County Adaptation Film Fest: Prince Edward County's Small-Town Take on the Big Screen

By Jim Slotek

As a certain giant ape of film festivals gets underway in Toronto this week, some veterans of TIFF and other film industry VIPs are playing small-ball, helping Prince Edward County get ready for its close-up.

Tickets went on sale Sept. 1 for the County Adaptation Film Festival, which will run in Picton, Ontario from Sept. 27-29, on the heels of TIFF. It will play out in one theatre, the beautifully-preserved blast-from-the-past Regent, with many guests staying in one hotel, the town’s boutique Royal across the street.

The entire program is five films, plus “conversations” and a street party.

(Photo: Bianca Kapteyn)

And yet, there is an intriguing twist to the event, set in a verdant rural county that has become a magnet for notables looking to either retire, semi-retire or simply reset.

There you may run into music legend Eddie Kramer, recording producer for the likes of Hendrix, the Stones and Bowie, and a consultant on the recent Massey Hall reno. Erstwhile Toronto club owner (the El Mocambo, Cadillac Lounge) Sam Grosso still hosts bands at the rustic barn Sam’s Place and runs a vintage car chauffeur service.

And a premiere local winery, Closson Chase, is partly owned by Michael MacMillan and Seaton McLean, former partners in the prolific CanCon production company Atlantis, and McLean’s wife, actress Sonja Smits.

As for the County Adaptation Film Festival, its credit list includes curatorial director Diana Sanchez, the Toronto International Film Festival’s former senior director of film, who programmed there for more than 20 years. The CAFF advisory board includes ex-TIFF executive director and chief operating officer Michèle Maheux, Mongrel Media founder Hussain Amarshi (without whom Canadians’ exposure to global and independent films would be thinner) and writer Devyani Saltzman, daughter of filmmaker Deepa Mehta.

Haley Bennett in Widow Cliquot

“You’re certainly right to pick up on the high quotient of film people living in the county or nearby,” says Alexandra Seay, Co-founder & Artistic Director of CAFF. “Gathering the advisory committee came before the funding. I felt we needed people who had done this before. We were quite lucky.”

Seay was the one who carried the idea of an “adaptation festival.” The notion is to marry the worlds of literature and film, presenting only films that have been adapted from books.

(And whaddya know? There happens to be a book store across the street).

With a nod to the local wineries, Thomas Napper’s Widow Clicquot opens the festival, with a Q&A with author Tilar J. Mazzeo whose biography of Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin Clicquot inspired the movie. Day Two celebrates Truth and Reconciliation Day a few days in advance, with the short film Six Strings and Gord Downie’s Secret Path, adapted from Jeff Lemire’s graphic novel.

It’s followed by Karim Aïnouz’s Firebrand, starring Alicia Vikander and Jude Law and adapted for the screen from Elizabeth Fremantle’s novel, The Queen’s Gambit (not the chess story, but the one about the sixth wife of Henry VIII, who managed to outlive him).

Events move to the Closson Chase Vineyard where author Mark Sakamoto and producer David Hamilton talk about Mehta’s upcoming adaptation of Sakamoto’s novel Forgiveness.

Kingston author Iain Reid will talk about Spike Jonze’s and writer Charlie Kaufman’s Adaptation, a sort-of-meta Nicolas Cage starrer about a writer trying to adapt Susan Orlean’ The Orchid Thief.

CAFF closes with Tanya Talaga talking with Courtney Montour, co-writer/co-director of the four-part CBC docuseries based on her latest book, The Knowing. There’s also a screening of Ru, with Charles Olivier-Michaud who adapted Kim Thúys 2009 novel, and Scarborough novelist Catherine Hernandez talking about the adaptation of her book into the award-winning 2021 film.

“When Alexandra told me the particular niche she wanted to explore - adaptations that you can create conversation around -  I found that very compelling,” Sanchez says.

“Festivals have really changed, and throwing films on the screen is not enough anymore.  You’re competing with Netflix, and with your couch. I teach cinema studies at U of T and people watch films on their phones. You need to create an experience.”

Seay, who’s also involved in the programming at the Regent, says, “when we came back from the pandemic, we started to showcase a lot of Canadian films. One of the reasons was we had access to the filmmakers, to the creators.

“And we found that our audiences for single stand-alone events would often surpass the audience numbers for a full run of a feature film. A film like Maestro for example or Tar, we would sell more tickets for a single showing of Women Talking with (editor) Chris Donaldson in attendance than we got for the entire run of either one of those films.”

And how did Sanchez feel, going from one of the world’s largest film festivals to one with a single small-town theatre, that charges half what Cineplex does for concessions?

“I really had not planned on staying (at TIFF) as long as I did,” she says. “I loved that job, it was so much fun. But at the same time, it was time to change things up a bit.

“I actually love that there’s one cinema. One of the biggest headaches at a big festival is the tickets and the scheduling.

“You can see all there is to offer at this festival, and there will be conversations. And that’s what people are yearning for.”

Click here for info on County Adaptation Film Festival. Click here for ticket information.