Skip to main content
The Hands of Ida film image; text on blue screen

The Hands of Ida

This event has passed

Join us for an exclusive screening of The Hands of Ida, the only known copy of a repudiated TV movie written by Gerry Atwel and directed by the visionary Guy Maddin. Rumoured to have been destroyed in a black magic ceremony, this film aired only once on CKND TV in Winnipeg in 1995. Thanks to Paul Anthony, one of the film’s actors, who taped it off television, we can present it to you in all of its degraded glory.

What can you expect (but not possibly be prepared for)?
A woman named Ida endures a brutal assault where her hands are removed, sparking the rise of a female vigilante group targeting male assailants by cutting off their penises. Portraying a reality where men must be escorted by women to ensure their safety after dark.
“I am the anger of women,
You are the instruments of justice.
We are the hands of Ida.”

Preceded by:
Hollywood (North) Babylon: Paul Anthony Tells All!
Winner of nine Outstanding Actor Awards, Paul Anthony is probably best known for playing The Rainbow Raider on the television series The Flash. He will open the evening with a series of showbiz stories while screening various never-before-seen clips from his diverse career. Highlights include: his awkward first role on James Cameron’s Dark Angel; a challenging death scene in Larry Clark’s Masters of Horror; an embarrassing misunderstanding with Keenen Ivory Wayans that cost him a part in White Chicks; and a deleted (never aired) sex scene with Alan Cumming and Pam Grier on The L Word.

Presenter
Director
Country of Origin

Canada

Year

1995

Language

English

18+
60 min

Book Tickets

This event has passed.

Presenter

Paul Anthony headshot

Paul Anthony

Paul Anthony, a recipient of the BC Entertainment Hall of Fame Award, has performed in over 60 film and television projects including iZombie, Riverdale, Blade: Trinity, SUCK, A Gun to the Head, Stargate, the Emmy Award-winning Traffic and, of course, Guy Maddin’s The Hands of Ida. He is also the creator and host of the critically acclaimed Paul Anthony’s Talent Time, a live comedy/variety/talk show and public access TV program. The Globe & Mail’s Mathew Hays hailed it as “the most innovative…and inspired show” he has seen in years. An edited version of Paul Anthony’s Talent Time is available for binge-watching on TalentTime.biz.

Director

Guy Maddin headshot; Rumours director

Guy Maddin

Guy Maddin has directed thirteen feature-length movies in a career spanning over thirty years. For the past decade, he has worked exclusively in directorial partnership with Evan and Galen Johnson, creating The Forbidden Room (2015), The Green Fog (2017), and the internet interactive Seances (2016). During his solo helming years, Maddin mounted around the world over seventy performances of his films, Cowards Bend The Knee (2002), Brand Upon The Brain (2006), and My Winnipeg (2007) in productions featuring live elements – orchestra, sound effects, song and narration. His screenplay and film-story collaborators include Nobel Laureate Kazuo Ishiguro and poet John Ashbery. In America, his movies Archangel (1990) and The Heart Of The World (2000) won National Society of Film Critics Awards for Best Experimental Film.

Filmography: The Saddest Music in the World (2003); Brand Upon the Brain! (2006); My Winnipeg (2007); The Forbidden Room (2015)

Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre

The Librarians

Dir. Kim A Snyder
92 min

Dispatches from the front line of America's culture wars (and ours too): librarians speak out about the war against ideas, history, freedom of expression and sexual identity, a campaign in which an open mind is the ultimate enemy.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

Dawn Pemberton Sings Aretha + Amazing Grace Film Screening

Dir. Alan Elliott & Sydney Pollack
180 min

These dates are going to knock your socks off: one of the all-time great concert films, Aretha Franklin performing at the New Bethel Baptist Church in 1972, and Canada's own Queen of Soul, Dawn Pemberton, performing live in Aretha's honour.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

Caravaggio

Dir. David Bickerstaff & Phil Grabsky
100 min

In the latest from Exhibition on Screen, co-directors David Bickerstaff and Phil Grabsky shed light not only on Caravaggio's paintings, but his life, often kept half-hidden in the same chiaroscuro tones he shaded his masterpieces with.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

Left-Handed Girl

Dir. Shih-Ching Tsou
109 min

Co-written and edited by Sean Baker (Anora), Shi-Ching Tsou's heartwarming solo feature debut follows a single mom in Taipei who is too consumed with her noodle stand to keep tabs on her five-year-old daughter's burgeoning shoplifting habit.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

Train Dreams

Dir. Clint Bentley
104 min

A lovely, ruminative movie set in the Pacific Northwest in the first half of the last century. Robert (Joel Edgerton) is a lumberjack, a taciturn man who comes to appreciate the life slipping between his fingers.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

Thieves' Highway

Dir. Jules Dassin
94 min

Set in the world of trucking, this unusual but effective drama fuses elements of film noir and neo-realism. It was director Jules Dassin's last American movie before the blacklist forced him into exile in Europe. Intro by Mike Archibald.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema