True/False Films

Secret Screening Blue

In person: animator Andy Smetanka.

An unlikely diary of the artist as a young Canadian. A city huddled on the windswept northern steppes, its history a tangled mix of the bizarre and the quotidian. A free mix of half-truth with complete fabrication that in the process creates something imbued with ice-clear honesty. It's all the work of one of Canada's most beloved and idiosyncratic filmmakers, responsible for highly stylized flights of retro-fantasy. But this documentary, his first, gives both historic and emotional grounding to his vision and, in doing so, brings new focus to the art and life of this exceptionally talented director. (DW)