The Cinema Lounge series gives Canadian artists the opportunity to choose a Canadian film that has impacted them in their careers and to write and speak about its importance. This gives rise to a larger public debate about Canadian cinema.
Patricia Rozema has chosen one of Atom Egoyan’s seminal works, an adaptation of Russell Banks’ The Sweet Hereafter.
Dir. Atom Egoyan | 110 min. | 1997 | Canada
Starring Sarah Polley, Ian Holm, Tom McCamus
* Introduced by Patricia Rozema
FREE ADMISSION
Based on the novel by Russell Banks, The Sweet Hereafter recounts the story of a bus accident which ends in tragedy.
The story follows the families whose lives irrevocably change, and a big city lawyer who shows up in the community hoping to sign people up for a class action lawsuit. In the ensuing atmosphere of suspicion, guilt and doubt, a surviving teenager manages to regain her strength and dignity and by telling a lie reunites the community and drives the lawyer from town.
Atom Egoyan’s excellent adaptation of Bank’s complex tale of guilt and redemption is told in a Rashomon-like fashion.
BACKGROUND: Patricia Rozema
One of Canada’s most accomplished women directors, Patricia Rozema was raised in Sarnia, Ontario, by Dutch Calvinist parents and graduated from Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, with a bachelor's degree in philosophy and English. She initially pursued a career in journalism and became an associate producer with the CBC's nightly news program The Journal. In 1985, after a five-week course in film production, Rozema started her film career with the short film Passion: A Letter in 16 mm, which won second prize at the Chicago International Film Festival.
While she was writing and preparing her first feature, I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing, she worked as an assistant director on Cronenberg's The Fly and on TV dramas, such as Night Heat and The Campbells. I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing, a serious comedy about a socially inept Girl Friday, completed for only $350,000, made one of the most outstanding feature debuts in the history of Canadian cinema. And Rozema, at 28, became one of Canada's first female filmmakers to win serious international acclaim.
At the 1987 Cannes Film Festival, I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing won the coveted Prix de la jeunesse. She went on to create a larger body of feature and television work including White Room, When Night is Falling and Mansfield Park. More recently she directed Kit Kittredge: An American Girl and was nominated for an Emmy Award for her writing on the TV movie Grey Gardens, which won an Emmy.