Directed and produced by: Janko Virant

Cast: Karen Waddell

Poetry read by: John Ralston 

Production company: V-Art Productions

The sound of a shower against the backdrop of nighttime in the city. The next day, a middle-aged woman, the subject of a love poem, walks home down a sunny Toronto street while verses of the poem echo through her head. The flowers on her table wither. The poem continues to ring in her head as she comes to her house with a bouquet of fresh flowers. On her way home, she pauses at the gate of her house, feeling for a minute the presence of a man she loves. But the figure is nowhere to be seen. At home, she gently arranges the flowers to the beat of her inner poem. Night falls. She stretches on the floor while verses of love and longing still echo in her mind. A man walks to the door of the woman’s dwelling. The poet, whose words propel her story has arrived to welcome his muse. Outside, the night falls, backwards this time.

 

Janko Virant 

Director/Producer from Ljubljana, Slovenia, where he studied at The Institute of Design,

Photography & Film. Worked as a producer and director for the film division of the Slovenian cultural organization SKUC, where two of his films earned national film festival awards. Moved to Canada where his first work explores and dramatizes the universal immigrant experience: “From the bottom of the earth, I took the elevator of chance to the top floor, got out my last three pennies and threw them down, to see if I could find them again”. With his first Canadian film launched, Janko founded V-Art Productions, making Mind’s Eye, Mysteriously Yours, In Eve’s Shadow and Two Sides of a Shadow, all for the CBC. The Boatswain was broadcast on History TV, TVO, Vision TV, RDI. Janko most recently finished documentaries Slovenian-Canadian Roots and Window of Opportunity, broadcast on OMNI TV 1. Currently he is working on NEVER LET YoUGO, a feature supported from TELEFILM Canada and OMDC, about a Slovenian rally car driver trapped between his dream of returning home or settling in Canada.

 

*European premiere