Patricia Rozema: A Video Essay | On Film

Описание: Patricia Rozema launched her filmmaking career with accolades, bringing international attention to the vibrant works of the Toronto New Wave and Canadian cinema as a whole. Her first short film, Passion: A Letter in 16mm, won second prize at the Chicago International Film Festival, and her debut feature film the surreal and witty take on the art world, I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing, was the first English-language film to win a prize at the Cannes Film Festival ― the Prix de la jeunesse in 1987. Rozema, like the other independent filmmakers in the New Wave, was a beneficiary of the Ontario Film Development Corporation founded by former head of Festival of Festivals (now TIFF) Wayne Clarkson the year before Mermaids’ production in 1986. The OFDC’s emphasis on funding films with personal vision supported Rozema’s singular voice in her debut, which was not only critically acclaimed, but also became one of the most profitable Canadian films. Since then, Rozema’s films have been celebrated for their complex, sympathetically rendered characters, often portraits of artists in crisis ― particularly women, as in White Room and When Night Is Falling ― and those reckoning with conflicting aspects of their personalities or familial obligations, such as Mouthpiece, Into the Forest, and Kit Kittredge: An American Girl.

She has been referred to as a “master of adaptation” with six out of the nine films in her filmography based on a play, novel, or film (in the case of Grey Gardens). Each was interpreted through her trademark formal inventiveness, sensual visual style, and deft ability to thread a fantastical feminist sensibility through the many genres in which she works, from romance dramedy to noir fairy tale to children’s film to period drama, and most notably with her bold revisionist take on Mansfield Park. “You cannot underestimate what a radical thing it is to change from one art form to another,” Rozema once said. “So you serve two masters as an adapting filmmaker: the author's intention and the needs of film. Sometimes ‘fidelity’ can mean only focusing on one day of a story told over 20 years in a book.”

As part of our year-long focus on Toronto New Wave and to observe Rozema’s ongoing contribution to the Canadian film industry, TIFF Cinematheque is pleased to premiere the 4K restorations of When Night Is Falling and White Room among a selection of Rozema’s features and her short This Might Be Good from Preludes, the collection of shorts commissioned for TIFF’s 25th anniversary.

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