HOMEGROWN FILM FESTIVAL
Craving more than Netflix? Ashley Martin has some National Film Board suggestions to ease your COVID-19 isolation.
If the novel coronavirus has worn down the novelty of your usual streaming services, the National Film Board may be what you need.
The 81-year-old Canadian public film agency has more than 4,000 titles available to stream for free at NFB.CA.
Saskatchewan is well represented on the site, with films set in Lumsden, Balgonie, Duck Lake and Val Marie, among many other places.
So, for your social-distancing and self-isolating pleasure, here are some new (and old) viewing options.
SOMETHING OLD
If you like true crime, how about Don Mulholland’s film, R.C.M.P. File 1365 – The Connors Case.
“Based on true facts, this short 1947 dramatization depicts the investigation led by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to catch the criminal who murdered a salesman from Regina, Saskatchewan.”
Also from 1947, something a little more, ahem, uplifting: Yorktonite Evelyn Spice and Lawrence Cherry’s short film, Wings of Mercy.
“(It) takes a look at Saskatchewan’s air ambulance service, organized and operated by experienced flyers who provide speedy hospitalization and treatment to the ill and injured. Within 15 minutes of receiving a desperate phone call for help from a remote area, a plane is on its way, guided to the patient with the help of landmarks such as a coal bin or a thin column of smoke on a northern lakeshore.”
SOMETHING NEW
Tasha Hubbard’s 2016 feature-length documentary Birth of A Family tells the story of Saskatoon journalist Betty Ann Adam and her three siblings, as they meet for the first time after being taken from their mother during the Sixties Scoop.
“Betty Ann, Esther, Rosalie, and Ben were only four of the 20,000 Indigenous Canadian children taken from their families between 1955 and 1985, to be either adopted into white families or live in foster care. As the four siblings piece together their shared history, their connection deepens, and their family begins to take shape.”
Hubbard, who is from Peepeekisis First Nation and is based in Saskatoon, has three films on the NFB site. Her newest film, nîpawistamâsowin: We Will Stand Up, about Colten Boushie’s
death, is available through the NFB’S Campus subscription (which costs $29.95 per year).
SOMETHING SHORT
Denis Nokony directed and animated The Giant, while Ken Mitchell’s script tells a little story about a large man. The 1987 film, clocking in at 2:34, is about Edouard Beaupre, who was known as the Willow Bunch Giant.
“At 2.5 m (8-foot-3), he was the tallest Canadian in history. Born in 1881 in a small Métis community south of Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, his life was tragically cut short in 1904 while he was ‘on display’ at the St. Louis World’s Fair.”
A little longer, at six minutes, is Shipbuilder, by Stephen Surjik (who grew up in Regina).
Mitchell wrote the script for this one, too.
“This film recreates the true story of Tom Sukanen, an eccentric Finnish immigrant who homesteaded in Saskatchewan in the 1920s and 1930s. Sukanen spent 10 years building and moving overland a huge iron ship that was to carry him back to his native Finland. The ship never reached water.”
QUELQUE CHOSE EN FRANCAIS
Scott Parker’s 2016 mini-doc Les Fransaskois is part of his series The Grasslands Project, which includes 10 films on NFB. This one is mostly in French, with English subtitles.
“The southern Prairies are overwhelmingly anglophone, yet a strong and vibrant francophone population persists in the small rural communities that dot this landscape. Gravelbourg is considered the centre of French language and culture in the region, and this short film hears from the Fransaskois (a term combining French and Saskatchewan) on the challenges and future of their unique prairie culture.”
SOMETHING SPORTY
Set in Eston, John Howe directed and stars in the 1964 10-minute film Gone Curling.
“This short comedy follows a visitor to the Prairies as he slowly discovers the cult of curling. At first, our protagonist doesn’t seem to understand why everyone is so crazy about curling, but once he studies up, buys the right gear, and gets a few lessons, he can’t be stopped.”
SOMETHING FORGOTTEN
Rex Tasker’s 1973 documentary Regina Telebus “offers a report on Regina’s successful experiment with dial-a-bus, a flexible service midway between a bus and a taxi.”
It may have been a successful experiment in the early 1970s, but the program ended within a decade of its inception, as it wound up costing as much as fixed bus routes (according to a Leader-post editorial from June 18, 1981).
SOMETHING REMEMBERED
Who could forget Saskatchewan’s involvement in LSD testing?
It is a storied history. Connie Littlefield’s 2002 documentary, Hofmann’s Potion, includes interviews with Weyburn Hospital doctors Abram Hoffer, Humphry Osmond and Duncan Blewett.
“This documentary offers a compassionate, open-minded look at LSD and how it fits into our world ... the drug was hailed as a way to treat forms of addiction and mental illness.”