MONTREAL -- Digvijay Singh shows up for interviews fully armed. He brandishes a dossier of research material showing that sacrificial rape - the subject of his film, entitled Maya - is more than a freak occurrence in India. The 28-year-old director wants to be clear about one thing: Sexual abuse with religious sanction isn't something that we can dismiss as fringe behaviour in a third-world country.

It's not all noir in Nordic land
BY LIAM LACEY, FILM CRITIC,
The Globe and Mail
Fridday September 7, 2001

Programmers were avoided the doom and gloom often associated with Scandinavian film. Kira's Reason - A Love Story, starring Stine Stengade and Lars Mikkelsen, delves into the hurt and embarrassment of a family member who spends time in a mental hospital, yet it has a far-from-despairing resolution.

Most people's first association with Scandinavian cinema is probably that of hooded Death in Ingmar Bergman's much-parodied The Seventh Seal. For contemporary audiences, it could be pop singer Bjork swinging from the hangman's noose in director Lars von Trier's Dancer in the Dark. While long winters and a stiff Lutheran determinism undoubtedly take their toll, not all Scandinavian cinema is so downbeat.

Riding the Pacific New Wave
By MARK PERANSON, SPECIAL TO THE GLOBE AND MAIL
Tuesday September,4 2001

Bruce Sweeney wants his new movie to make you uncomfortable. What better choice, then, to open the Toronto International Film Festival

VANCOUVER -- With five British Columbia films screening at this year's Toronto International Film Festival, and with Bruce Sweeney's Last Wedding chosen as the first B.C. film ever to open this trendsetting event, perhaps the talk about a Pacific New Wave has some basis in reality.