The Film North – Huntsville International Film Festival was founded by Lucy Molnar-Wing in 2009, and held in Huntsville, Ontario, Canada. Film North presents a Retrospective Program each year as part of their film studies focus. Film North takes place at the Algonquin Theatre, Huntsville, Ontario, Canada. The festival's inaugural dates were Thursday, September 23 to Saturday, September 25, 2010. Film North presented 39 short and feature films from around the world, including Canada, the United States, Peru and Belgium. Notably, the film
In the Wake of the Flood, Ron Mann's documentary on
Margaret Atwood's interactive book tour for her novel
The Year of the Flood, was screened at the 2010 event.
West Wind: A Vision of Tom Thomson opened the 2011 Film North 2 festival on September 22, 2011. This documentary explores
Tom Thomson's extraordinary contribution to Canada's artistic development, and was directed by
Michèle Hozer and
Peter Raymont. The Lifetime Achievement Bull's Eye Award 2011 recipient,
Michael Snow, requested screening his 1967 film
Wavelength in its original format. Film North found 1600 feet of original film and projector, and drove these up to Huntsville to screen
Wavelength. 2012, the third season of Film North included 43 films, of which 31 were Canadian and 15 were world premiers:
Dolime Dilemma: Water Proof,
Morning Zombies,
Sisters In Arms,
I Was a Boy,
2 Knocks,
One Night Stand,
The Ballerina and the Rocking Horse,
Angelfish,
The Etiquette of Sexting,
From Nomad to Nobody,
Waiting For Summer,
Ostichcized,
Zen and the Arts of Distraction, '' 'Missing' Artist:Unknown
, and 6 Canadian Premiers: Fish
, Powerful: Energy for Everyone
, Duck
, Spaghetti fur Zwei
, La Cosa in Cima Alle Scale
, and Algonquin''.
Butter, directed by
Jim Field Smith and starring
Jennifer Garner, had its Ontario premiere screening, and
Antiviral had its first screening since winning the 2012
Toronto International Film Festival's Skyy Vodka Award for Best Canadian First Feature Film.
Artist: Unknown, directed by Craig Goodwill, is the unfolding of a wake for Tom Thomson and was part of the closing night program, which culminated with the Ontario premiere screening of
Two Jacks, directed by Bernard Rose and starring Jack Huston, Sienna Miller, Danny Huston and Jacqueline Bisset. The short film
Algonquin had its Canadian premiere at the festival in 2012. The film brought audiences into the heart of Canada's iconic wilderness,
Algonquin Park, by following the headwaters that originate and flow out of its highlands.
Algonquin was directed by Jeremy Munce and produced by Joel Irwin. Andrew Sheppard and Hugo Kitching were the film's cinematographers. The 2012 Director's Retrospective selection was
Robert Altman's
McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971), starring
Warren Beatty and
Julie Christie, about the frontier myth of the West. In 2013, Film North screened 35 films. Awards were presented for the following: • Best Short Film,
S is For Bird, directed by Matt Sadowski • Best Canadian Emerging Filmmaker,
Pretty Thing, directed by E. Mirabelli and M. DeFilippis • Best Documentary, ''The Captain's Log'', directed by J. Haenel and B. Pfister • Best Canadian Feature Length Film,
Sex After Kids, directed by Jeremy Lalonde • Best Animated Film,
The Snow Spirit, directed by L. Salas Rejes The Retrospective Series' theme was "Representations of Stand Up Comedy In Feature Film". The films
The King Of Comedy, directed by Martin Scorsese, and
Louis CK: Hilarious, directed by Louis CK, were screened. The opening night feature was
Fight Like Soldiers, Die Like Children, directed by Patrick Reed, produced by Peter Raymont. This won the Golden Antler Viewer's Choice Award. The Friday shorts program screened 20 films, and the night's feature was the Canadian premiere of
All Is Lost, directed by J.C. Chandor and starring Robert Redford. The closing night feature was
Who The F--k Is Arthur Fogel, directed by Ron Chapman, which was preceded by the 1965 short film
Genevieve, starring
Geneviève Bujold and directed by
Michel Brault. On September 21, 2013, Brault died of a heart attack while travelling to the festival to receive its Bull's Eye Lifetime Achievement Award. Festival founder Lucy Wing praised Brault as "a champion of Canadian cinema and among Canada’s short list of trailblazing filmmakers of the 20th century." == Film submission criteria ==