The Walkerton Film Society

I believe that the essence of almost all films is to take the journey of someone else. Every film needs an entry point, someone for people to relate to and care about. As Stanley Kubrick said, Schindler's List may neglect the millions of Jews who died during the Holocaust in favour of the couple hundred that survived, but the film paints such an intimate portrait of a man on a journey of self discovery that history is simply a backdrop for this process. That's the difference between fiction and documentary. Documenary is fact; fiction is being there. That's what Godard could have meant when he said that cinema is "60 frames of truth per second."

That's why, film is deemed as an escapist medium (as if this is a bad thing), because it allows us to step outside of ourselves and take wonderful journey's to places that we could never imagine possible otherwise. Sometimes we go to the farest reaches of outer space, or the deepest depths of the sea, and sometimes we venture not much farther than to the local pool hall or roller rink. Nevertheless, the journey is a sucessful one when taken in the presense of someone who we can care about and relate to or at least understand on a personal level. You may not agree with the crimes of Alieen Warnoes or feel any smypathy for the four mercants of cruelty in Closer, but we love these films because they allow us to understand the humanity of their characters, or lack thereof.

This is the one thing that connects all of the films of the Walkerton Film Society; they can be dark, disturbing, cruel, and sometimes depressing, but at their heart is a man or a woman who allows us to feel for them, care about them, and ultimatly grow with them. It's the rare magic of film that so many people can gather in a single room and each share the same journey, the affect of which is sometimes like a snowflake: no two are the same. Whether we are going to the beach, in the company of men, living a life of crime, experiencing death, wandering with angels in Berlin, or combing the streets of Rome looking for a stolen bicycle, we are always doing so with people who, for better or worse, have laid themselves bare for us.

This is the essence of why I, Mike Lippert, have created the Walkerton Film Society, a place where cinema affectionados of all shapes and sizes can come together to enjoy the magic of the cinema from all corners of the world, which our small town existence has unfortunatly denied us. Thus, The Walkerton Film Society is a gift from me to you, a way of giving back a little piece of the magic that I've only been able to write about up until this point. I hope you'll come and share it with me.