Kenneth J. Harvey’s film of Gerald Squires takes tops honours
‘I Heard the Birch Tree Whisper in the Night’ wins Best Canadian Feature at the Regina International Film Festival
Local filmmaker Kenneth J. Harvey’s film about the late Gerry Squires has won the award for Best Canadian Feature at the Regina International Film Festival.
Harvey was on hand at the festival’s awards gala Saturday night and accepted the award.
“Gerry won. Hazy like a dream,” he wrote on Facebook, later adding, “Congratulations to all the super excited and surprised people involved.”
The film, “I Heard the Birch Tree Whisper in the Night,” features interviews with celebrated artist Squires collected over a couple years, in which he speaks of his upbringing, his beginnings in art, his family, spirituality, and moving back to Newfoundland. There are interviews with family members, friends and fellow artists.
This is the second film festival award for the film — in June, it earned the 2017 Nickel Independent Film Festival’s Audience Choice Award after two sold-out screenings.
A native of Change Islands, Squires moved to Ontario as a child and studied art, eventually coming back to Newfoundland in the early 1960s. He was known for his large, dramatic landscapes, as well as his stained glass, lithography and sculpture pieces.
Squires, who is shown at various stages of illness over the course of the film, also talks about the moment he realized he was dying. He passed away in the fall of 2015, age 77, while the film was still in production, making it particularly poignant.
“I don’t mind dying,” Squires says in the film. “It’s not death that bothers me as much. It’s just being useless.”
“I Heard the Birch Tree Whisper in the Night” debuted at The Rooms in St. John’s last May.
“I wanted to make a film about Gerry, but I wanted to make a bigger film as well, about art and creation and death,” Harvey said at that screening. “In that way, by making a bigger film about those topics, the film … has a much broader reach with people and Gerry will go with it.”
Harvey is an award-winning novelist and filmmaker, whose previous film and TV projects include “It Was Sunny The Day I Killed Her,” “I’m 14 and I Hate the World,” and “The Slattery Street Crockers.”
His novel “Inside” won the BMO Winterset Award, the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and was longlisted for the Giller Prize,” while “Blackstrap Hawco” was also longlisted for the Giller.
“I Heard the Birch Tree Whisper in the Night” will air on CBC TV this fall.
“Gerry won. Hazy like a dream. Congratulations to all the super excited and surprised people involved.” Kenneth J. Harvey Facebook post