As a teenager in the 1920s, my grandmother Gladys played piano for silent films in the remote New Zealand town of Takaka. She still recalls a film which was shot nearby at Pohara beach. Although Glad has never seen the film, I found out later that it was the underwater spectacular Venus of the South Seas, starring Australian diver Annette Keller...

Anna and Michael are successful young filmmakers from Alberta, married in life and in art. Their latest project is a movie about Martin Frobisher, Elizabethan pirate and explorer who made three perilous journeys to the Arctic in the 1570s.  History says that Frobisher failed in his attempt to find the fabled Northwest Passage, a quick route thro...

Content warning: abuse, death, fire, violence

Fanny and Alexander is a grand opera in two acts, adapted from the film by Ingmar Bergman by Mikael Karlsson and Royce Vavrek, with support from the Bergman Estate and artistic consultation from Cinematograph AB (Ingmar Bergman Jr. and Claes du Rietz).

ACT 1

Christmas at the Ekdahls.  Helena...

Content warning: sex

Based on Carlos Reygada’s Acclaimed 2007 film Stellet Licht. Set within a Mennonite community in northern Mexico, the opera follows a pious husband and father, Johan, who’s strongly held spiritual obligation to his marriage, family, and community is put to the test when he falls in love with another woman from his faith.