GIFT Film Screening

Join us for a screening of the breathtaking and richly cinematic documentary THE GIFT, followed by a Q&A session with award winning Filmmaker Robin McKenna, who will be joining us LIVE via Skype to answer your questions.

“Robin McKenna’s elliptical, poetic, and visually arresting “Gift” examines the radical concept that creativity is not a commodity to be sold but a blessing to be shared.”
-Peter Keogh, The Boston Globe

WATCH THE TRAILER:

GIFT-Trailer from Gaudete Films on Vimeo.

EVENT DETAILS:

Doors: 6:30pm
Film: 7pm-8:30pm
Q&A w Director: 8:30-9:00pm
Price: Pay What Feels Good
Tickets available at the door.

ABOUT THE GIFT

Inspired by Lewis Hyde’s beloved classic The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World, GIFT is a richly cinematic film, interweaving character-driven stories. On North America’s Pacific Northwest Coast, a young Indigenous man undertakes the elaborate preparations for a potlatch—to make a name for himself by giving everything away. In Rome, Italy, a factory occupied by migrant families is transformed into a living museum, protected by a “barricade of art”: a model of resistance, and an invaluable gift. In the pirate utopia of Burning Man, a mutant bumblebee art car distributes honey in a post-­apocalyptic desert landscape. Meanwhile, in Auckland, New Zealand, artist Mingwei Lee prepares to launch Sonic Blossom – a “transformative gift” of song. GIFT is a tribute to something that can’t be measured or counted, bought or sold. Exploring the parallels between artists’ work and a gift economy, it’s a reflection on the creative process, the reasons we “labour in service of our gifts”, and a celebration of the imagination.

ABOUT ROBIN MCKENNA

Robin McKenna began making films with La Course destination monde. Her film, The Great War Experience won Yorkton Film Festival’s Founders’ Award in 2007. Her cinematography credits include City of Borders (Berlinale, HotDocs 2008) and The Take with Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis (AFI Best Documentary, 2004). She is an alumnus of Hot Docs Doc Lab, and has been a filmmaker-mentor with Wapikoni Mobile. GIFT is Robin’s first feature documentary. Currently, she is direction a short film with the National Film Board for the Governor General’s Award for the Performing Arts and finishing Thanadoula, a short documentary fairytale about a girl’s search for her older sister and the “crow magic” connecting them. She is a producer/co-director of Medicine, a feature documentary in post-production about ayahuasca, medicine and healing.

PRAISE FOR THE GIFT!

“Thank you for this magisterial film, subtle as it is on the revolutionary nature of art and the power forged when we honor our gifts and give them away. A dream, a meditation, a call to action.
-Terry Tempest Williams, author & environmentalist

“At a time when art is relentlessly commercialized and commodified, Robin McKenna’s “Gift” provides a gentle and welcome reminder of other values.”
-A.O. Scott, The New York Times

“A beautiful, moving, and thought-provoking reflection on the creative process and the things that make us human.”
-Jonathan Lethem, novelist

“GIFT presents us with a rare opportunity to escape the relentless logic of the market and to reclaim a little bit of our human freedom.”
-Le Devoir

“GIFT is a poetic outlook on gift economies through art and cultural practices. It follows four storylines linked by creativity, generosity, resistance and defiance.”
-Phi Centre

“As we witnessed the transformative power of this gift, our eyes filled with tears. This kind of art cannot be measured or counted; it is priceless. It travels from heart to heart and keeps on moving.”
-Spirituality and Practice