The Alchemy of ALFF
ALFF has evolved into a two-week, 100-plus film event. There are 45 feature- and mid-length films, over 50 short films, live concerts…
Photography and Film
Yukon is the home for many talented film and photography professionals and enthusiasts. Most often, there are opportunities for Yukoners to participate in Yukon Film Society programming. Interestingly, Yukon hosts many film festivals with the larger events primarily hosted in Whitehorse and Dawson City. Yukon landscapes and beauty, certainly attracts many professional photographers to our community. What’s Up Yukon, Yukon’s arts magazine is a fantastic place to discover local events, programs and of course, to view local photographers works.
Whitehorse Photo Club Q4 Showcase
The Whitehorse Photo Club has submitted its final showcase submissions for 2022! Check back in 2023 for even more amazing images!
A Movie Fit For A Woman King
The Woman King centers around the victories and losses of the Agojie in 1823 when slave trading had reached its peak in West Africa.
Whitehorse Photo Club’s Amazing Q3 Submissions
What’s Up Yukon and The Whitehorse Photo Club is pleased to showcase local photographers’ incredible work with these Q3 submissions.
Thor: Love and Thunder Gives Us Much To Love
“Thor: God of Thunder” is a very-impressive title, indeed. In Norse mythology this hammer-wielding god was also associated with storms, lightning, strength, fertility and sacred groves.
Voices Across The Water
Voices Across the Water follows two master boat builders as they practice their art and find a way back to balance and healing.
Whitehorse Photography Club Showcase
Welcome to the Q2 submissions from the Whitehorse Photography Club featuring three outstanding images by Gerry Steer, Walter Gutowski and Geoff Muldoon. The photo composition by Gutowski was one of the group’s submissions to the North Shore Photography Competition where the Whitehorse Photography club placed 12th out of 29 clubs. Check out the Q3 submission …
A Review of Death on the Nile: When Glamour and Murder Collide
British director/actor Kenneth Branagh brings the grisly Agatha Christie novel Death on the Nile to life. Released in North America Feb 11
Whitehorse Photography Club: Wildlife photos
Whitehorse Photography Club’s entries for “Celebration of Nature” photo contest. Whitehorse finished 5th of 20 clubs with147 points.
New Yukon Media Funds
Media funding for filmmakers has four new funding programs: Predevelopment, Development Fund, Media Production Fund and Training Fund.
ALFF 2022 goes online
A few of the the diverse offerings at the 2022 Available Light Film Festival (ALFF) happening online, and maybe a bit in-person.
The Yukon Theatre opens its doors after a two-year shutdown
Folks are excited that the Yukon Film Society has re-opened the Yukon Theatre on Wood Street after its former owners shut it down.
Theatre in the Bush 2021
Ramshackle Theatre in the Bush “I’m already out in the yard,” Fidler says. “I’ve got my chainsaw out and I’m clearing the paths.”
The pandemic creates the space to share stories in a new way
As the Ice Melts is a project that takes the form of two videos which present stories and poetry on the theme of our changing environment. The work has been put together by Bielawski, Lilley and Champagne and Aishihik First Nations storyteller, Ron Chambers.
Enjoy Dawson City films from the cozy comfort of your couch
Ever since Available Light Film Festival launched 19 years ago, it has brought to its audiences stories of different ways of life and different perspectives. This year, four films from Dawson City will be featured for online streaming across Canada.
Silver Linings
Artists and Parks Canada heritage interpreters, Justin Apperley (left) and Miriam Behman, with their field camera Photography played a key role in the history and mythology of the Klondike Gold Rush. The photographer’s lens bore witness to the thrum and commotion of the stampede, along with the turmoil it wrought. The impacts of this era …
The appeal of terrible Christmas movies
December brings three things; colder weather, drier skin and the inevitable onslaught of terrible Christmas movies.
Lesson learned?
Allan Code directed Pandemic at the End of the World in order to bring a historical perspective to the current global reality.
An interview with Naomi Mark
Meet Yukon filmmaker Naomi Marks: I write budgets, develop content and scripts, direct documentary, fiction and commercial content, and edit.
