Based on the popularity of its summer film series, the Yorkton Film Festival is bringing back Open Cinema for the fall/winter.
The festival will open up its vault and trot out some of the best in Canadian film Tuesday evenings starting October 7. The screenings are free and open to all.
"Our last summer program was very successful," said Scott Stelmaschuk, festival coordinator. "We had great turnouts and there seems to be a demand for it so we thought we might as well keep doing it."
For the October screening the festival is showcasing a number of classic vignettes from the National Film Board (NFB) including Log Driver's Waltz, Duel-Duo, Blackfly, The Cat Came Back, The Sweater, Cactus Swing and to cap the evening the Academy Award-nominated The Painted Door based on the Sinclair Ross short story.
These animated shorts illustrate the NFB's early and ongoing innovation and are just plain fun.
In honour of Remembrance Day, Open Cinema presents two World War I documentaries, Days in Hades: The Battle of Ypres, and The Trenches on November 4.
December 2, the festival will re-screen its 2014 Best of the Fest winner Jingle Bell Rocks. The documentary, by self-professed Christmas music junkie Mitchell Kezin, is a quest to uncover the stories behind 12 of his favourite alternative Christmas tunes.
Open Cinema takes a break in January, then returns February 3 with Gordon Pinsent: Still Rowdy after all These Years, a bio of the legendary Canadian actor.
Finally, the series wraps March 3 with The Motherload. This CBC Doc Zone episode takes an in depth look at the subject of working mothers, what has changed, what has not and the ongoing struggle of parents to achieve work-life balance.
All the screenings run at 7 p.m. at the Yorkton Public Library and will be followed by film talk.
At the first event the coordinators will hand out Open Cinema passports and anyone who has their passport stamped at all five of the screenings will be entered into a draw to win tickets to the festival's popular Lobsterfest event, which is held on the Friday night of the festival.
The 2015 Yorkton Film Festival runs May 21 to 24.
