SOLD OUT
The Comox Valley Art Gallery & Toronto International Film Fest-Film Circuit presents two Film Series each year. For more information on our TIFF Film Circuit, please visit our Film Series page. The first film in our 2017 Fall Series is:
September 17 – MAUDIE
Director: Aisling Walsh
Cast: Sally Hawkins, Ethan Hawke
Year: 2016
Runtime: 115 mins
Country: Canada / Ireland
Language: English
Maud Lewis is among the most inspiring figures in Canadian art. Afflicted with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, she spent her early life dismissed for what was presumed to be her limited ability. But Lewis’ colourful paintings, made on surfaces ranging from beaverboard to cookie sheets, established her as one of our country’s premier folk artists. Starring Sally Hawkins and Ethan Hawke (also appearing at the Festival in The Magnificent Seven), this moving film explores Lewis’ life in all its heartbreak and triumph.
Marshalltown, Nova Scotia, 1937. Maud Dowley (Hawkins) is stuck living with her unsympathetic aunt. Desperate to break away, she responds to a local fish peddler’s call for a housekeeper. Everett Lewis (Hawke) is disagreeable and initially cruel to Maudie, but the two quickly acknowledge that each is in their own way a social outcast. They need and understand each other. Within weeks, they marry.
One day a summer resident comes calling. She’s a New Yorker, wears alluring clothing and talks like Katharine Hepburn. She sees something in Maudie’s paintings and commissions one. Suddenly Maudie’s pastime is recognized as having real value. People come from far and wide. Eventually her work will hang in the White House.
Cinematographer Guy Godfree fills Maudie with majestic images of maritime landscape and light, while director Aisling Walsh focuses on character, drawing performances of emotional complexity and great physical detail from her leads.
Though set in the past, Maudie speaks to the present in many ways — this is, after all, a tale of a woman asserting herself as a generator of both art and commerce. But it is also a story of the power of creativity to transform a life and touch the soul.
Synopsis credit: MICHÈLE MAHEUX, www.tiff.net
Tickets & Passes will be available at the CVAG Gift Shop
580 Duncan Ave, Downtown Courtenay (6th and Duncan)
and at the door if available (Door: cash only , exact change appreciated)
– Tickets are $12 for CVAG Members, $13 for Non-Members
– Fall Season Passes are $55 for CVAG Members, $60 for Non-Members ( includes 5 films)
– A limited amount of passes are available for each series
– To purchase tickets/passes over the phone call CVAG at (250) 338-6211
All screenings are at the Rialto Theatre at 5pm
2665 Cliffe Ave, Courtenay (at Driftwood Mall)