Gas Can, ‘folk’ film about racism in Sask., wins audience choice award
A First Nations man walks through a field, seeking out the nearest farmyard after his truck has run out of gas. A gunshot rings out, and a dead white rabbit comes onto the screen.
The scene from Mattias Graham’s short film Gas Can hits home for Saskatchewan viewers.
“This (was filmed) well before Colten Boushie was killed,” said Graham, who directed the film that won best short film and audience choice at Friday night’s Saskatchewan Independent Film Awards (SIFA).
“(That) they’re largely the same set of circumstances is really scary.”
Boushie was shot and killed in August 2016 in Gerald Stanley’s Biggar-area farmyard, where Boushie stopped after allegedly experiencing car trouble.
Through this film, Graham wanted to explore racism in his home province.
“I remember my grandpa saying once, ’I’m no racist, but I would never hire a native man again,’ ” said Graham, who grew up in Regina but now lives in Montreal.
“That kind of paradox — ’I’m not racist, but’ — really stuck with me and I wanted to make something that would explore that contradiction and that kind of cycle of racism.
“We wanted to challenge people and challenge settlers in particular … (but) we tried to do something that’s more like a folk tale.”
“I think that’s what so great about art, is here’s a mean’s of communicating something to us, to an audience, in a different way,” said Gord Pepper, executive director of the Saskatchewan Filmpool Cooperative, which presented the awards.
“Rather than just saying ‘OK, we’re racist…,’ if you put it into a work of art like this, it just becomes so much more potent and powerful to me watching it.”
Shot near Weyburn, Avonlea and Foam Lake, Gas Can is set in rural Saskatchewan in 1977. It stars Simon Moccasin, Candy Fox and Trenyce Yuzicappi as a Cree family travelling to Prince Albert.
When their car runs out of gas, Moccasin’s character seeks help from a farmer he knows, played by Lyndon Bray. The farmer agrees to give the family gas in exchange for some work. In the end, he doesn’t give them all the gas that was promised.
“It’s supposed to be a ‘fair’ transaction from the farmer’s understanding, but these people aren’t starting from the same starting block,” said Graham.
Graham said with help from Moccasin and Fox, he reworked the story to better represent an Indigenous perspective.
“It needed to be tweaked just a little bit more, to bring up and out more of the Indigenous voice,” said Moccasin, who made various suggestions to Graham, including adding a ceremonial song, Meewasin.
“When we include Indigenous voices and ways into western infrastructure, the possibilities for good medicine to reproduce happen tenfold.”
Pepper said Gas Can and other Saskatchewan stories are key to a successful local film industry.
It’s important “believing in our own stories, like Mattias did,” said Pepper.
Graham agreed, “It’s just so important to see yourself on screen and to see your culture and to hear your language.”
His favourite film of the year was another he worked to edit. From Up North is a documentary created by Trudy Stewart and Janine Windolph.
Friday’s awards ceremony and screening was packed, with at least 15 people being turned away at the door, said Pepper.
“I think we’re really getting to that point, that we can actually not only appreciate our own films but actually begin to build excitement,” said Pepper.
Four other films won awards on Friday.
Layton Burton won best student film for Separate Beds; Mark Claxton won best acting for his work in Doktor Ripp; Lucas Frison won best feature film for Talent; and Travis Neufeld won best technical achievement for production design of The Tin Wife.
Gas Can, which was made with Filmpool support and funding from the Saskatchewan Arts Board and an IndieGogo crowdfunding campaign, will be released sometime in 2018.