Stryking cinema
FilmExchange scales down — but still highlights the best of Canadian film
Peter Vesuwalla



Easily the single most spectacular event in the history of the National Screen Institute’s FilmExchange Canadian Film Festival was the premiere of Noam Gonick’s Hey Happy! in 2001.

Gonick arrived at the Garrick Theatre with an entourage of ravers, go-go dancers and transgendered party people in the back of a garbage truck, dazzling the crowd outside.

“Watching the film in a theatre with Gonick et al. was like going to see the Rocky Horror Picture Show, where the goings-on in the audience were more entertaining than anything onscreen,” I wrote in my review of that film. “They should tour with the film like a travelling carnival.”

Gonick, whose follow-up, Stryker, is closing the festival this year, remembers the event as the best screening his film had.

“How are we going to top that?” he asks. “I don’t know. You can’t. You’re in Portage Place, what are you gonna do?”

Then again, Gonick doesn’t have to top himself. His new film about gang warfare in Winnipeg’s North End speaks for itself this time around. It’s a more focused effort from a more mature filmmaker.

“I want to say I feel like I’ve grown up a lot since Hey Happy! came out, but then you’re going to want to know how,” says Gonick. “I don’t really know if I have (grown up), or if I really want to. It feels like we’re going to do exactly what we did in 2001, which is just end the festival with a huge bang and unleash another epic on the world from Winnipeg.”

The film is about the Indian Posse, under its old leader, Mama Ceece (Deena Fontaine), who gets out of prison and resolves to unite the gang and take over the streets.

Ceece’s rhetoric explains that, through the unity of the gang, natives are effectively taking back their land. The opening credit sequence, depicting natives being driven from their homes and forced onto reserves and into residential schools, echoes the sentiment.

“You gotta go where the drama is, right?” says Gonick. “I think the Indian Posse is the most interesting phenomenon in Winnipeg right now.

“I’m trying to talk about what’s essential and unique and pure about Winnipeg. We have a generation of kids who are bashing back against the system, and I think it’s very exciting. I want to document it. I want to chronicle it.

“I think gangs have an important message to tell — a message of resistance, of fighting back. And I think it’s a fight that’s been going on since Winnipeg and Manitoba were originally colonized. I see a continuity between the original wars and battles and skirmishes when this area was settled and native kids getting blown away for carrying screwdrivers in the North End.”

The film received a standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival, and is slated to play at New York’s Museum of Modern Art on March 20.

“I don’t think anyone will appreciate this as much as Winnipeg,” says Gonick. “There’s so much rhetoric out there about making a film which is universal and, believe me, I was the first to buy into that. I think the film should be seen around the world. But I think Winnipeggers will have a special relationship with the film, because it’s all our stories.

“That sounds so retarded but it’s true. I think we all lived through this time, and I think it has a special effect on you when you see a movie about a time you live in and a place you live in.”

While Gonick continues to move on to larger projects, FilmExchange itself has become smaller.

Since its inception in 1999, the festival has garnered a reputation as a laid-back affair for filmmakers looking to relax and enjoy themselves without constant pressure to push projects, swing deals and stuff screenplays under the bathroom stalls of the country’s movers and shakers.

But last year’s FilmExchange was a day longer and included nearly twice the number of feature films.

The program is still strong. Besides Stryker, NSI has lined up Carole Laure’s CQ2, which Quentin Tarantino reportedly went out of his way to catch during the Cannes Film Festival; Ruba Nadda’s Sabah, with star Arsinée Khanjian in attendance; and It’s All Gone Pete Tong, Mike Dowse’s follow-up to his cult hit Fubar.

The Best of Secter and the Rest of Secter, Joel Secter’s documentary about his playwright uncle David, will also be given its world premiere at FilmExchange. A midnight screening of Cassandra Nicolaou’s Show Me, starring Katherine Isabelle (Ginger Snaps), and a Saturday afternoon screening of Le Déclin de l’empire américain round out the list.

A few notable Canadian films, such as Don McKellar’s Childstar and Oliver Assayas’ Clean, are conspicuously absent.

Still, the NSI has put together a promising program, beginning with the annual SnowScreen event held once again at the Forks. The outdoor screening of shorts from the National Film Board, the NSI ZeD Drama Prize and the Winnipeg Film Group has been a hit in the past — especially as the films are projected onto a huge ice sculpture.

“This year instead of having SnowScreen on the Tuesday night of festival week, we decided to incorporate it (into Wednesday’s program),” says fest director Liz Janzen. “It’s our opening night event this year, so it’s replacing two features that would have run there last year.

“Also, we scaled back on the number of midnight screenings this year to make the schedule a little more friendly for the delegates, so people aren’t staying up so late and still trying to get to the industry events the next morning.”

The usual workshops and panel discussions have also been streamlined a bit, focusing more on the NSI’s programs, according to industry centre co-ordinator Brendon Sawatzky.

“I was thinking along the lines that in the past couple of years we’ve been doing some panels for a very specific audience,” Sawatzky says. “We wanted to open it up a bit more to a lot of our local emerging filmmakers.”

The discussions this year will focus more on producing shorts, features, television and global marketing. There will also be discussions on new media topics such as computer games and HDTV.

Peter Vesuwalla talks movies with Terry MacLeod every Friday at 7:45 a.m. on CBC Radio One 990.

For more info see our What’s Up entertainment listings.