From April 16 to 17, Sudbury, Ont. will once again host the annual REAL Life Film Festival, a pro-life and pro-family event. The theme of this year’s festival is “Life and justice.” Lina Madore, the festival project manager, told The Interim, it is “a Christian film festival promoting the true message about life and the family values of life.”
About three to four years ago, Madore’s group, The Water Gate charity, was thinking of different ways to evangelize. They came up with the idea of a Christian film festival and invited anyone interested to form the organizing committee of the festival. “We weren’t prepared for the amount of work … It was almost a shock to us,” said Madore. Yet because of the success of the first REAL Life Film Festival, they decided to make it an annual event. They began to build a group of representatives who will advertise the festival at different churches and parishes, as they discovered that “the best publicity is (by) word of mouth.”
The festival is intended for everyone and geared especially towards families. Movies are suitable for general viewing, though when a movie is intended for more mature viewers is playing in one of the two theatres in the venue, kids will be able to go to the other theatre to watch a movie geared towards children. “(We will) serve food on the premises so families can make it a family date,” said Madore.
The organizers hope that the audience will learn “what the Word of God has to say about these issues” and how a Christian should respond to them. Madore also emphasized that, instead of giving the usual negative message transmitted by many movies and forms of media, the festival promotes a message of hope. “People will come out of there filled with hope having viewed films that have developed strong family values.”
The festival opens on Friday, April 16 at 6:30 p.m. with a Gala event featuring The Boy in Striped Pyjamas and the short film Butterfly Circus, both winners of several international awards and accolades. There will also be a film in the afternoon, free of charge, for high school students. The movies that will be aired are Big Ticket and The Boy in Striped Pyjamas.
The festival will continue from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Saturday. The movies screened will be Butterfly Circus, Big Ticket, End of the Spear, Expelled, The Widow’s Might, The Widow and the Judge, Maafa 21, Mouse, Lines that Divide, Demographic Bomb, Saving God, Dark Valley, Sarah’s Choice, Dark Radius, The Pistol, Death as a Salesman, The Biology of Prenatal Development, Turning the Tide, Children of the Bates, Up, The Cost of Abortion, Veggie Tales, and the winner of the Salt n’ Light Youtube film contest. The movies will be playing at the Glad Tidings Auditorium at 1101 Regent Street in Sudbury.
Interim coverage of the 2009 REAL Life Film Festival is available here.
