Evokative Films' founder is named one of Montreal's Noizemakers!

Stephanie was very honored to become one of Montreal's Noizemakers of 2010!
A tradition for many years, The Montreal Mirror starts the new year with the Noizemakers issue, where the efforts of a few Montrealers working in cultural or community areas are highlighted.

Article by Mark Slutsky, Film Editor of The Montreal Mirror

Mixed emotions
Evokative Films is a small distributor with a diverse mandate

"When I was at Fantasia, I’d see huge line-ups of people and how excited everybody was,” says Stephanie Trepanier. “I couldn’t understand why some of these films would get a sold-out crowd of 700 people, people being excited and lining up for an hour before the film, and no distributors would pick up the film afterwards. It plays at Fantasia and it’s done and you never see it again. I saw the enthusiasm and thought there has to be a market out there that isn’t being catered to, that I could concentrate on and try to please.”

Ask anyone who’s ever worked in film distribution and they’ll tell you: it’s one of the toughest, least glamorous links in the movie-making chain. So it’s pretty amazing what Evokative Films, a tiny local distributor with only three employees, has managed to accomplish in a year: five theatrical releases and five DVDs on store shelves, all out of company founder Trepanier’s Park Ex loft.

Evokative’s consistently interesting slate of films defies easy description, with movies ranging from the rambling, understated Japanese comedy Adrift in Tokyo to Korean boxing saga Crying Fist to French neo-blaxploitation actioner Black. “I think what unites the films is it’s always a mix of genres,” says Trepanier. “It’s never just a thriller. It’s going to be a mix of thriller and psychological drama, or a road movie that’s a comedy but also a little bit dramatic. There’s always a mix of emotions. I kind of like that.”

Trepanier, who got her start at Fantasia (and is still associated with the fest as a programmer) before working as a publicist for the ill-fated Christal Films, prides herself on Evokative’s signature look and style. Their beautifully designed DVDs—the latest being Adrift in Tokyo, in stores as of late December—are instantly recognizable, with a signature red band at the bottom. “I’m really happy with the way the company’s perceived now and how we’ve managed to develop as a brand in just a year,” she says. “That’s what I’ve been trying to do from the beginning. I come from marketing and I always thought that one thing that was missing from DVD distribution was to have a strong brand.”

Plans for 2010 include “surviving,” Trepanier laughs, “but in terms of films, there’s Deliver Us From Evil”—a Straw Dogs-ian Danish thriller—“in March, as well as the launch of the Black DVD, which didn’t do so well in theatres but I think on DVD it could do really well, across Quebec, because it’s in French and it’s action and everything.”

http://www.montrealmirror.com/2010/010710/film3.html

Posted in In the Press

Glowing reviews for ADRIFT IN TOKYO!

Following the April 10th release of ADRIFT IN TOKYO, we’ve been blessed with all-around positive reviews! This love-fest in the media translated in a very good box-office for the 1st week-end at the AMC Forum Theatre: $6 600. Yes, these are small bucks compared to the Hollywood blockbusters, but it still puts us in second place of the Quebec per-screen box-office for 1st-week films, and in 5th place for per-screen box-office on all films playing in Quebec. To say that we’re thrilled is an understatement!

So here’s a little round-up on the good things that have been said in the press for the release and beforehand…

Print Media
At the Montreal Gazette: John Griffin’s review, Liz Ferguson’s review, Al Kratina’s review
At the Montreal Mirror: Mark Slutsky’s review
At the Hour: Meghan Hick’s review
At Exclaim!: Katarina Gligorijevic’s review
At The McGill Tribune: Brahna Siegelberg’s review
At Variety: Russell Edwards’s review
At the Japan Times: Mark Schilling’s review

Web
At Twitchfilm: The release news, Todd Brown’s review, Todd’s Best films of 2008, Andrew Mack’s review
At the Toronto J-film Pow-wow:The release news, Chris MaGee’s Review
At Cinema Strikes Back: David Austin’s review, Their Top-10 picks of 2008
At Midnight Eye: Keith Fancher’s review
At They Shoot Actors, Don’t They?: Katarina Gligorijevic’s review
At eFilmCritic: Jay Seaver’s review
At UGO: John Lichman’s review
At LunaPark6: Luna6’s review
At MovieMoxie: Shannon Riddler’s review

ADRIFT IN TOKYO will be playing in Montreal until April 23rd, to then play in Toronto at the AMC Yonge & Dundas theatre from May 1st. Next up will be Vancouver from May 22nd.

