Edmonton firm’s documentary gets Emmy Award nod
The Great Human Odyssey nominated in science and technology doc category
Surely one of the most gorgeous and fascinating documentaries yet made by an Edmonton production company, Niobe Thompson’s The Great Human Odyssey is up for an Emmy — TV’s equivalent of an Oscar, Grammy or Tony.
While the dramatically scored series about the tenuous journey of human survival played on CBC’s The Nature of Things, it also ran on PBS’s Nova documentary series in the United States. It’s there Odyssey earned the Outstanding Science and Technology Documentary Emmy nod.
“This is our first,” Thompson said on his way to the Wi-Fi-free wilds of northern Saskatchewan, where he is working on a documentary about man’s ancient and ongoing relationship with horses. He said Odyssey is in the competition “with films by David Lynch, Werner Herzog and David Attenborough,” and said being on the list is “career exploding.”
Odyssey, where the enthusiastic anthropologist climbed cliffs to gather eggs and held his breath underwater for nearly five minutes, is in Thompson’s signature first-person style of “I had to know!” immersive investigation. Using speculative re-creations of early humanity and stunning drone photography — not to mention a largely Alberta crew — it’s already won two Canadian Screen Awards and six Rosies.
This isn’t the first Emmy action Edmonton’s seen. In 2003, for instance, city filmmaker Michael Jorgensen won a long-form documentary Emmy for Battle of the X-Planes, a Nova special about fighter planes. Also, the “technology is magic, not evil!” holiday Apple advertisement shot on Ada Boulevard and at Cloverdale rink — made by American company TBWA — took an Emmy in 2014.
But there’s something particularly gratifying about a series produced by an Edmontonian asking, “How the hell did we get here?” getting international attention. The shiny statues will be given out at the 38th annual News and Documentary Emmy Awards at the Jazz at Lincoln Center Oct. 5.
THEY’RE INSIDE AND OUT
And just like that, another art gallery snaps opens in Edmonton — with a metropolitan vibe focusing on street art, graffiti writers and more.
Fresh Canvas Gallery at 10340 134 St. in Old Glenora is run by Trevor Peters and Annaliza Toledo. They’re the pair behind Rust Magic Mural Festival, which is currently 90 per cent through the process of adding 20 new outdoor wall murals to the city.
Last year and this, on both sides of the river, they partnered with spray-can artists locally and from around the globe, bringing the total to about 35 new mural walls under Rust Magic’s banner alone.
One of this year’s fan favourites by Instagram likes is by San Francisco’s Carly Ealey — a beautiful blue face, almost seemingly underwater, on the north side of Chez Pierre Cabaret at 10040 105 St.
During the painting process, the wall kept leaking, “around the eyes,” Toledo noted. Below the face, Ealey left in the blue drip lines, which are mirrored above in the pink tentacles of a pink jellyfish floating off into the sky. It’s magnificent, and I strongly encourage you to make your way around the city and check off the spots on the Rust Magic mural map.
Although they’ve had the gallery space rented for while, the group art show Magic & Decay was the grand opening, fulfilling one of the caveats of participating in the festival — every artist had to contribute to the show. Ealey has a beautiful little triangular-framed portrait there, the painted-on subway maps of NYC by Wane COD vibrate with authenticity and the work of John James makes me blush. Barcelona’s KRAM, who’s beautified urban spaces worldwide, has a spectacular alligator on the wall, too — and you can see his latest work with Eledu outdoors on the north side of Lingnan (10582 104 St.). They’ve also got one from last year just south of A&W on Whyte Avenue.
Fresh Canvas Gallery is “catch me if you can style” right now, Toledo jokes, by appointment at realfreshcanvas.com — but they’re working on regular hours as they move into a standard, every-two-months rotation of new works from all over the planet, including here.
PRIDE ON STAGE AT K-DAYS
A quick tip de la chapeau to K-Days, which had its first official Pride Day at its smaller stage Friday. Amid the giant stuffed Pikachus and screaming rides, Rae Spoon opened up by saying they’d like to be friends with the prime minister, that he’s done good things — but there’s still the small matter of the broken Kinder Morgan pipeline promise, and so the song You Lied was sent his way for now.
American house music and dance star Crystal Waters was up next, a pair of outrageously energetic dancers flanking her as she sang 100% Pure Love and Gypsy Woman. CeCe Peniston and Betty Who had the crowd dancing in rainbow socks and posing one by one to be the ‘I’ in the giant word PRIDE sitting stage right, all this visible from the adjacent beer garden where a can cost only $8.
Speaking of drinking and music — and what else is there, really? — when the Edmonton Folk Music Festival announced it was expanding its beer garden capacity to 3,500 patrons from 2,300 in an effort to slay those ridiculous lineup dragons, the nerd in me wanted to know what that was going to look like.
Festival producer Terry Wickham over at the folkfest asked for a map from his crew, and here it is if you’re interested, showing how it will interact with Stage 1, poking to the north.
It’s a great response to a longtime gripe, squeaky wheel and all, and will change the nature of the beer gardens a little — that place where so many happy annual reunions take place in the golden sun.
The festival runs Aug. 10 to 13. Weekend passes are no longer available, and overall, said Wickham, tickets are selling about the same as last year — about 90 per cent gone at this point. Sales of weekend transferable passes have dropped considerably, but this is a direct consequence of more singleday passes being released. If you’re looking to buy tickets for Saturday or Sunday, these are getting scarce, so now might be the time. More info and tickets are at the festival website.
See you there — let’s promise not to trip over each other in advance!