A delayed Short Film Festival will happen in October
After a few months of working at home, Dan Sokolowski is finally back in his southeast corner space at the KIAC (or Dënäkär Zho) Building. There, he’s busy downloading videos for this year’s late version of the 2020 Dawson City International Short Film Festival, which will take place over two weekends in October.
Conservation Photography
I have a confession. I work for CPAWS Yukon and I’ve never been into the Peel Watershed. (The small exception is the time I canoed the Blackstone River when I was a kid). Still, I’ve never hiked the jagged ridgelines of the Mackenzie Mountains, or admired the crimson-speckled stones on the shore of the Snake …
Outbreak
As we wade deeper and deeper into the Pandemic, it’s time to search a little deeper into a movie that might hit a shade closer to home.
Online: 2040 Screening – World Environmental Day
Director Damon Gameau (That Sugar Film) embarks on a journey to explore what the future could look like by the year 2040 if we simply embraced the best solutions already available to us to improve our planet and shifted them rapidly into the mainstream.
Capturing a significant moment in history
It all started when Yellowknife-based photographer Pat Kane posted a tongue-in-cheek Instagram post in response to the new reality of social distancing associated with COVID-19: “So much for my photography business, I guess I’ll have to start taking photos of people through their windows.”
Onward: A Review
Good news my quarantined friends, I know some of us were getting a little worried that we might find the end screen of our screening services. Well, it appears at least a few of the big ones have heard those concerns and are starting to move theatrical releases to digital media. Today let’s take a …
Togo
On a cold day, cuddled up under blankets, this is the perfect escapism to enjoy with some loved ones.
Spoiled for choice
When coming up with a description of the Available Light Film Festival (ALFF) for the uninitiated, Andrew Connors, the festival director and artistic director of the Yukon Film Society, highlights the festival’s diversity and character. “It’s an intimate festival that celebrates northern, Indigenous and Canadian cinema with some international spice thrown in for good measure, …
Bizarre ice
A rare combination of crystal clear ice, a shallow, and variably coloured lake bottom, and a bright sunlight reflection set the stage for this unique environment of surreal dimensional ice phenomena.
Netflix and Christmas
Well folks, with the holidays fast descending upon us and many lamenting the lack of a decent theatre in the Yukon, I know what you’re all thinking—how am I going to get my movie fix? Don’t worry, with all the streaming services that exist today, one need never leave home to get their share of …
Silver screenings
Director Tasha Hubbard’s nîpawistamâsowin: We Will Stand Up, weaves a narrative exploring the history of colonialism in the Prairies, around Gerald Stanley’s trial around the death of Colton Bushie The Yukon Film Society (YFS) aims to bring limited release theatrical films to local audiences every winter through its Available Light Cinema (ALC) series. On Aug. …
Outpost is in this year
Neil Macdonald (left), Dave Hamelin and Jayden Soroka formed Outpost 31 to create a full-service production company in the Yukon. Their success resulted in an invitation from Telefilm Canada to attend the 2019 Cannes Film Festival in France. In 2018, the Yukon saw vast growth within the local film industry. One of the reasons for …
In pursuit of the perfect shot
The Porcupine Caribou Herd is thought to have the longest mammal migration on the planet. The image I wanted to capture is hard to describe, but while doing research on the caribou, I saw videos of them in winter, migrating in long lines of thousands. It reminded me of images of the Klondike Gold Rush a hundred years ago, where there was a line of 400 men following a trail straight up the mountain.
