Huronia Museum Film Series brings festival calibre films to Midland movie goers.

All proceeds for ticket sales help to support Huronia Museum.

Tickets can be purchased in advance at Huronia Museum or through our online store at https://www.shopmidland.com/HuroniaMuseum/?listing.action=products&catId=100032849&page=1

All films will once again be screened at 4:30 and 7:30 on Wednesday nights at the Galaxy Theatre.  Tickets are available in advance at Huronia Museum or at the Galaxy Cinema, if available, on film nights.  Individual tickets are $10 and Six packs are $54.

LIVING – Wednesday, February 15, 2023 @ 4:30 & 7:30
Director: Oliver Hermanus
Cast:  Bill Nighy, Aimee Lou Wood, Alex Sharpe, Tom Burke
Runtime:  102 minutes

In this remake of Akira Kurosawa’s 1952 film Ikiru, director Oliver Hermanus teams with Nobel- and Booker Prize–winning author Kazuo Ishiguro to renew the timeless tale of a bureaucrat who rediscovers life’s capacity for passion and joy following a terminal cancer diagnosis.

Mr. Williams is a buttoned-down, pinstripe-and-bowler hat–clad stereotypical English gentleman in 1952, with a mid-level bureaucratic job in a postwar London county council. Through his taciturn manner, he lets his staff know that maintaining the status quo on files is more important than progress. One day Williams receives a dire diagnosis from his doctor, and soon the tightly-held reins of his very prosaic life begin to loosen: he realizes that he isn’t facing death; he’s been living it. In charmingly awkward sequences, Nighy beautifully captures that specific lead-up to the end of life and the inevitably accompanying questions: did I accomplish anything? Will I leave anything and place created by the craft elements, notably production design by Helen Scott, and costume design by the multiple Oscar– winning Sandy Powell. It’s all captured on screen by cinematographer Jamie Ramsay, who impresses with his creation of beautiful images filled with light. Deeply affecting and an utter treat for the senses, Living is as timeless a film as the message at its core.

CALL JANE – Wednesday, March 1, 2023 @ 4:30 & 7:30
Director: Phyllis Nagy
Cast:  Elizabeth Banks, Sigourney Weaver, Chris Messina, Kate Mara
Runtime:  121 minutes

Chicago, 1968. As the city and the nation are poised on the brink of political upheaval, suburban housewife Joy leads an ordinary life with her husband and daughter. When Joy’s pregnancy leads to a life-threatening heart condition, she must navigate an all-male medical establishment unwilling to terminate her pregnancy in order to save her life. Her journey for a solution leads her to Virginia, an independent visionary fiercely committed to women’s health, and Gwen, an activist who dreams of a day when all women will have access to abortion, regardless of their ability to pay. Joy is so inspired by their work, she decides to join forces with them, putting every aspect of her life on the line.

ALICE, DARLING – Wednesday, March 22, 2023 @ 4:30 & 7:30
Director: Alanna Francis
Cast:  Anna Kendrick, Kaniehtiio Horn, Wunmi Mosaku, Charlie Carrick
Runtime:  90 minutes

Alice is an anxious person and no one is sure why. When she’s invited on a cottage trip to celebrate her friend’s birthday, she feels like she has to lie to her charming and successful boyfriend, Simon, telling him that it’s a very important business trip.

Her longtime friends want Alice to enjoy their time together, but she just doesn’t seem present. With Simon continuously texting her, it becomes clear that she’s being closely monitored by him and her phone turns into an overbearing conduit for emotional abuse. Once they realize what’s happening, Alice’s friends try to convince her that her relationship isn’t normal, but she continues to doubt herself, constantly modulating where she goes or what she eats, unable to disconnect from Simon, even though she knows she’s unhappy. As the weekend progresses, not only their friendship hangs in the balance, but also Alice’s safety. The women become entangled in a psychological tug-of-war with Simon, who continues his attempts at excising Alice from those closest to her.

Written by Alanna Francis, returning to the Festival after 2019’s The Rest of Us, and intelligently realized by Mary Nighy, Alice, Darling captures the apprehension and dread that haunt victims of domestic abuse. Nighy’s direction puts particular focus on the little details that serve as warning signs and, coupled with a meticulous performance from Kendrick, she creates a tense atmosphere that serves as a unique portrait of psychological manipulation and one young woman’s effort to overcome it.

Content advisory: depiction of self-harm; themes of anxiety and mental distress; sexual content, coarse language.

