Patricia Rozema Retrospective: I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing (1987) 4K Restoration
Director: Patricia Rozema Run Time: 81 min. Rating: R Release Year: 1987
Starring: Ann-Marie MacDonald, John Evans, Paule Baillargeon, Richard Monette, Sheila McCarthy
Country: Canada
Language: English
About the film:
Patricia Rozema’s mesmerizing debut feature.
Aspiring photographer Polly lands a job at a Toronto art gallery run by Gabrielle, who is also a painter. Polly is impressed with Gabrielle’s paintings, but as Polly gets to know her lover Mary and becomes entangled in their lives, she realizes Gabrielle isn’t exactly who she appears to be. The gauche absent-minded temp with spiky orange hair and the polished, bourgeois curator with a gift for gab are like night and day, yet a strong connection builds between these two women through their shared love of art, and their genuine curiosity and appetite for love.
“Swift, witty and intimate, it is an amazingly confident first feature that reveals with exquisite humor and compassion the pitfalls in a relationship between two radically different women.”
—Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times
Winner of the Award of the Youth at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival. To commemorate Canada 150, I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing (1987) was digitally restored by Library and Archives Canada, Cinematheque Quebecoise, The Cinematheque, and TIFF.
About the filmmaker:
Patricia Rozema is a Canadian writer and director who is known for her uniquely tender films. When Rozema was growing up, television was severely restricted in her house, and didn’t go to a movie theatre until she was 16 years old. She graduated from Calvin College and Seminary with a degree in philosophy, and after a brief stint in journalism, she began work on her first feature film, I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing (1987). The film, a magical realist film about a socially inept secretary in an art gallery, made for one of the most outstanding and celebrated feature debuts in the history of Canadian cinema. At the 1987 Cannes Film Festival, I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing (1987) won the Prix de la Jeunesse and was runner-up for the Camera d’Or. In 2023, it was announced by Telefilm Canada that Rozema’s sophomore feature, White Room (1990),would be digitally restored under its government-funded program to preserve classic Canadian films.
In 1995, Rozema wrote and directed the queer classic When Night is Falling (1995), which won festival audience prizes around the world and remains a celebrated film in the LGBTQ+ community. Her following films include Mansfield Park (1999), Kit Kittredge: An American Girl (2008), Happy Days (2000), and Into the Forest (2016). Rozema’s latest feature, Mouthpiece (2019), was adapted from a play of the same name by Amy Nostbakken and Norah Sadava, who also star in the film. Mouthpiece (2019) opened at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival and was named one of TIFF’s Top Ten Canadian Films of the year.
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