Festival Updates and News
News about Ottawa Festivals and our Member festivals, special events and fairs.
Sail Around the World with Stories at the 2011 Children’s Storytelling Festival
[Source: Ottawa Storytellers website]
Story Yoga for Kids* – Tania Frechette
Tania Frechette’s passion for yoga began a decade ago. She is a trained yoga professional at the highest level (ERYT-500). Tania loves to teach people of all ages. Her approach to yoga is creative and fun. www.yogaland.ca
Yogini Went To Sea – Join a yogini for an adventure to the sea. We will transform ourselves into different sea creatures, have fun surfing big waves and row some boats. (1pm to 1:30pm)
The Zoo – Let’s go to the zoo! Have fun with your animal friends. Jump like a monkey, roar like a lion, walk like heavy elephant, hiss like a snake and much more. (2:30pm to 3pm)
*Please bring a yoga mat or large towel.
Read more on the Ottawa Storytellers website: World with Stories at the 2011 Children’s Storytelling Festival
Teach Ontario kids “food literacy,” says chef Michael Smith
Trevor Pritchard, Open File
Chef Michael Smith calls for Nutritional Literacy – Ottawa Writers Festival – September 26, 2011 from OTTAWA INTL WRITERS FESTIVAL on Vimeo.
Renowned P.E.I. chef and Food Network personality Michael Smith was in the city on Monday as part of the Ottawa International Writers Festival. And in this clip posted today by the festival on Vimeo, Smith talks about the need for a province-wide food literacy strategy:
I’m talking food literacy. Nutritional literacy. And I strongly believe that it needs to be in your kids’ schools from kindergarden all the way through to twelfth grade.
Smith’s timing is prescient: earlier this month, the Ontario government’s new guidelines around what foods can and can’t be sold in school cafeterias went into effect.
The host of such shows as Chef Abroad and The Inn Chef was at Ashbury College to talk about his new recipe collection, Chef Michael Smith’s Kitchen.
British Animators win big at festival
Steven Mazey, The Ottawa Citizen
OTTAWA — British animators Phil Mulloy and Stephen Irwin took home two of the top jury prizes as the Ottawa International Animation Festival that ended Sept. 25.
The annual festival, the largest of its kind in North America, ran Sept. 21 to 25, presenting short and feature films on screens around town, as well as workshops and special screenings outside of the competition. In a closing ceremony at the Canadian Museum of Civilization, the festival presented more than a dozen awards.
Phil Mulloy, a two-time previous winner at the festival for best feature film, won the prize again for Dead but Not Buried, a dark comedy bout a dead body that goes missing. The jury praised Mulloy’s “innovative way of filmmaking, bold use of minimalistic graphics, original use of sound and subversive humour.”
Stephen Irwin won the $3,000 Nelvana Grand Prize for best independent short animation, for his film Moxie, “for its powerful combination of style and narrative, leaving a memorable impression.”
Gilmour’s life as novel
Powerful ‘fictional autobiography’ takes CanLit and author’s own work to task]
Mark Medley, Postmedia News
THE PERFECT ORDER OF THINGS
By David Gilmour,
Thomas Allen, $27.95
A funny thing happens near the end of my interview with David Gilmour. We’re sitting in a quiet café in Toronto’s Annex neighbourhood, discussing his latest novel, The Perfect Order of Things, when he stops mid-sentence. “Oh my God, an ex-wife,” he exclaims.
Anne Mackenzie, managing director of the Toronto International Film Festival, and mother of Gilmour’s daughter, has just walked in the door. “I don’t know what she’s doing here,” he says. Mackenzie, or at least her fictional doppelgänger, appears in a chapter that is set, in part, at a film festival party, at a time when the marriage between the narrator and “M” is basically over. “By then we both hated each other,” he writes.
Mackenzie comes to the table and the exes exchange pleasantries. When she walks away, Gilmour leans across the table and motions for me to do the same. “She has not read this,” he whispers conspiratorially. “She doesn’t know she’s in it yet.” He asks that I don’t mention it to her.
Mackenzie returns to the table a few minutes later, and they make plans to rendezvous on the patio once the interview is over. But Gilmour, like a kid showing off a new toy, cannot help himself.
Read more on the Ottawa Citizen website: Gilmour’s life as novel
148 years and the fun hasn’t stopped at Carp Fair
Family tradition for many
Meghan Hurley, The Ottawa Citizen
OTTAWA — Wendy Armstrong has been going to the Carp Fair ever since she met her husband there 19 years ago.
The Montreal native didn’t even want to go to the fair, but friends talked her into attending a Friday night dance.
“One of the girls I was with went to high school with him,” Armstrong said about how she met her husband. “And here we are.”
Nineteen years later, Armstrong spent Saturday afternoon watching her children go on rides and play games while her husband busily worked behind the scenes as the president of the fair.
Armstrong’s daughter, Greer, 8, won a toy in the shape of a lemon after throwing darts in an attempt to burst a balloon.
Only moments before, Greer went on the dragon roller-coaster twice in a row and came running off the platform with a grin on her face.
“I don’t like many roller-coasters, but that one’s a lot of fun because you don’t go too fast,” she said.
Ottawa Fashion Week reaches out to the world
Marlo Cameron, Open File
The people behind Ottawa’s biggest celebration of fashion are changing tack. It used to be that most designers featured at Ottawa Fashion Week came from the nation’s capital. This year, all that has changed.
