With Hollywood productions and powerful foreign films often taking up the vast majority of screen time in our Canadian theatres, our own domestic productions sometimes don't get as much chance to shine on screen.  

There are some local initiatives to try and address that.

While the Port Moody Canadian Film Festival (which ran from March 10 to 12) included some B.C. films among its Canadian content, a new film festival in Maple Ridge will zero in specifically on British Columbian cinema.

The inaugural Maple Ridge Festival of B.C. Film will run from Friday (March 17) to Sunday (March 19) and will screen six features and six shorts over its three-day run at the ACT Arts Centre (11944 Haney Place, Maple Ridge).

Things will kick off with Jason R. Goode's chilly thiller Numb, in which a couple joins with some hitchhikers to search for stolen gold in the wintry wilderness but stumble across a lot more than they bargained for.

Damian Gillis and Fiona Rayher's documentary Fractured Land will follow on March 18. The film (named the best B.C. film at the 2015 Vancouver International Film Festival) focuses on indigenous leader, lawyer, and environmental activist Caleb Behn as he strives to balance traditional ways of life while protecting the land from threats such as fracking.

Also in the mix is Jason Bourque's Black Fly, a dark drama about a troubled teenager who seeks refuge with his estranged older brother on an isolated island, only to discover his brother has become a heavy drinker with an explosive temper.

There's also Jim Garrison's The Wingman, about a womanizer who forces his relationship counsellor into helping him bed women, only to learn the true value of male friendship.

Matthew Kowalchuk's Lawrence and Holloman is a nihilistically black comedy of a suicidal accounting clerk who finds a mentor in an eternally optimistic suit salesman.

The festival closes with Patricia Rozema's Into the Forest. Ellen Page and Evan Rachel Wood star as sisters who are forced to fend for themselves in their remote home in the wilderness when a continent-wide power outage takes place.

For tickets or more information, visit the ACT Arts Centre website.