The Martlet

The Victoria Film Festival (VFF) is upon us once again, running from Feb. 3 to 12. More than 70 feature-length films from around the world will be screened, as well as almost as many shorts. As a Canadian film aficionado, I was delighted to notice that Canadian films are at a premium this year, accounting for a whopping 25 of the feature-length productions.

Amongst the Canadian offerings is one particularly touching short film entitled Joanna Makes a Friend. Joanna follows the brilliant scheming of a lonely nine-year-old girl (played by Vancouver actress Dalila Bela) who takes her ex-VCR-repairman father’s advice quite literally when he instructs her to “go make a friend.” Using his discarded repair parts, she builds a robot that might share her somewhat antisocial propensity for H.P. Lovecraft novels.

In the film, the robot affords Joanna both companionship and guidance, eventually assisting her in making a real friend with a little hard love. The movie runs only 15 minutes but is sure to be a credit to independent producers Talitha Cummins, Robin Chan and Kate Green.

Director Jeremy Lutter and writer Ben Rollo were high-school pals who studied in UVic’s writing department together. Joanna was originally published as a story in the undergraduate literary journal edited by the Writing Students’ Union called This Side of West. Lutter read his friend’s tale for the first time at the journal’s launch and immediately solicited him to write a screenplay treatment. After being short-listed to present the pitch at last year’s Whistler Film Festival, they were astonished to discover that they had won the Motion Picture Production Industry Association (MPPIA) award, worth some $15 000 in private and public funding, to make the film.

Lutter says that they just met the completion deadline in time to premiere the film at this year’s Whistler Film Festival only a few months ago. The project required the building of a robot for which they solicited advice from the UBC robotics club and the expertise of robot designers Paxton Downard and Derek Lewis. The aesthetic of the robot is clearly influenced by the robot in the 1986 Ally Sheedy comedy Short Circuit and the more recent Disney feature Wall-E. However, Lutter warns that the film has its darker moments and describes it as “Short Circuit meets Edward Scissorhands.”

Some of the other VFF Canadian films include the introspective, nostalgic drama Donovan’s Echo starring Danny Glover, as well as the personal ghost journey Keyhole, starring Jason Patric (whom you may remember as Michael in the benign 1987 vampire comedy The Lost Boys). And there is just so much more. For film listings and ticket information, visit victoriafilmfestival.com.