Extraordinary Women: The Nova Scotia Folk Artist

Roncesvalles non-profit Back Lane Studios and the Revue Cinema present another Extraordinary Women event, with a screening Sunday, April 28, 12:00-2:30pm, of the award-winning bio-pic Maudie about the Nova Scotia folk-artist Maud Lewis. For our post-film discussion, we welcome Toronto filmmaker Mary Young Leckie, the creative producer behind the project, and two of Maud’s descendants. While working in Halifax more than 20 years ago, Mary learned about Maud and felt the artist’s story had to be told. It took 13 years to complete the movie, but what a team was behind it: Irish director Aisling Walsh, big-name Oscar-nominated actors Sally Hawkins and Ethan Hawke, and funding from Canada and Ireland.

Hawkins and Hawke are remarkable in their portrayals of Maud, crippled by rheumatoid arthritis but with a passion to paint, and Everett, the inarticulate, surly fish peddler who posts a notice for someone to clean his one-room shack. Maud, seeing that ad as a way to escape a confined life in her aunt’s house, applies for the job and moves in. Over the years, Maud covered surfaces inside and outside the house with cheerful flowers, birds, animals and other designs, and she began selling her brightly coloured paintings to people who dropped by her home. Eventually, her story and her work fuelled new interest in folk art in Canada, and her nostalgic paintings, created despite pain and disability, have become part of Nova Scotia’s identity.

How closely does the movie parallel Maud and Everett’s actual lives? What choices were made in this moving story for dramatic purposes? We will find out in the post-film discussion! Tickets in advance are by $15 suggested donation on Eventbrite. Tickets also available at the Revue Cinema at the time of the event.