Vice has its virtues on Bravo!'s In Short series

MONTREAL - Nothing like a little sin to inspire Canadian filmmakers and actors. So, imagine how fired up our artists can become when confronted with a lot of sin.

In Short is an eight-part series focusing on the seven deadly sins. It kicks off with quite the bang Wednesday at 10 p.m. on Bravo. Kudos to the broadcaster simply for providing Canadian talent with a showcase, let alone undertaking such an ambitious project. Each hour-long episode is chock full of short films, featuring an array of established filmmakers and actors as well as up-and-comers.

The sin series begins with the May 4 peek into pride, and its opposite, humility. (In the interests of fair play, the producers have included a corresponding virtue to go along with the seven deadly vices.)

Over the coming weeks, viewers will be treated to examinations of envy and kindness, lust and chastity, greed and charity, wrath and patience, sloth and diligence, and gluttony and temperance – the latter an unknown term here in Sin City.

The eighth and final episode, to air June 22, will be a sort of greatest-hits compendium and will feature the Oscar-nominated short I Met the Walrus as well as a two-minute offering by homeboy and Oscar-nominated director Denis Villeneuve (Incendies).

Although only excerpts of some of the films will be broadcast over the next eight weeks, all the shorts in their entirety will be available for viewing on www.bravofact.com (even for Montrealers who don’t have Bravo as part of their cable package or who have missed an episode).

The Pride/Humility segment starts on just the right note as Montreal director/actor Joe Cobden plays an ego-crazed filmmaker who turns the camera on himself. Gazing into a mirror, he proclaims: “I love me. It’s amazing what you can learn through my eyes. I’m giving you something.” Cobden then auditions 40 actors he found on Craigslist for a starring role in a film to be called, appropriately, Greed. But can anyone measure up to the impeccable qualities of its director?

A slew of other actors – Nicholas Campbell, Liane Balaban and Dan Levy – quickly learn that pride comes before a fall in the shorts that follow on the opening instalment of the series.

One of the more arresting films in this segment is My Father Joe, set in Montreal in the mid-1940s. This is a son’s heartfelt tribute to a man who managed to evade the Nazis in France and bring his family to this city. But the dad, an expert maker of handbags, finds it difficult to adjust to his new home. It’s that pride factor rearing its head again.

Offering commentary on this sin are actors who can attest to the prevalence of pride in their business. Jason Priestley, for example, declares that vanity is the engine that drives Hollywood. Gordon Pinsent, on the other hand, stresses how humility is vital if one hopes to hang in for the long haul – as he has certainly done.

The latter’s daughter, actress Leah Pinsent, doesn’t necessarily concur with her dad: “Some do think that humility is actually the sin and that vanity is a virtue.”

The Envy/Kindness episode, airing May 11, begins with an absolutely inspired piece by beloved maverick director Bruce McDonald. A frustrated architect watches – enviously – as a flock of birds flies, perhaps south for the winter. So he decides he’d like to fly – without an airplane – and devises the most primitive and unorthodox plan to achieve flight. It involves a giant slingshot and would certainly give pause to those pioneering brothers Wright.

Also memorable in this segment is Alex and the Ghosts, a piece that will definitely resonate with local hockey fans. An animated homage to the Habs, the short sees the good guys locked in battle with the cursed Boston Bruins. And as some had always suspected, the ghosts of Canadiens teams past come to the rescue of the home squad. Which begs the question: Where were those ghosts when we needed them last week?