Suck". 2009, Canada. Written and directed by Rob Stefaniuk. Pictured: Jessica Paré (JENNIFER) Rob Stefaniuk (JOEY), Paul Anthony (TYLER)

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.

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