Patricia Rozema Retrospective: White Room (1990) 4K Restoration
Director: Patricia Rozema Run Time: 110 min. Rating: NR Release Year: 1990
Starring: Barbara Gordon, Kate Nelligan, Margot Kidder, Maurice Godin, Sheila McCarthy
Country: Canada
Language: English
About the film:
Patricia Rozema’s follow up to I’ve Heard The Mermaids Singing (1987) follows Norman, an aspiring writer with writer’s block, who peeps on his neighbors. When he witnesses the murder of famous singer Madeline X, he attends her memorial and encounters a woman connected to her. He follows her home and discovers her nightly visits to a secret room. Set in Toronto of the ‘90s, this twisted urban fairy tale, as much about the consequences of naive romanticism as our uniquely modern obsession with celebrity, has two endings – one tragic, one euphoric, both essential.
“a semi-unknown masterpiece…A queer-coded character drama about sensitivity, identity, and idealism, its deeply moving arc needs to be more widely seen”
—Grant Phipps, Tone Madison
Set in the cultural landscape of bohemian Toronto at the dawn of the ’90s, White Room (1990) explores the incompatibility of the fragile openness needed to create art and the impossibly thick skin required to sell it.
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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