Dreamspeakers
It’s back! Edmonton’s aboriginal film and arts festival, Dreamspeakers, has returned to the downtown for 2011.
We like mentioning Dreamspeakers because Edmonton’s got a lot of festivals (but still no cheese-rolling festival) and smaller ones ones can sometimes be overshadowed.
There will be movie screenings, today through Saturday, at Metro Cinema (in the Citadel Theatre). But there’s also a Walk of Honour luncheon and gala, Youth Day events, and the opening reception (happening in just a few minutes at the Yellowhead Brewery). Here’s the full schedule.
Friday is Youth Day, which includes an actor workshop with one of the stars of Twilight (Tyson Houseman went to school here in Edmonton) and emerging filmmakers’ video contest.
The Walk of Honour, by the way, is in Beaver Hills House Park (Jasper Avenue at 105 Street) so you, like we had, might have passed by it a bunch of times without knowing.
As for movies, there are a half-dozen or more feature-length films and plenty of shorts.
Festival of Ideas
The University of Alberta is hosting an interesting festival.
It’s not about cowboys, or plays, or music, no, it’s a festival for ideas!
Running through the weekend (when the U of A’s newspaper, The Gateway, celebrates 100 years) you’ve got chances to hear from great thinkers on interesting topics. It’s all under the theme “Truth and Lies: Trust Me.”
And it closes out Sunday with David Sedaris. I am genuinely going to slow-clap this.
So, if you’re up for some intellectual festivaling, this will be the event for you.
Heart in the Heart
Look at all the smiling faces!
This weekend was my first trip to the Heart of the City festival. A trip I endorse you making in future years.
I knew what Heart of the City was, but I just hadn’t ventured to Giovanni Caboto Park (in Little Italy) to take it in.
No, I wasn’t scared of the neighbourhood. Heck, I wandered around Norwood and Sprucewood for about an hour, Saturday. (More on that at a future time.)
So I didn’t exactly know what to expect when I showed up.
What I got was lots and lots and lots of local music. This was the first year the festival was held over two days, so they lined up something in the neighbourhood of 150 bands and artists to play. With 20-minute sets you didn’t have to stick around long to hear plenty of Edmonton’s best music.
How do I know it was Edmonton’s best?
Morgan Smith, over at iNews880, writes a blog about volunteers, non-profits and similar stuff. She even profiled my day job in one of her first “Have time will travel” looks at where people can volunteer in Edmonton. She’s got a great look at the volunteer aspect to Heart of the City.
And she’s got that little bit about the festival that blew my mind. Morgan writes that performers and artists all have to live in the heart of the city:
East of 124 Street
West of Wayne Gretzky Drive
South of Yellowhead Trail
North of the river valley
That makes the Heart of the City festival all about people living and creating in the heart of our city. Even I couldn’t play the stage. Unless I had a band member living in that central area. And if I had any musical talent.
Like any good festival there was lots of room to enjoy the sunny weather. They also had hula hoops all over the place if you wanted to give them a whirl. Plus, food carts and snacks!
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This was earlier, before the "Hula Hoop Kid" got to cleaning up.
Quick side story on the hula hoops:
While meeting up with some friends we were over by the art tents and saw a little guy, between three and five-years-old, collecting the hula hoops. He was dragging those giant hoops one at a time, then dragging the whole mess of them to another location. He had gathered up most of the hoops in site and wandered back our way to get more.
People, spotting the hoops, began to disrupt his pile and play with them.
Well, he gathered up a new hoop, turned around and was floored.
How could those jerks be messing with the hula hoops he had so carefully put away?!
He ran to tell his mom about it. And, thankfully, as he was pointing at those hula hooping people, they finished and carefully put them all back.
Our little buddy then ran over and jumped on the hoops, keeping anyone else from using them.
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Anyway, I was impressed by the Heart of the City, and had a really good time. (The weather sure didn’t hurt.)
Even if you don’t like hanging around some of Edmonton’s central neighbourhoods, make sure you take the time to venture out to next year’s Heart of the City. It may even be enough to get you to check out Edmonton’s heart-neighbourhoods after the festival is done.
Two performers, one finished and one getting ready, as a volunteer thanks and introduces.
Book ‘em
This is your brain on books. (Image: LitFest)
Do you like reading? Maybe you like writing. Perhaps you just want to be close to people who are in the glamorous literary world?
Here’s your answer to all of the above: LitFest, the Edmonton International Literary Festival.
Here’s what the folks at LitFest have to say about LitFest:
LitFest is Canada’s only Creative Non-fiction Festival. It brings together some of the world’s best selling, award winning and emerging authors, writers, filmmakers and artists with audiences at readings, panel discussions and presentations.
Creative non-fiction allows a writer to employ the diligence of a reporter, the shifting voices and viewpoints of a novelist, the refined work play of a poet and the analytical modes of the essayist and a journalist.
LitFest: Edmonton International Literary Festival was created in 2002 as the successor of the Alberta Book Fair, an annual trade fair for almost 20 years.
Now, doesn’t that sound like some good, bookish, times?
Things really get rolling October 21, but there are a few events between now and then (including tonight, hence the post right here). To find out when and where the big stuff is happening, check the events page.
Bottoms up, folks.
Uh, like I need to say any more.
Tickets are $15 in advance, or $20 at the door, venue is Mayfield Inn & Suites (16615 109 Ave).