Posted in In the Press, Theatrical Releases

A return on the world premiere of BLACK @ SXSW

It’s bad, I’ve been back in the office from my trip in Austin, Texas for SXSW for a few days and I only get to do a recap now. Things are very busy in the office you see, in-between HANSEL & GRETEL starting its run in Toronto on Friday, the Crying Fist DVD getting in its final stages of production and ADRIFT IN TOKYO to come out in theatres soon. Amongst many other things! Tim League and the Fantastic Fest folks were nice enough to program BLACK in their SXSW Presents Fantastic Fest programming, which got us all very excited to have BLACK’s World Premiere there. Both March 14th and March 18th screenings were at the South Lamar Alamo Drafthouse Theatre, to sold-out audiences that seemed very eager to see this new genre of French action flick with Blaxploitation influences starring MC Jean Gab’1.


The sold-out house on the 1st screening.


Lauranne Bourrachot, one of the producer of the film, and Pierre Laffargue, the director.

 
The Q&A session after the first screening. A video of it will be posted soon on YouTube.

 
The presentation of the second screening.

Great reviews got posted on blogs following the screenings. You can read them right here:
A first Ain’t It Cool Review
A second Ain’t It Cool Review
A review on Cinematical
A review on HitFix
A review on RowThree
And finally an interview with Pierre Laffargue on eFilmCritic

BLACK will be released in France in July and in Canada in August. There is no American distributor yet for the film but we wouldn’t be surprised that one is signed on soon following all this great buzz!

Posted in In the Press, Special Screenings

HANSEL & GRETEL wins two awards at Fantasporto!

We’ve just learned that the South-Korean dark fantasy HANSEL & GRETEL won two awards at the 29th edition of the Oporto International Film Festival (Fantasporto) which ended today. The film directed by YIM Phil-sung won the Special Prize of the Fantasy Competition and the Best Film Award of the Orient Express section.

The other Jury Awards were given to IDIOTS AND ANGELS, the excellent animation by Bill Plympton, which won the Best Film Award of the Fantasy Competition, as well as to MOSCOW, BELGIUM, by Christophe Van Rompaey, which was chosen as Best Film of the 19th Director’s Week. Most commonly called Fantasporto, the Portuguese festival is considered amongst the 25 leading festivals of the world, according to Variety International Film Guide.

HANSEL & GRETEL already got attention on the International film festival circuit after being part of the official selections of the Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival (Pifan), where it won a Special Mention, the Sitges International Film Festival and the London Film Festival in 2008, followed by the Gerardmer Fantastic Film Festival and lately the Oporto International Film Festival (Fantasporto) this year. In Canada, HANSEL & GRETEL had the honour of being chosen as the Closing Film of the Dragons and Tigers section at the Vancouver International Film Festival, to follow with the Toronto Reel Asian Film Festival.

The film will be screening from March 6th, for a two-weeks run, at the AMC Forum theatre in Montreal, with a Korean with English subtitles copy. HANSEL & GRETEL will then go on to play in Toronto from March 27th and Vancouver from April 17th. On Friday March 6th, the Evokative Films team will be present at the AMC Forum theatre to raffle various prizes among those attending the 7:10 pm screening.
To see the event on Facebook: HANSEL & GRETEL @ AMC

Posted in In the Press, Theatrical Releases

So, what have you been up to?

Wow, I realize it’s been exactly a month since my last post. So what have we been up to at Evokative?

Well for starters there’s been more travelling as I attended the Unifrance Rendez-vous of French Cinema, followed by the Rotterdam International Film Festival and finally Ciné-Québec. Many films were seen, a lot of hands were shaken and hopefully these will lead to some nice acquisitions in the near future.

I had my first radio interview for Simahlak’s Gumbo Radio on CKUT, which you can listen here: Gumbo Radio January 20th

We also welcomed a new addition to the team, Émilie Lacourt, who is now Evokative’s General Assistant.

Finally we’ve been busy working on the production of our very first DVD, THE KILLER (LE TUEUR), which will hit good DVD rental stores in March. Adrift in Tokyo will also finally be released in theatres soon, so stay tuned for more news very soon.

Posted in Events, In the Press

ADRIFT IN TOKYO and PARKING make Twitchfilm’s “Best films of 2008″ lists

As 2008 comes to a close, film critics are making their countdowns of the best films seen through the year. I’ve been very happy to see that not one, but two films from Evokative’s line-up have been mentionned in Twitchfilm’s Best of 2008 lists.

Posted in In the Press

Evokative on the web

I was recently interviewed by James McNally for his Toronto Screen Shots blog.
You can read the result here!

I was also recently asked by Toronto J-Film Pow-wow’s founder Chris MaGee to write a little piece for his continuing “What film got you hooked?” serie of features, back in September.
Other contributors include Mark Schilling from the Japan Times, Jason Gray from Screen International, Todd Brown and Andrew Mack from Twitchfilm.net, Tom Mes from Midnighteye.com and Kevin Ouellette from Nipponcinema.com, amongst others.
My choice of film was Akira by Katsuhiro Oromo. You can check it out here: http://jfilmpowwow.blogspot.com/search/label/Features

Posted in In the Press