OFW launched in 2008, and its organizers hoped it would broadcast to the world all the local talent and style that is rarely—if ever—attributed to Ottawa.
“We felt like Ottawa was underrepresented in the fashion scene in Canada. We have great designers here, why not showcase the talent we have?” said Christine Achampong, public relations coordinator for Ottawa Fashion Week.
Three years later, the event has grown. But this year’s festival includes just four Ottawa-based designers on its roster of 22. When OFW was introduced, almost all of the 29 designers featured were from Ottawa. Showing off just a small collection of local talent might seem counterproductive if OFW hopes to put Ottawa on the map, but organizers say that approach was quite deliberate.
“Having such little Ottawa representation makes Ottawa designers want to step up their game and say, ‘one of my goals is to show at Ottawa Fashion week,’” explains Achampong. “We want to incorporate more local designers, and we’re hoping that events like ours raise the profile of more local designers, and that they have some sort of goal to achieve within the next couple of years.”
Read more on the Open File website: Ottawa Fashion Week reaches out to the world
Allah, Liberty and Love with Irshad Manji
[Source: The Ottawa International Writers Festival]
Hosted by CBC’s Lucy van Oldenbarneveld
Mayfair Theatre, 1074 Bank Street
Tickets: $15 general / $10 student or senior
The New York Times bestselling author to whom Oprah gave her first ever Chutzpah Award, Irshad Manji has written a book that equips all of us to develop moral courage.
Having engaged with politicians, activists, families, students, scholars and ordinary people of various religions and cultures, Manji tells stories that are deeply poignant, frequently funny and always revealing about the morally confused era in which we live. Allah, Liberty & Love is ultimately a book about how to become a gutsy global citizen working for both personal and world peace. Prepare to be informed as well as inspired.
Irshad Manji is the new voice of reform, not only for Islam, but for all religions. When we realize that liberty
and love, meaning and purpose are more sacred than ideology and dogma, our spirituality will come of age.”
—Deepak Chopra, author of The Soul of Leadership
Information and tickets:
writersfestival.org • 613.562.1243
Ottawans get ‘animated’ at yearly festival
Denis Armstrong, Ottawa Sun
Call animated films cartoons and Chris Robinson gets a little testy, which is understandable.
As the artistic director of Ottawa’s International Animation Festival, the author and film programmer screens more than 2,000 films that want to be shown at the annual Animation Festival. Only 150 actually make it in.
Animated films are much more than cartoons, he points out, because they have the ability to amuse, entertain, and most importantly, satirize the way no regular film can.
That’s an awesome power, one that few films outside Jean Cocteau are even remotely capable of duplicating.
And because they work with cute and playful images, animators can say dangerous truths and get away with it.
“Short animated films are the poets of the film industry,” Robinson states flatly.
“They aren’t made by nerds, but by people who are passionate about the art.”
So, you can understand why Robinson, or anyone who loves film, gets defensive calling animated films cartoons. That’s like calling a Harley a bike.
He gets to show what he means Sept. 21 to 25, when his International Animation Festival opens around town.
Read more on the Ottawa Sun website: Ottawans get ‘animated’ at yearly festival
Bambi, Godzilla and a few surreal spirits
Festival turns Ottawa into an animation paradise
Steven Mazey, the Ottawa Citizen
FIVE DAYS OF TOONS
What: Ottawa International Animation Festival, the largest event of its kind in North America
When & where: Sept. 21 to 25. Screening venues include ByTowne Cinema, Arts Court, Rideau Centre cinemas and others
Tickets and passes: Single tickets are $12 general, $7 for seniors and children under 12. Passes, at assorted prices, are also available.
Information: www.animationfestival.ca; 613-232-8769
Watch a Clip: Watch a trailer for Chico and Rita, one of four feature films in competition this year.
OTTAWA — In case you didn’t hear about it, Bambi once met Godzilla.
The encounter didn’t go well for the little deer, as you’ll see if you attend “Ten Reasons to Love Animation,” one of the special presentations at this year’s Ottawa International Animation Festival.
Running Sept. 21 to 25, the festival is the largest event of its kind in North America, with more than 150 films from around the world presented on screens around town, chosen from more than 2,000 that were submitted.
Read more on the Ottawa Citizen website: Bambi, Godzilla and a few surreal spirits
Turning cynics into believers
Tzeporah Berman’s inspiring voyage of environmental activism
Michelle Lalonde, Postmedia News
THIS CRAZY TIME: LIVING OUR ENVIRONMENTAL CHALLENGE
By Tzeporah Berman with Mark Leiren-Young Knopf Canada, $32
To be frank, I was not hooked on Tzeporah Berman’s This Crazy Time from Chapter 1. Books about our sorry history of environmental foolishness tend to get me down. And why should I care about the story of one woman’s 20-year journey from a wide-eyed university student researching deforestation to her current high-profile job as the co-director for Greenpeace International’s climate and energy campaign?
There are thousands of Canadian environmentalists working on these issues, I thought, so what makes Berman so special?
But as Berman and her co-writer, humorist and film producer Mark Leiren-Young, began to weave Canada’s environmental history into Berman’s own story, my cynicism began to wane and the pages kept turning. Berman’s story is not only amusing and inspiring, it is the inside scoop on how the Canadian environmental movement dealt with its growing pains, slowly matured to middle age, and is now staring down its biggest challenge.
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