Georgia Straight contributors Ian Caddell and Mark Harris exerted a towering influence over the city’s film community, and both will be honoured at this year’s Vancouver International Film Festival.

The local film Cinemanovels is being dedicated to Caddell, who died last November. As Canadian Images programmer Terry McEvoy told the Straight, “you could throw a dart” at VIFF’s roster of movies and find a good match for the journalist, who covered film at the Straight for 19 years.

“The reason I find [Cinemanovels] particularly appropriate is because [writer-director] Terry Miles is very much a local boy who’s done genre pictures as well as very personal pictures,” McEvoy said. “You could have the biggest Hollywood star picture, and that would be appropriate for Ian, and you could have the most intimate independent film. It’s hard to say why you would pick any particular film for Ian, to tell you the truth, but Cinemanovels: it makes a lot of sense.” The film concerns the estranged daughter of a filmmaker who mounts a retrospective of her father’s work.

In a separate call, VIFF director Alan Franey explained why You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet—the most recent film by French master Alain Resnais—was chosen in tribute to long-time Straight critic and UBC film scholar Mark Harris, who died of a pulmonary embolism in February (both You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet and Cinemanovels will screen during the fest).

“It’s ambitious and rich in references, and it complicates itself with folding narratives and devices, but it’s so beautiful,” Franey said. “It’s very much a film made by an old director at the end of his career, reflecting on what the pursuit of art has meant to him. It’s perfectly suitable for Mark because not only was he a great cinephile, but he had that penchant for French cinema, and I know he was a huge fan of Alain Resnais. And this deals thematically with end-of-life issues.”

This year’s Vancouver International Film Festival takes place from September 26 to October 11.