Well, I’m back. I wish I had a great excuse for not updating this site. I don’t. But I do have a great reason to start back up again. Drum roll please…….

Starting August 31, a new theatre will be born in Winnipeg. It will be called The Theatre Project and will begin life at the Ellice Theatre on the corner of Ellice and Sherbrook, right across from the West End Cultural Centre. At the beginning, we’re only running on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday evenings every week.

The films we’ll be showing will be some of the most interesting, funny and thoughtful films to screen in Winnipeg in a long time. Our focus is going to be in independent and foreign films. We hope to show a documentary in October. Also in October we’re planning to provide two nights for Winnipeg short films. If they’re interested, both the U of M and the U of W will be given the opportunity to show some of the best student shorts they have produced in the last year or so.

I’ve been saying we and us and our. That’s because this is a project undertaken by four of us. I have the pleasure of having worked with some very talented and intelligent people recently. They have seen the potential in doing something that is different and, we hope, of value to people. Bob Still has been an educator for a number of years. He has also been involved in live theatre productions both professionally and as a volunteer. Ken Wild is someone I consider a raw talent. I don’t think there are many things that Ken couldn’t do if you gave him a manual and 15 minutes to read the whole thing. John Uy may be the most self-effacing super-competent person I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with. The four of us bring incredibly varied experience and perspective to this project, yet we have never (yet) felt the need to quarrel about things. Bob and I are ancient. Ken and John are not. John is software savvy. Ken has computer hardware knowledge. Bob and I simply have many years of watching films. I can help a bit on the marketing side.

You see where I’m going with this? Three great people and me. It’s going to be like Christmas all the time. We’re still firming up the choices we want to make for the first month’s films. It looks like we have a great international selection from places like Iran, Serbia, France, Mexico and Denmark.

We will be launching a website for the Project soon. I’ll keep you posted here. I’ll also be posting the names of the films we’ll be showing soon. Thanks for being patient. Hang on. It’s going to be a great ride.