Movies with a femi-twist
“Intersectional feminism”—what is it and what does it mean? The Yukon Status of Women Council (YSWC) is helping Yukoners learn more with an interactive (feminist) film screening of Bend it like Beckham. The event, which will act as a fundraiser, will take place at the Beringia Centre on May 9 at 6:30 p.m. The event is …
Focus on photos
The Air North First Light Image Festival will compete with a Steven Page concert this year, but organizer Mark Kelly said ticket sales are already going strong for the photography fest, now in its third year. “We’re not sold out yet, but as of (April 8) the workshops are 70 per cent sold out and …
Bohemian Rhapsody
Bohemian Rhapsody is a 134-minute chronicle of the formative years of Queen, and a loosely based bio on the late Freddie Mercury. It is directed by Brian Singer and stars Ramie Malek, Lucy Boynton and Gwilym Lee. First Thoughts … It’s all the greatest hits of Queen … how can you not love this. The …
Hip hip hooray! for local filmmaker Lulu Keating …
When the Klondike Institute of Art and Culture (KIAC) in Dawson City put out a call for a members’ exhibit with the theme of “The Age of Selfies,” local filmmaker Lulu Keating decided to submit a work about her recent hip replacement. “Anger was part of my recovery from hip replacement,” said the former Nova …
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Indian Horse
Indian Horse will be screened at the Atlin BC Globe Theatre on Thursday, July 5, 2018 at 7 PM as part of the Atlin Arts & Music Festival.
A rowdy night of feminism and tornadoes
The Yukon Status of Women Council (YSWC), in partnership with Whitehorse Blue Bin Recycling, will celebrate “badass women” by screening the over-the-top, action-packed film Twister.
Get a feature shot at first light
Jay Gough of Nikon Canada, along with Trisha Gillings of Panasonic Canada (not pictured), will be on site all day with trade show style booths demonstrating their latest equipment, and delivering “Tech Talks” over the lunch hour It’s springtime in the Yukon and our days are getting longer, Yukoners are preparing for the summer season …
Dawson City International Short Film Festival is downloaded for its 18th Year
Screenings for the Dawson City International Short Film Festival began in October, with five or six people meeting twice a week to view what would eventually add up to between 400 and 500 submissions for the Easter weekend festival.
Sharing a love for film
There are meetings. There is paperwork. There are grants to apply for and cheques to sign. But, for Jessica Hall, being the president of the Yukon Film Society is all about… people. “The thing I really like about being on the board is my fellow board members and the staff,” she said. “They are all …
Let there be light
The 2018 Available Light Film Festival (ALFF) features a strong Indigenous presence in this year’s films – and in the audience, with more than 40 guests attending from Outside.
It’s so bad, it’s good
In honour of James Franco’s upcoming film release of The Disaster Artist, I figured I had to take a look back at where this film actually started, and that meant watching The Room (2003). The Disaster Artist is a dramatization of The Room. The Room is written, directed, produced and stars Tommy Wiseau and is …
Off the page and onto the screen
Get your cameras rolling and warm up your gear because the annual Yukon 48-Hour Filmmaking Challenge starts on Friday, January 12. It’s a yearly team-up between the Klondike Institute of Arts and Culture in Dawson City and the Yukon Film Society in Whitehorse. The event gives participants two days to complete a short film with …
Lots of condos, no place to live
From chic, clean condos, to drafty old Chevy vans, the 2017 documentary film Vancouver: No Fixed Address brings you the residential experiences of, in the words of F. Scott Fitzgerald “the inexhaustible variety of life” in Canada’s most expensive housing market.
