Film Brockville returns to arts centre

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For Film Brockville, it’s a homecoming of sorts.

The non-profit organization is making a mid-season move from Brockville’s Galaxy Cinemas back to the Brockville Arts Centre, where it got its start.

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“Money’s always a problem and the arts centre gave us a good offer,” said Film Brockville facilitator Dale Chisamore.

“The audience keeps asking us to move there,” he added.

Film Brockville is a grassroots community group that screens independent, foreign, documentary and Canadian films during the fall and winter.

It is in its 24th season, which started off as the 14th year at Galaxy, before which Film Brockville was at the Brockville Arts Centre for a decade.

Moving back to the arts centre allows for a reduction in costs that is small, but “at this point, anything is good,” said Chisamore, noting times are hard for small art film associations.

“It has to happen here or we would, I would think, fold,” he added.

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Film Brockville also caters to an older audience, and many people will appreciate not having to climb as many stairs to get to their seats, added Chisamore.

While it is a mid-season move, he said people also see it as the beginning of a winter season.

Brockville was one of the first smaller communities to join the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) when it started its “Film Circuit,” an outreach effort that now includes more than 220 locations across Canada.

The volunteer group chooses its films through the TIFF catalogue, and they also coordinate with the arts centre, which shows similar types of films, so they don’t double up. The arts centre will continue with its own film schedule in addition to Film Brockville’s list.

The Film Brockville screenings need to attract 85 to 90 people to be viable, and organizers hope the move back to the arts centre will make this target easier to hit.

Chisamore adds the move will also allow the group to experiment with matinees, showing films at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m.

Film Brockville regularly donates any excess funds garnered from ticket sales to the local food bank, something it plans to continue doing, said Chisamore.

“It’s a constant need,” he said.

Film Brockville’s “winter season” begins this Sunday with “Beautiful Boy,” starring Timothée Chalamet and Steve Carell and based on the bestselling pair of memoirs by father and son David and Nic Sheff.

Felix van Groeningen’s film chronicles the experiences of survival, relapse and recovery in a family coping with addiction over many years.

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“It’s an outstanding, moving film,” said Chisamore.

That will be followed on Sunday, Jan. 27 by the Danish thriller “The Guilty.”

In this subtitled film, emergency dispatcher and former police officer Asger Holm answers a call from a kidnapped woman. When the call is suddenly disconnected, Asger races against time to save the woman as the case grows more complex.

“You Are Here,” a Canadian documentary about the diversion of American planes to Gander, N.L. during 9/11, follows on Wednesday Feb. 20, while on Feb. 27 the group will screen “A Private War,” a biopic on the late legendary journalist Marie Colvin.

“If Beale Street Could Talk,” a film currently generating some buzz, follows on Sunday, March 10 with a 7 p.m. showing.

Based on the novel by James Baldwin, this story of a newly engaged Harlem woman struggling to prove her lover’s innocence while carrying their first-born child to term is set in early-1970s Harlem.

Film Brockville rounds out the winter with “Woman at War,” an Icelandic film about an eco-terrorist trying to reconcile her convictions with impending motherhood. It runs at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Apr. 17.

More detailed information is available online at www.filmbrockville.ca.