65 Roses, a Canadian/BC production, captured three awards. Women in Film and Television Vancouver presented its Merit Award to 65’s Nimisha Mukerji, co-director, producer, editor, and Gillian Lowry, co-producer. Mukerji with her co-director, Philip Lyall, won the NFB’s Most Popular Canadian Documentary Award and the VIFF’s Most Popular Canadian Film Award.

Nearly half of this year’s feature and mid-length films were non-fiction, and audiences chose Peter McCormack’s Facing Ali (BC/Canada) for the second annual Documentary Audience Award for most popular non-fiction. The festival buzz and the line-ups told us something was up for this amazing piece.

B.C. films in VIFF2009 included 3 exclusive BC features: The Red Rooster, Cole, Excited. The gala opener A Shine of Rainbows is a Canada/Ireland production produced in part by Vancouver’s own Tina Pehme. Along with 65 Roses, 4 other BC docs’s added more diversion and interest to this field: Petals, Certainty, Facing Ali and Finding Farley.  Farley, like Facing Ali, generated lots of buzz and long line-ups.

The VIFF is more than an awards program or a count of how many films this province or Canada had. There were cumulative affects when I grouped some Canadian films together. And, there were universal, borderless themes that resonated from other Canadian films.

I noticed the Canadian paradox of diversity and unity in two coast-to-coast films. Carl Bessai`s Cole captures British Columbia’s physical beauty in rural Lytton, adding the sublime elegance of Vancouver surrounded by mountains and ocean. Newfoundland’s Sherry White in her first feature, Crackie, shows an isolated, cruel town on the ‘Rock.’ The physical surroundings so different, yet we watch lead characters in both films trying to break the chains of their impoverished town and circumstances they call home.

Vancouver’s Bruce Sweeney’s Excited and William Sonoda’s Puck Hogs from Ontario use the sports most associated with their provinces, golf and hockey, for the fun of their movie. The same diversity/unity paradox is the regionalism of Canada, the reality of Canada, the facts of geography.

Black Field, Dani Esterhazy’s first feature, vividly shows the diverse, multicultural experience of Manitoba in 1875. This is a back bone of Canada’s development we need to see more of especially as the world shrinks and boundaries disappear.

Rosie Dransfeld’s cinema ferrite documentary, Broke, takes us to downtown, boulevard of broken dreams, Edmonton. Set up in a pawn shop, she documents stories of too many who are marginalized, too many with no voices, without the opportunity to feel alive and human. Homelessness is a global concern.

In At Home By Myself...With You, Director Kris Booth and Producer Bryce Mitchell have great fun with the sociology of fear. This film and more serious films such as Manitoban Sean Garrity’s Zooey and Adam deal with real life, similar urban problems and dilemmas. These studies are without borders.

Leslie, My Name is Evil, is BC’s Reginald Harkema’s study of the Manson cult, and times. A clever blend of story, great acting, editing, music, this feature takes us well beyond our borders to study another time and place, asking questions we still need to make choices about. Cooking with Stella, Dilip Mehta’s feature debut also takes us beyond our borders, beyond ourselves while picking at colonialism, class relationships, parenting, and international politics.

VIFF2009 brought the world’s richness to us while celebrating, honouring, and offering entertaining, thoughtful Canadian responses for global, universal, or national themes.

The one final take away I would add is the state of the Canadian filmmaking industry. It is in great shape because of its own, regional diversity. I spoke with filmmakers from across this country. They understand the exigencies of filmmaking in Canada, the turmoil of indie filmmaking. They turn their backs on this to follow their dreams, passions, and ideas. It is inspiring to be around all these Canadians who want to, and will, make great films.

Glen Russell is a freelance writer and West Coast Contributing Editor at Northernstars.ca