This Is Not a Movie (Courtesy of the Reel Shorts Film Festival)

By Emily Keller

reel shorts

Reel Shorts Film Festival to host Virtual Cinema

May 9, 2020 | 7:00 AM

The Reel Shorts Film Festival, that was supposed to open on May 5, has been postponed this year until 2021, but they will be running a Virtual Cinema instead.

Organizers have partnered with Toronto-based distributor Blue Ice Docs to have documentaries available on-demand.

Terry Scerbak, Director of the Reel Shorts Film Festival, says the documentaries are ones that were scheduled to have theatrical releases.

“Now they never would have come to Grande Prairie anyways, they would have been in the major cities, so, it was a great opportunity for us to not only get involved, but for our audience members to see them in first release, so to speak.”

The two movies they started with were The Booksellers, a documentary about the rare book world in New York City, and This Is Not a Movie, a documentary about Canadian foreign correspondent Robert Fisk.

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They will also have two documentaries about ballet available, including Beyond Moving and Ballet Now.

Scerbak says the cost for each film for on-demand is $9.99, and half of the money raised goes back to the Reel Shorts Film Festival. The films are then available for five days after to watch.

She says that the films are also being presented by local businesses.

“We’re also using it as an opportunity to kind of put a spotlight on local businesses or non-profits that have supported us in the past and we’ve partnered with, and now we’re just using this opportunity to also focus on them.”

This Is Not a Movie is presented by CW Xteriors, The Booksellers is presented by the Grant Berg Gallery, PRIMAA is presenting Beyond Moving and Ballet Now is presented by Beauchamp Photography.

Trailers for the movies, and information on accessing the films, can be found online at the Reel Shorts Film Festival website.

Scerbak adds that they are planning on running the Virtual Cinema until movie theatres are able to re-open.

The postponed version of the Reel Shorts Film Festival will go in 2021 on April 26 to May 3.