- This event has passed.
Kelownafornia: Moviescapes of the BC Interior
October 6 at 7:30 pm - 9:30 pm
For over a century, filmmakers have looked at the Okanagan and seen somewhere else. This fall, we bring home nine movies—indie, Canadian and big-budget Hollywood—to celebrate the landscape hiding in plain sight behind every place it’s ever played.
Come see the Okanagan Valley through the films that turned it into somewhere else.
This festival is presented as part of The Kelownafornia Project, centred around researching how people in the Okanagan perceive their natural environment through various themes and aspects.
The Kelownafornia Project is a multi-disciplinary project based at UBC Okanagan and is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). Dr. Greg Garrard is the Principal Investigator on the project.
Films will be shown at the Mary Irwin Theatre in the Rotary Centre for the Arts (RCA), starting at 7 pm. View the full schedule and film details below.
Tuesday, September 15
My American Cousin (1985, PG)
A dull 1959 summer on a Penticton cherry farm explodes into teenage rapture when 12-year-old Sandy’s American cousin roars into the orchard in a red Cadillac.
Monday September 21
Fido (2006, R)
In a candy-colored 1950s suburb where the dead work as household servants, a lonely boy’s bond with the family zombie puts a deranged spin on Norman Rockwell.
Monday, September 28
NFB Nite (Unrated)
An evening of National Film Board shorts turns the projector on the valley itself. Decades of Okanagan life captured by the country’s own documentary filmmakers.
Tuesday October 6
Recon (2020, 14A)
American soldiers push deeper into WWII Italy (AKA Enderby), led by an old Italian man they’ve been ordered to execute.
Introduction by Gord Wiley, location scout for Okanagan Film Commission.
Tuesday October 13
Tomato Red: Blood Money (2017, Unrated)
A drifter fresh out of prison breaks into the wrong house and falls hard for the scheming, magnetic siblings inside, while the BC Interior quietly plays the Missouri Ozarks.
Introduction by Juanita Wilson, director of the movie (via zoom)
Tuesday, November 3
Light of My Life (2019, R)
Casey Affleck disguises his young daughter as a boy on a trek through a post-apocalyptic wilderness where being female can be lethal.
Introduction by Dr. Greg Garrard, talking about apocalyptic movies.
Monday, November 9
Gunless (2010, PG)
A hardened American gunslinger stumbles into a tiny Canadian town so relentlessly, maddeningly polite it slowly disarms him — literally.
Introduction by Dr. Dan Keyes, talking about the film industry in the Okanagan and beyond
Thursday, November 19
Bones of Crows (2022, 14A)
A sweeping multigenerational saga follows a Cree family from the residential school era into the present, turning survival itself into an act of defiance.
