For the past number of years the Creston and District Public Library has been proud to offer free public screenings of current, thought-provoking documentary films. The tradition continues in a new and exciting format as the library has recently joined the National Film Board of Canada’s Film Club. This film club offers monthly screenings of top-notch documentary films produced, co-produced or distributed by the NFB.
This fall, the library is pleased to present two feature documentary films: Pink Ribbons, Inc. (Nov. 29) and Surviving Progress (Dec. 13).
Pink Ribbons, Inc., created by filmmaker Léa Pool, examines the breast cancer charity “industry”. Breast cancer, states the filmmaker, has become the poster child of cause-related marketing campaigns. Each year, countless women and men walk, bike, climb and shop for the cure. Millions of dollars are raised in the name of breast cancer, but where does this money go and what does it actually achieve? Pink Ribbons, Inc. shows how the devastating reality of breast cancer has become overshadowed by a shiny, pink story of success.
Pink Ribbons, Inc. will be preceded by an animated short film, Missed Connection, the story of a delusional young man who spots the girl of his dreams in his favourite café and weaves a self-indulgent fantasy story of their imagined life together. Missed Connection examines our universal desire to connect in a world of beautiful strangers.
On Dec. 13, see Surviving Progress, a film inspired by Ronald Wright’s bestselling book, A Short History of Progress. Surviving Progress presents the story of human advancement as awe-inspiring and double-edged. It reveals the grave risk of running the 21st century’s software — our know-how — on the ancient hardware of our primate brain which hasn’t been upgraded in 50,000 years. With rich imagery filmmakers Mathieu Roy and Harold Crooks launch us on journey to contemplate our evolution from cave-dwellers to space explorers. Surviving Progress is a cinematic requiem to progress-as-usual. Throughout human history, what seemed like progress often backfired. Some of the world’s foremost thinkers, activists, bankers and scientists challenge us to overcome progress traps, which destroyed past civilizations and lie treacherously embedded in our own.
Surviving Progress will be preceded by the animated short Drux Flux, which addresses the ideological excesses of the 20th century. Drux Flux is a frenetic animation inspired by Herbert Marcuse’s book One-Dimensional Man.
Admission is free to all films, which are shown at the Creston and District Public Library. Pink Ribbons, Inc. and Missed Connection start at 7 p.m. Nov. 29, with a running time of 100 minutes. See Surviving Progress and Drux Flux start at 7 p.m. Dec. 13 with a running time of 92 minutes. For more information, call the library at 250-428-4141.
—CRESTON AND DISTRICT PUBLIC LIBRARY