Festival wraps: the Atlantic Film Festival (09/15-23/00).

The 20th Atlantic Film Festival (AFF) managed to uncover a few trends amid the many screenings, workshops and parties. The three big winners were all intimate, low-budget works that point to a smaller-scale, much more risky approach to both dramatic and documentary filmmaking. Two features dominated the proceedings: Andrea Dorfman's Parsley Days, which picked up the Best Actress prize (Megan Dulop) and the cinematography award, and Barry Newhooks' Newfoundland digital video (DV) flick, The Bingo Robbers, which copped writing, acting and soundtrack awards, Both were made on minuscule budgets with little agency or distributor interference in the scripts or direction. Whether either film goes on beyond the festival is moot. It seems that local Atlanti writer/directors have decided not to wait for the lumbering funding process to tell them whether they can make films anymore. This defiant do-it-yourself attitude popped up throughout the AFF program. DV features from Vancouver, Marc Retaileau's Noroc, and Scotland, May Miles Thomas's One Life Stand, show that this new wave is not an isolated phenomenon. And while many established producers were still waiting for Heritage Minister Copps to refill the feature-film funding tank (she finally announced more money for the fund at the Vancouver International Film Festival), it would seem that the DV future may have already arrived.

Meanwhile, Halifax seems to have become the festival of second choice. The relaxed atmosphere and still-human scale attracted the top echelon of Canadian directors, including Francois Girard, Bruce McDonald, Don McKellar and Denys Arcand, whether they had new films in competition or not. And the slow trickle of Toronto producers -- including Cheryl Wagner, Camelia Frieberg and Wayne Grigsby -- is finally beginning to make a difference to the Atlantic scene. Most have brought new work with them, and Grigsby, in particular, seems most adept at getting his projects to full funding despite the lineup at the federal-funding trough. Perhaps the most tantalizing film not shown at the festival was the Grigsby-produced, David Wellington-directed MOW, Blessed Stranger: After Flight 111. Based on the events surrounding the aftermath of the crash of Swissair Flight 111, it's a rare, powerful and effective "torn-from-the-headlines" work that missed the festival deadline by a single day. Sparked by a terrific lead performance by Kate Nelligan, the film would have made a singular impact in a public screening. [Ed's note: Blessed Stranger was broadcast on CTV in October.]

The most honoured documentary at the festival was Matthew Welsh's astonishing examination of two brain-damage victims attempting to recover their basic motor skills. Entitled Breakaway, the film scored Best Atlantic Documentary and won Welsh a Most Promising Director statuette. Intimate and very moving, it's the kind of out-of-nowhere film that almost perfectly makes use of the festival's ability to build word of mouth and a larger market for what is essentially a small but visionary piece of factual filmmaking. As the festival closed, word circulated yet again that the monstrous shoot for The Shipping News was headed back to Nova Scotia with Kevin Spacey still in the lead and Lasse Hallestrom as director.