A product of NIFCO’s legendary Picture Start program, Ian Foster’s Keystone will screen at the Nickel Independent Film Festival on Thursday June 16th. This will be its hometown screening premiere, but, the short has already earned acclaim on the film festival circuit.

It was, for example, named one of the 10 best shorts of the year by the Calgary International Film Festival, and Des Walsh was nominated for best actor in the Vaughan Film Fest recently. In the film, Des Walsh’s character, Jack, is struggling with memory loss. So he visits Keystone, an organization with an unlikely mandate: making your most important memories truly unforgettable.

Jack begins to recount these moments in his interview, but rather than being a series of highlights, they reveal the bond he formed with one particular woman, and the importance he has placed on their story. Here is the film’s trailer:

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Today, Foster and his team have released the promo video below. “Originally, in the script, there was a scene that contained a song that two of the characters discuss offhandedly,” Foster says, of Bob Dylan’s “Simple Twist of Fate.”

“But not having the - ahem - budget for that, I struck on the idea to write a song and have my pal Graydon James (of increasingly busy Toronto Band The Young Novelists) sing the vocal as “Jeff Elliot” - the character Jody Richardson played in my first film, One More Song. Not key to the story of Keystone, but a fun easter egg. The song’s chorus is the film’s tagline, ‘Who Holds You Together?’ and the verses reference scenes in the film.”

You can hear the whole song, “Before Evelyn” here:

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They decided to put the song to use in a promo vid for the film; Foster collected footage of friends during his Canadian tour last summer (he’s also a noted musician). The footage aimed to visually answer the line in the chorus / the film’s tagline, “Who Holds You Together?”