Late Fall Season in the Kluane National Park
The colourful fall season is over very early in the Yukon – much earlier than in my home country, Switzerland. But I found that the month of October is also very attractive for an amateur photographer like me, even if the coloured leaves have almost all fallen to the ground. Here are some suggestions for …
Quietly Connecting
“For the first – I don’t know how many hundred thousand – years of human life, (when we were out on the Savanna learning about the forest) silence was essential to our survival. So, silence is our natural milieu, and the farther we get away from silence the more we lose our humanity.” — Maggie …
The Hitman’s Bodyguard
The Hitman’s Bodyguard is a buddy cop action movie written by Tom O’Connor and directed by Patrick Hughes (the same inspired genius who brought us Expendables 3 and The Making of Expendables 3.) The 118 minute flick hosts a star studded cast, including Gary Oldman, Ryan Reynolds, Samuel L. Jackson and Salma Hayek. First Thoughts: …
Stay for the Conversation
“Prepare to be moved, disturbed, engaged. Come for the film. Stay for the conversation,” says Canadian author and media critic Geoff Pevere. Pevere is director of programs for Rendezvous with Madness, a Toronto based film festival focused on movies that delve into the world of mental health and addiction. The festival is travelling across Canada …
Cars, Guns and a Heart-pumping Soundtrack
Baby Driver is a popcorn action movie written and directed by Edgar Wright. The 113 minute flick hosts a star studded cast including Kevin Spacey, Jamie Fox and Jonn Hamm. First Thoughts: What did I just watch? Seriously I have been here for almost two hours and I have no idea what just happened. This …
Trainwreck
A flawed character struggles to unravel the threads of a pivotal event, though hobbled by some impediment – amnesia, maybe, or being stranded in a foreign country where everyone speaks an unfamiliar language. It’s a dramatic device of my favourite genre, but suspense thrillers are few and far between these days. In The Girl on …
Celebrating Film During the Arts and Music Festival
There’s going to be a new projector at the Globe Theatre this year when the Available Light Film Festival (ALFF) takes its films to the Atlin Arts and Music Festival. Andrew Connors, artistic director of ALFF, says this will give a sharper image than previous years, but he notes that no showing at the Globe …
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Amazon Princess in the Midst of WWI
DC’s latest and greatest blockbuster Wonder Woman: Rise of the Warrior is directed by Patty Jenkins and written by Allan Heinberg, Zack Snyder and Jason Fuchs. This movie is 141 minutes long and has been full of buzz and controversy. Is this movie brimming with female empowerment that will rattle the course of western society? …
A Rag-Tag Team of Do-Gooders
The Marvel Cinematic Universe strikes again with Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, released April 19. Written and Directed by James Gunn with an additional writing credit to Dan Abnett, this sequel runs for an hour and 36 minutes and spans several solar systems as we take a closer look at Marvel’s rag tag team …
Life Lessons Through the Lens
You can learn a lot by studying animals, just ask local photographer Minnie Clarke. Her passion for capturing northern creatures was borne on a remote trapline in Johnson’s Crossing, Yukon. Clarke has been photographing Yukon’s wilderness for 20 years, but one stunning subject in particular is the focal point of many of her studies: the …
Free Fire
Free Fire is a new run at old-school shoot out movies, it is an R rated flick written by Amy Jump and directed by Ben Wheatley. This 90 minute romp has an all-star cast including Enzo Cilenti, Armie Hammer and Cillian Murphy. First Thoughts: Fun, just a heck of a lot of fun. This movie …
The Problem with ‘Right’ and ‘Wrong’
The film Hell or High Water is a modern western written by Taylor Sheridan and directed by David Mackenzie. This hour and forty two minute flick stars Jeff Bridges, Chris Pine and Ben Foster. Initial impressions… wow, just wow. It is rare these days to see a movie that truly gives characters time to develop …
A Southern Story with a Northern Connection
The OUT North Queer Film Festival brings film lovers an American documentary with a local twist on April 9. Southwest of Salem tells the true story of four young lesbian women accused of sexually assaulting two underage girls and using them in satanic rituals in the early 1990s in San Antonio,Texas. They were wrongfully convicted …
Power Couple
It’s a truth universally acknowledged that when it comes to Pride and Prejudice, once is not enough. For acolytes, Jane Austen’s best-selling novel of the early 19th century invites reading again and again – and again. The same applies to the miniseries produced by BBC in 1995 and available on DVD at Whitehorse Public Library. …
It’s All About the Visuals
