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In his opening remarks before the screening of his new film, Leslie, My Name is Evil, writer-director Reginald Harkema suggested to the audience, "think of this movie as a trip."

Boy is it ever.

Steeped in hallucinogenic imagery and walking the fine line of absurdity, Lesliel is an outrageous and not very subtle commentary on American society. And it's winking from the very first scene.

It's the fourth film from Vancouver's Harkema, who is now living in Toronto. As with the previous three, this one also is about the messy connections between boys and girls. But this one is both a romantic comedy and courtroom drama, set during the trial of Charles Manson and three women from his "family".

That I watched this film while California attempts to extradite Roman Polanski — whose wife Sharon Tate was one of the Manson family victims — was not lost on me.

Told in two parts,...

TORONTO -- Faced with the prospect of having to choose between warring Montreal film festivals, a group of Canadian filmmakers on Thursday came out in support of Claude Chamberlan's embattled Festival of New Cinema and New Media, now in its 33rd year. "Claude Chamberlan shouldn't be put in a position where he has to defend his wonderful festival nor should he need to fight to maintain its funding," John L'Ecuyer (Regenesis) said in an open letter. The letter of support from English-Canadian and bilingual directors, also signed by Bruce McDonald, Ryan Larkin, Peter Wintonick, John Pozer, Ron Mann, Manfred Becker and Jerry Ciccoritti, follows a March 3 open letter by French-language directors, led by Robert Lepage and Andre Forcier, urging support for Chamberlan and his event.

TORONTO -- Faced with the prospect of having to choose between warring Montreal film festivals, a group of Canadian filmmakers on Thursday came out in support of Claude Chamberlan's embattled Festival of New Cinema and New Media, now in its 33rd year. "Claude Chamberlan shouldn't be put in a position where he has to defend his wonderful festival nor should he need to fight to maintain its funding," John L'Ecuyer ("Regenesis") said in an open letter. The letter of support from English-Canadian and bilingual directors, also signed by Bruce McDonald, Ryan Larkin, Peter Wintonick, John Pozer, Ron Mann, Manfred Becker and Jerry Ciccoritti, follows a March 3 open letter by French-language directors, led by Robert Lepage and Andre Forcier, urging support for Chamberlan and his event. L'Ecuyer and his colleagues called attention to the New Montreal FilmFest's plans to unspool Oct. 12-23, virtually at the same time that the Festival of New Cinema and New Media will be running this year (Oct. 13-23).

VANCOUVER -- Canadian filmmaker John Pozer has launched a lawsuit against his ex-partner and fellow filmmaker Lynne Stopkewich for a share of the profits from Kissed, Stopkewich's 1996 debut feature about a young woman sexually attracted to corpses. In a March 20 lawsuit, Pozer claims he lived with Stopkewich in 1994 while she developed and financed Kissed, a film about an attractive young necrophiliac, played by Molly Parker, who has sex with corpses in a funeral home. Produced as a low-budget feature, Kissed spurred a bidding war for its U.S. distribution rights after bowing at the 1996 Toronto International Film Festival. The Samuel Goldwyn Co. eventually grabbed the U.S. rights, while Malofilm Distribution secured the Canadian rights.