ROSIE – Wednesday, April 5, 2023 @ 4:30 & 7:30
Director: Gail Maurice
Cast:  Mélanie Bray, Keris Hope Hill, Constant Bernard, Alex Trahan
Runtime:  92 minutes
Language: English, French, Cree

Métis writer-director-actor Gail Maurice’s feature film debut tells the story of a suddenly orphaned Indigenous girl and her newly chosen family in Montreal in the 1980s.

Rosie is a visibly Indigenous, English-speaking, sweet, and headstrong little girl and her mother has just died. A children’s services agent brings her to her only living relative, her Francophone aunt Frédèrique. “Fred” doesn’t have a solid foundation on which to raise a child. She is unprepared — she’s working at an adult entertainment shop and threatened with eviction — and is at first unwilling to take on caring for her adopted sister’s young daughter.

From images of people working on the street to a scene involving sleeping rough in a car in a junkyard, ROSIE captures an uncomfortable reality understood through innocent eyes. Seeing things from the girl’s viewpoint explains why Fred’s gender-bending friends — from the Cree perspective of being genderless — Flo and Mo appear in various forms of drag, and why the night in the car is seen as a fun camping experience. The film focuses on characters living on the fringes of society, including a homeless Cree man, and how united and transformed they become through the eponymous character’s vibrant presence.

Touching on the Sixties Scoop and disconnection from Indigenous identity, ROSIE is an ode to finding your chosen family when your blood relations have been removed from the picture.

I LIKE MOVIES – Wednesday, April 19, 2023 @ 4:30 & 7:30
Director: Chandler Levack
Cast:  Isaiah Lehtinen, Percy Hynes White, Romina D’Ugo, Krista Bridges
Runtime:  99 minutes

Opening with an easy contender for most hilariously (intentionally) inept parody of A Christmas Carol ever made, Chandler Levack’s ultra-indie I Like Movies is a smart, funny, and ornery exploration of adolescent trauma and early onset cinephilia. It’s hardly surprising that one condition only exacerbates the other.

Lawrence Kweller is an irascible, self- and movie-obsessed teenager living in the wilds of early-2000s Burlington, Ontario. He’s the kind of guy who, when he buys a movie ticket, mentions the director’s name just to show that he’s there for the right reasons. He dreams of NYU, where he’ll be mentored by a grateful Todd Solondz. But for Lawrence, who delivers every statement with utter certainty, this isn’t a mere dream: it’s locked in — as long as he can make thousands of dollars working part-time at his local video store, Sequels, to afford tuition.

Lawrence has more serious problems — ones that the 10 free video rentals he gets weekly at Sequels won’t solve. His egocentrism threatens his only real friendship, with longtime buddy and fellow lonely guy Matt Macarchuk, the put-upon co-star and co-creator of his student short. It becomes increasingly clear that Lawrence’s movie obsession (and his inability to tolerate anyone) is a way of burying a world of hurt and avoiding any real connection.

Levack and her collaborators have created a touching and very recognizable world driven by empathy. As infuriating as Lawrence can be, the film sticks with him as he bounces from one small but impactful disaster to the next. We find ourselves rooting for him — not to realize his fantasies, but to engage with his reality. I Like Movies is also blessed with an excellent cast, led by Lehtinen and Hynes White and ably supported by Romina D’Ugo as Lawrence’s Sequels boss, and the ever-versatile Krista Bridges as Lawrence’s resilient mother.

Unfortunately, due to some changes at Cineplex, April 19 will be our final film of the 2022/2023 season.  We will then break and resume again in the fall.  These changes are at a corporate level and are policies that apply to all groups renting from Cineplex across the country.  It is not a decision made by our local theatre staff, it is the new corporate policy for third party rentals and a reflection of changes made in a “post” covid world.

However, this change is not necessarily forever and the best way to influence change in our favour is by showing ourselves to be a truly profittable partnership.  So, the more people we have attending our films the better.

**Reminder to everyone on our email subscriber list-If you are not receiving our weekly emails, please check your spam / social folders.  Some email providers recognize the film emails as spam because they are messages sent out to a large group using an email service**

The Huronia Museum Film Series is made possible with the support of our many generous sponsors.

Corporate Sponsors

Bobbie Dupuis—Remax
Catharine Bayles – RBC Dominion Securities
Dentures By Denturists
H. S. St. Amant and Sons
Iron Horse Crossing
Iyengar Yoga at the Farmhoue
John Winter Family Law
Midland Toyota
Minds Alive
Olde Town Library
Quest Art
Robitaille and Associates
Shoppers Drug Mart

 Individual Sponsors

Jeanne McIsaac

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