The first Invermere Film Festival is this weekend, Feb. 7 to 9, at Columbia Valley Centre.

Each evening’s final film will feature guest speakers associated with the films.

On Friday evening, Feb. 7, Canadian scientist and feminist Anne Innis Dagg and The Woman Who Loves Giraffes director Alison Reid will be on hand via Skype for a Q&A.

In 1956, four years before Jane Goodall, Anne Innis Dagg became the first scientist to study African mammals in the wild. Her research led to the publication of The Giraffe: Its Biology, Behaviour and Ecology, the ‘bible on giraffes.’

Then, she disappeared from the scene, leaving the research community to wonder what happened. This film is the story of her re-discovery.

Saturday’s (Feb. 8 at 6 p.m.) special guest is Cranbrook resident Russ Sheppard, a central figure in The Grizzlies.

Acclaimed and upcoming Canadian actor and playwright Jonas Chernick will be the special guest for the screening of his latest film James Vs His Future Self during Invermere Film Festival’s Sunday evening showcase Feb. 9.

Winnipeg-born Chernick (pictured above) has been keeping busy in film and television since 2001, when he starred in and helped write the screenplay for Inertia, which won the award for Best First Canadian Film at the Toronto International Film Festival, where he also won the honour for best leading actor.

Chernick won a 2008 Gemini Award and was nominated for a 2009 ACTRA Award for his work as ‘Slade’ on the CBC drama series The Border.

In 2012 he was in The Samaritan with Samuel L. Jackson and he also wrote, produced and starred in the comedy My Awkward Sexual Adventure, which won the Audience Award at the Whistler Film Festival, the People’s Choice Award at the Calgary International Film Festival and was named one of the Top 10 Films of 2012 by the Toronto International Film Festival.

His latest film, showing Feb. 9 at Columbia Valley Centre in Invermere, is James Vs His Future Self, co-starring Daniel Stern (Home Alone, City Slickers), and Cleopatra Coleman (The Last Man on Earth).

A sci-fi themed romantic comedy, the film is about a scientist who invents time travel and goes back in time to convince himself to never invent it in the first place.

James is an uptight time-travelling obsessed young scientist, with a lifelong secret crush on his best friend Courtney, and a younger sister, Meredith, who is stuck looking after him since their parents died. James’s tunnel vision determination to become the world’s first time traveller has taken over every aspect of his life, and the only two people who care about him at all – Courtney and Meredith – are almost ready to give up on him. When James is visited by Jimmy, his nihilistic future self, he’s told that he needs to give up his dream of becoming the world’s first time traveller, or else suffer the unimaginably lonely consequences. But when he won’t go along with the plan, it becomes a wicked battle of man versus himself – literally.

Jonas Chernick will be in attendance and participate with festival-goers in a Q&A at the end of the screening Sunday evening.

Invermere Film Fest runs Feb. 7 to 9. Festival passes are sold out but single tickets are available.

See the festival schedule/line-up and buy tickets.

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