Canadian Masters: Patricia Rozema
The Canadian Film Institute’s Canadian Masters series is an annual celebration of excellence in Canadian filmmaking, featuring extensive onstage interviews, special screenings, and audience discussions with some of the greatest names in Canadian film history.
Since we began the Canadian Masters series in 2016, we have presented these extraordinary Canadian filmmakers: Atom Egoyan, Alanis Obomsawin, Guy Maddin, Theodore Ushev, Nettie Wild, William D. MacGillivray and Terry Greenlaw, and Peter Mettler.
In 2021, as part of our inaugural edition of the International Film Festival of Ottawa (IFFO), we are honoured to welcome Patricia Rozema as a Canadian Masters guest artist.
While we are still unable to do in person events and screenings, we able to present Canadian Masters online, with screenings, as well as recorded and live guest artist talks. We are proud to be partnering with Carleton University’s School For Studies In Art and Culture’s Film Studies section. For 45 years, Carleton Film Studies has produced some of the most important and influential film scholars, critics, and curators in Canada, and has also played a key role in the development of film culture generally in our nation.
Patricia Rozema
Since her arrival on the international cinema stage in 1987 with her wildly successful debut, I’ve Heard The Mermaids Singing, which captured the coveted Prix de la jeunesse at the Cannes Film Festival, Patricia Rozema has emerged as one of Canada’s most daring, versatile, and accomplished film artists. Her award-winning, diverse body of work spans film and television, fiction and documentary, original screenplays and literary adaptations. From Mermaids to her most recent film, Mouthpiece, Rozema’s varied, consistently stylish work has brilliantly explored themes of love and power, identity and sexuality, the complexity of gender politics, and the nature of human desire.
Mouthpiece
Faced with the sudden death of her mother and wrestling with the daunting responsibility of delivering the eulogy, aspiring writer Cassandra finds solace and inspiration in her imagination and in her memory, which rapidly become indistinguishable. As the funeral service approaches, Cassandra’s conflicted, complex reflections on and memories of her mother intensify and push her life in new and unexpected directions. Moving back and forth in time, the film’s multifaceted narrative probes the intimacies and emotional complexities of how we remember, what we remember, and why we remember. Based on the award-winning play by Norah Sadava and Amy Nostbakken (who also brilliantly co-star in the film as two ‘versions’ of Cassandra), Mouthpiece is an inventive, engaging narrative of personal rebirth from the acclaimed director of I’ve Heard The Mermaids Singing, Mansfield Park, and Into The Forest.
- Tom McSorley
Screening
MONDAY, MARCH 15 - TUESDAY, MARCH 16
Screening contents:
Screening co-presented by:
