In a 50 year career as dancer and artistic director with the National Ballet of Canada, legendary dance icon Karen Kain tackle Swan Lake for her first directing role and farewell project. For Kain, the making of this ballet is a labor of love, as it launched her career to superstardom when she made her acclaimed debut in the feature role of Odette/Odile in 1971. Swan Song captures the creative process, the determination and vision in re-staging this classical ballet, which was complicated by a two year pandemic-related delay. Featuring ballet stars past, present and future, the documentary provides an intimate glimpse into the grueling physical and emotional sacrifice required to create this sumptuous, lush re-imagining. Directed by Chelsea McMullan (My Prairie Home, Crystal Pite: Angels’ Atlas, winner of VIFF’s 2022 Showcase Audience Award), Swan Song is an immersive, thrilling glimpse behind the curtain.
October 1: Q&A with director Chelsea McMullan
Media Partner
Community Partner
Karen Kain
Canada
2023
Special Presentations
English
Self Harm, Coarse Language
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Credits
Executive Producer
Sean O’Neill, Chelsea McMullan, Jennifer Baichwal, Nicholas de Pencier, Anna Godas, Oli Harbottle, Neve Campbell
Producer
Sean O’Neill
Screenwriter
Chelsea McMullan & Sean O’Neill
Cinematography
Tess Girard, Shady Hanna
Editor
Brendan Mills
Original Music
Katie Stelmanis
Director
Photo by Luis Mora
Chelsea McMullan
Chelsea McMullan is a director, writer and producer. Their work in documentary, experimental narrative, and hybrid films has often centered on leading international artists in different practices. Ever Deadly (2022), directed in collaboration with the Inuk artist, writer and musician Tanya Tagaq screened at VIFF last year. Their previous features include My Prairie Home, a musical documentary about the transgender musician Rae Spoon and the feature documentary Crystal Pite: Angels’ Atlas about the world-renowned choreographer. Both screened at VIFF and many other festivals.
Filmography: My Prairie Home (2013); Crystal Pite: Angels’ Atlas (2022); Ever Deadly (2022)
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
Samia
Despite growing up in Mogadishu, Somalia, during the civil war, Samia Yusuf Omar persists in her dream of becoming an Olympic athlete and competes in Beijing, 2008 -- with London, 2012 next on her agenda. Based on a true story.
Sudan, Remember Us
A portrait of young artists and activists, Meddeb's doc charts events in Khartoum between 2019 -- in the immediate wake of the revolution that deposed dictator Omar al-Bashir -- and the mood four years later, when the country has been torn apart by civil war.
Margaret
Seventeen-year-old Lisa is rocked with guilt after a woman is killed in a traffic accident. But that’s only one thread in a teeming social tapestry this intense, passionate teen must negotiate as she comes of age in a time of contradiction and confusion.
E.1027 Eileen Gray and the House by the Sea
In this elegant non fiction film, actors play Irish designer Eileen Gray, her lover, the architect Jean Badovici, and modernist superstar Le Corbusier, who would become obsessed with the house on the Cote d'Azur that Eileen designed.
Scarecrow
A bittersweet, touching buddy movie with Gene Hackman as a volatile tramp, Max, and Al Pacino as "Lion", a drifter now set on returning to the wife and kid he abandoned years ago. Hackman's favourite of his own movies.