Ken Woroner looks forward to sharing his love of film at the inaugural Unama’ki/Cape Breton Film Festival in September.
-by Beverley Phillips
What began as an offhand comment over lunch turned into the inaugural Unama’ki / Cape Breton Film Festival.
From September 25th to 27th, film lovers can enjoy the Unama’ki / Cape Breton Film Festival at the Inverness County Centre for the Arts (ICCA).
Festival organizer Ken Woroner has worked in the television and film industry for decades as a stills photographer. His photographs serve as promotional material for the show or film, and he has worked on productions such as Frankenstein, Priscilla, and Murdoch Mysteries.
The idea first arose over lunch with Bill Culp, film industry liaison for the Cape Breton Partnership. “At some point, I said it’d be cool if there was a Cape Breton film festival.” And he said, ‘Yeah, you should do that.” Woroner replied, “Yeah, maybe one day,” but didn’t really think it was a serious suggestion.
Fast forward one year and ICCA discovers that they lost funding in the provincial budget cuts and were looking for fundraising ideas. “The idea for a film series came up,” he said, “and it landed in my lap. From there, it grew into a film festival.”
“The genre of movies will be anything and everything,” he said. “But the unifying theme is that the movies are somehow connected to Cape Breton due to being shot here, about here, or have some kind of tangential connection.”
By that, he meant movies that have themes or settings Cape Bretoners can identify with, perhaps by having a Celtic flair, or a coastal community setting.
Woroner has lived in Cape Breton for seven years now and is still discovering what it means to be a Cape Bretoner. It’s the idea of place that draws him. “What is interesting to me,” he said, “is, what is Cape Breton? As somebody who only very recently moved to Cape Breton and yet drawn to this place, I’m looking to learn. Watching movies that have something to do with this place and watching older movies from this place helps answer that question.”
Woroner’s knowledge of such movies is vast. He has a long list that he would be interested in showing and is in the process of evaluating and choosing them. “I don’t want to just show movies,” he said. “I want to show movies I think are worth showing, and I think there’s a lot of them. There are some interesting movies over the years I think are worth revisiting.”
“I like being a tour guide,” he added. “And there are interesting movies that I’ve come across in the course of just my general looking for things that I would love to show to other people, and hopefully they would go, “Wow, that’s cool.”
For Woroner, sharing movies with others goes back before he was working in the movie industry. “I have had screenings over the years, where it’s just a gang of friends, and you get a movie. In Toronto, you used to be able to rent 16 millimetre projectors, with 16 millimetre films from a film library that was part of the Toronto Public Library. And that was something I used to do.”
And it’s that friends hanging out watching movies and discussing them is what he hopes to create with this festival. Plans aren’t firm yet, but he hopes there will be two screenings per day with associated events.
While he is leading the charge for the festival, Woroner is not a one-man show. His team has a wealth of knowledge and experience in the film and arts communities.
First on board with this idea was his wife, Academy Award–winning Film Production Designer Tamara Deverell. “Film,” she said, “has the power to connect people through stories, places, and shared experiences. Creating opportunities for audiences to engage with filmmakers and celebrate local talent is essential to building a vibrant cultural community. The Unama’ki/Cape Breton Film Festival is an exciting step forward for our region.”
Also encouraging the idea from the beginning was Bill Culp. Culp said, “This is an opportunity to celebrate exceptional filmmaking while investing in the future of arts, culture, tourism, and the creative economy in our communities.”
From there, they added: Amber Bernard, a Mi’kmaw filmmaker and journalist from We’koqma’q; Beth Ryan, a founding member of Cape Breton Film Inc.; PR and communications expert Carly Appleton; retired book editor and past board member of the Cabot Trail Writer’s Festival, Alicia Peres; and Nova Scotia–based film and television producer, Penny MacDonald.
As a pre-festival event, there will be a screening of Andy Hines’ Little Lorraine at Strathspey Place in Mabou on Thursday, July 30th. The movie has been a great success for Hines in his directorial debut feature. The film, inspired by a true story, of three miners from Little Lorraine who got caught up in an international drug smuggling ring.
All proceeds from ticket sales will support the festival in September. “Every ticket purchased helps build the foundation for a festival that we hope will become a signature annual cultural event for Unama’ki and Cape Breton,” said Culp.
And along with being a fundraiser, it also gives people on the west side of Cape Breton, who may not have made it to Sydney for its theatre run, a chance to see the movie on the big screen.
While everyone has gotten used to watching movies at home on TV, Woroner said, “Watching movies at home is fine, but there’s nothing to compare with the large screen experience – at least for me. The big sound, the big picture, the opportunity to collectively experience a show in a big dark room with a large group of people and talk about it afterwards beats Netflix on the couch every time.”
Tickets for Little Lorraine are $15 and are available on Eventbrite. For more information, and to keep up-to-date on the latest film festival news, visit their website at: unamakicapebretonfilmfestival.ca or follow them on Instagram or Facebook.