Hello, Trent Cinephiles! We here at the Trent Film Society (TFS) hope that you all had a wonderful holiday break and a great first semester of the school year. It’s pretty bizarre how quickly the year is going by for us here, but it has been a really fun year so far, especially when it came to our wonderful film screenings that all of you attended. While we are saddened that the Fall semester has quickly come to a close, we are also very excited to share our Winter film lineup with you all. We have some exciting film screenings coming up that will be sure to entertain us as well as educate.

For those of you who were unable to join us for our first two screenings of the month (Jee Woon-Kim’s The Good, The Bad, The Weird and Edgar Wright’s Scott Pilgrim vs. The World), we at TFS had decided to kick-start the month of January with those two over-the-top and enigmatic comedies as a funny way to start off the semester. We figured that the best way to enter the cold and wintery school atmosphere this semester was to start off with some films that would provide a nice laugh and an all-around fun time for you cinephiles, and we thank all of the students and Peterborough residents who were able to join us for those screenings and make them such a success.

Now that those two films have been shown, we now plan on going into slightly darker territory with our following two screenings. Our screening that is taking place this upcoming Wednesday will be of the film Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter, which is directed by David Zellner. Based off of events from the fictional Coen Brothers film Fargo (1996), the movie follows Kumiko, a Japanese office worker who travels to North Dakota in search of a treasure that was hidden in her favourite fictional film, which she believes is a documentary.

The film is based off of an urban legend surrounding a woman named Tokako Konishi, a woman who was believed to have died while traversing Detroit Lakes, Minnesota in search for the briefcase laden with cash that was hidden by Steve Buscemi’s character in Fargo.

With an urban legend such as this as the basis for the film’s story, Zellner is able to utilize a very unique perspective here towards the theme of the power of cinema and how it can affect one person’s life. With Kumiko, Zellner and lead actress Rinko Kikuchi are able to craft a powerful character that embodies a character longing for a life that plays much like the characters in her favourite films, a theme that may ring true for many film fans across the world.

While it may seem depressing based off of its description, the film is able to finely make a tight balance between being a precautionary tale about the dangers of being consumed by fantasy escapism, and a celebration of the power that cinema can have on a film viewer.

Through its fable-like feel and its reverent blend of optimism and tragedy towards the theme of film escapism, Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter is hands down a film tailor-made to film fans, and it should definitely be watched by anyone who loves the art of cinema and has once imagined to themselves: What if life were just like our favourite movies?

The screening will take place at Artspace on Wednesday, January 20 at 8PM. Like all of our other screenings, there is no admission (FREE!), and we encourage everyone who can make it to join us for this special little film.

See you all on Wednesday!