New indie film a love letter to Burlington and Blockbuster

You can dive into nostalgia for noughties Burlington with a trip to see I Like Movies this weekend.

It's the first feature-length film from local filmmaker Chandler Levack and will be screening from today (March 10) at SilverCity Cinemas.

Levack said having her film playing in the cinema where she watched Titanic and Mean Girls growing up is "truly meaningful."

The  film centres around main character, Lawrence — an odd-ish teen who loves movies more than people and works at that staple of the early 2000s community experience, the video store.

It's a coming-of-age comedy which draws on Levack's own experiences growing up in Burlington and working at Blockbuster. While the film has been showing on the film festival circuit in Toronto, Taiwan and Norway among others, this Friday marks its release in the Canadian theatres.

Levack, now 36, lives in Toronto but she spent a lot of time in Burlington scouting locations during the pandemic. Many local landmarks make appearances in the film, including her old high school, Aldershot.

In fact, the city itself is an important character in the film. "It's very essential," Levack said. "There's things being name-dropped. There are a lot of hyper-specific things."

The old Brant Street Blockbuster she worked at near Central High School is long gone. And while the city has changed since 2003 when her film is set, there is still much about Burlington which makes it "comfortable" and home, she said. "I would like to think it is more diverse than the Burlington I grew up in. I am sure it is more expensive, like every town in Canada."

She is delighted that the film is getting a theatrical release and credited its distributor, Mongrel Media.

"My distributor really believed that audiences, not just in big towns but also small towns like Burlington, really needed to see themselves reflected on screen," Levack said. "That is what is so cool about this movie. It's just a small Canadian indie. But despite the hyper-specificity and the fact that I just wanted to make this cinematic love letter to my Burlington experience, it's now connecting with so many people around the world. People are discovering it and people in Norway and California are relating to it, it just shows that it is really important for Canadians to tell their stories."

It's an experience she could not have imagined in her Blockbuster days. "I would have been in total shock," she said. 

If she had made a film then, she assured BurlingtonToday it would have been "terrible," navel-gazing but with "more editing transitions and effects."

She is now working on another feature film. "It is set in 2011," she said. "I kind of get closer to modern society with every film I make. It's kind of a hang out movie about the Montreal music scene in the 2010s."

And she is savouring this unique and special moment. The theatrical release kicked off with a premiere in Hamilton on Wednesday night which Levack said was "amazing," with friends and family turning out as well as her old media teacher from Aldershot High School.

She hopes Burlingtonians will enjoy her film.

"Please come and watch my film," she said. "It would mean a lot to me and please know, that even though Lawrence is a little bit negative about Burlington, it's very tongue in cheek. I love Burlington so much."