If you attended the Fernie Mountain Film Festival at the end of February, you will know that Fernie can definitely put on a show when it comes to film. No exception to this rule is the Reel Canadian Film Festival, March 26-28. The festival is a natural progression of the popular Indie Films Fernie monthly screenings which has sold out both of its winter events so far this year. The Reel Canadian Film Festival celebrates excellence within the Canadian Film-making industry and showcases emerging talent and internationally acclaimed features. The inaugural event in 2009 left the committee overwhelmed with the amazing response from the community and buzzing with anticipation at producing the 2010 festival.

Meryl Streep has had a long and distinguished career in film. From playing a holocaust survivor in Sophie’s Choice to playing Julia Child in Julie and Julia, she has displayed a remarkable versatility that can be matched by few other actresses in Hollywood. She has played in great romances like Bridges of Madison County (opposite Clint Eastwood); and acted in powerful dramas like The Hours. It is quite odd, then, that such a famous and talented actor should have chosen a role in a film like It’s Complicated.

Every band remembers their first gig. Most bands park their van in a dingy back alley, unload their instruments through the back door of a local bar, do a sound check, and nervously get through a well rehearsed set for very little money. For our first gig, we unloaded our instruments onto a chairlift and played 6,316 feet above sea level. It was at the top of Fernie Alpine Resort on the outside deck of the Lost Boys Café playing for skiers on their lunch break. There was no sound guy, a blizzard blew in halfway through our set, we played for free sandwiches, and we were stoked. I remember a friend telling me that he could hear my banjo all the way out in Cedar bowl that day. If someone told us then that less than a year later we would be playing on a giant stage at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, we probably would have laughed….or fainted.

Like a lot of great ideas, the Fernie Mountain Film Festival was conceived on a skiing trip and born just four months later after an intensive planning process. Four years on, Brian Bell is blown away by the support and interest he’s seen in the festival. He says that selecting the films is still a lot of fun and the possibilities are endless.

In 1993 Hollywood produced the movie Philadelphia. It was a film about Andrew Beckett (Tom Hanks), a gay lawyer at a prestigious law firm, who was wrongfully dismissed because he has AIDS. The story follows his journey and that of his homophobic lawyer (Denzel Washington) as they struggle against Beckett’s former employers for compensation. The movie was generally considered excellent. In my opinion, however, it had several flaws. Philadelphia was a movie about gays that had almost no gay content.

Christina Penner’s Widows of Hamilton House is both a postmodern ghost story and a postmodern romance. Expect nothing typical. Penner’s beautifully rendered novel leads readers to re-examine their most staid notions of love, family, science, and spirituality. In fact, Widows of Hamilton House challenges our confidence in language itself. In Christina Penner, we find a writer who doesn’t trust words.

When I asked people this question their answer was often “no”. Even people who have lived in Fernie their whole lives. Outside of Fernie, people had never even heard of the Flathead.

You walk into a bar on a cold winter’s night and its warmth greets you. Some folks at the back are laughing and talking, but the ones closer to the stage are quiet. You notice the band on stage and immediately recognize something familiar. When the singer’s closed eyes open and alight on you, the moment lasts, like she is singing to you, singing the words right out of you.

I buy books for Christmas presents. Always and for everybody. Whenever possible, I stick to Canadian books. For the price of a decent bottle of wine, a book gives the recipient an art object, hours of entertainment, inspiration, a space for productive introspection, a cast of imaginary friends, and an excuse to spend the day curled up by the fire.

We’ve all heard the cries that the music industry is dying, but the cries are more bombastic than anything. Music is older than writing and older than words, and it’s impossible to imagine a world without it. A good band or DJ sets the mood, whether it’s wafting out of a home stereo or blaring out of the bar’s double-stacks.