With more films being made in Maple Ridge, the city decided to celebrate BC talent by hosting its first-ever film festival.
The ACT Arts Centre and The Ridge Film Studios have teamed up with the support of the City of Maple Ridge to host the inaugural Maple Ridge Festival of BC Film, which will be taking place Friday, Mar. 17, to Sunday, Mar. 19, at the ACT Arts Centre in Maple Ridge in order to highlight films made in our own backyard.
Executive and artistic director Lindy Sisson said in a press release that teaming up to host this festival made sense, given the increasing amount of films being made in the city. “More and more films are being shot in the Maple Ridge area, and with The Ridge Film Studios a block away from The ACT, it felt quite logical to join forces and champion BC filmmakers,” she said.
“Just as The ACT Arts Centre’s ACT Presents performance series is designed to introduce new Canadian and BC talent to our audiences, the Festival of BC Film has been created to bring more attention and access to the work of BC filmmakers,” Sisson said.
The festivities will kick off with an opening reception on Friday at 6:30pm. A total of six shorts and six feature films will be played over the course of three days.
The six films being featured are Numb, Anxious Oswald Greene, Fractured Land, Counter Act, Black Fly, and The Timekeeper.
The Maple Ridge Times reports that 82 productions and 50 “Movies of the Week” were shot in Maple Ridge in 2015. Meanwhile, News 1130 reports that there were 287 domestic and international productions shot in BC for the fiscal 2014/2015 year, estimated to have contributed $2 billion dollars to the provincial economy in production spending.
- For more information on the festival head to theactmapleridge.org