Yukon designers, models and photographers work in tandem to showcase the “haute-est” trends from the coolest people in the North and, according to photographer Christian Kuntz, it’s all about the pictures. From blue jeans and bush boots to stilettos and silk, Kuntz re-interprets fashion through a lens. Born in France and schooled as a furniture …
King of Chicago
The mayor of Chicago is mad as a hatter, but the trains run on time. Having been mayor for a couple of decades, Tom Kane is the ultimate power player; he has a lot to say about which councillors get elected and he wields that power like a mace to get them on board with …
Life After Tragedy
When asked about the message she hopes to convey in the film, Ohama responded, “It’s a moving and inspiring story of how people find real joy, love and meaning in life again… even in the face of extreme loss. In our busy, cluttered world filled with stress… we tend to forget how to see and …
Live by these words and don’t see the movie
Warcraft: The Beginning is an epic fantasy film that released on digital download September 13, 2016. It’s based on a popular series of video games by Blizzard Entertainment. This two hour movie is directed by Duncan Jones and written by Duncan Jones and Charles Leavitt. Full disclosure: I am a huge fan of the fantasy …
Yukon Stories
Arctic Secrets Directed by Allan Code, a Whitehorse based filmmaker, Arctic Secrets is a symphony of immensely strong and surprisingly fragile elements that comprise the wilderness of the Yukon Territory. Stunning imagery abounds in this visual adventure through its waters, mountains, and forests. Focusing mainly on the more arctic regions of the territory, Code and …
So Close, But Still a Galaxy Far, Far Away
Rogue One is the first of Disney’s anthology stories set within the Star Wars universe. This flick comes in at two hours and 14 minutes and is directed by Gareth Edwards. For those of you unaware, Rogue One takes place after Revenge of the Sith and before A New Hope, detailing the story of how …
Self Love
From Jan. 26 to Feb. 25, the ODD Gallery in Dawson City will be featuring an exhibition called The Golden Age of Selfies. The exhibition will showcase work submitted by members of the Klondike Institute of Art and Culture (KIAC). The idea of taking a selfie might feel modern, but the selfie itself has been …
Epiphanies
“It’s like everybody knows the story,” muses a reporter to her colleague. “Except us.” The journalists of “Spotlight,” a legendary investigative unit at the Boston Globe, won a Pulitzer for a series of revelatory articles on the cover-up of child abuse in the Catholic Church, published in 2002. But as one of the characters ruefully …
Laughter, Tears, Curtain
It was the short, sharp shock heard round the world – eventually. But in the world of Topsy-Turvy, Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado is being staged for the very first time, and there’s a lot at stake. Before Topsy-Turvy, released in 1999 and available on DVD at Whitehorse Public Library, Mike Leigh was a respected …
Yukon 48 hour Film Challenge Back Again this Year
If you’ve always wanted the challenge of making a film in a short amount of time, here’s your chance. The Yukon 48 Hour Film Challenge, hosted by the Klondike Institute of Art and Culture (KIAC) and the Yukon Film Society, will once again be offering filmmakers of all ages a chance to test their mettle …
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What to do on Sunday Night
In the 2016 film Captain Fantastic, Ben Cash (Viggo Mortensen – The Lord of the Rings, A History of Violence), is a father with meticulous survivalist and socialist ideals. He lives live an isolated off-the-grid life in the forests of the Pacific Northwest with his six children. The 2015 documentary Sonita chronicles the heart-wrenching story …
Finessing Filmmaking Skills
There are many excellent training opportunities available to aspiring Yukon filmmakers of all levels, through several different organizations. The Screen Production Yukon Association (SPYA) is one such organization; this winter, it’s launching a new series of two to six hour workshops, called micro-workshops, offering specialization in select areas of the field. “A lot of filmmakers …
A Study in Sound
Take a moment to think about your favourite film. What is the soundtrack like? Besides music, what other sorts of sounds are used to create a unique world? Subtle, yet essential, soundtracks can become afterthought in the visually-oriented world of film, particularly at an amateur level. The workshop will take place on Nov. 7 and …
Welcome to the Party, Pal
“The story is ridiculous – ludicrous.” That’s director John McTiernan blithely dismissing the plot of one of the most successful thrillers of the past 30 years. Reservations about the plot aside, McTiernan had something particular in mind for this movie: it should be a joyful thrill ride. The result was Die Hard, and it’s a …
And now for something completely cifferent …
Straddling comedy, horror and drama genres, Anders Thomas Jensen’s 2015 film Men & Chicken is on the brink of insanity. It is certain to be any dark comedy director’s dark comedy; Jensen has crafted a unique blend of laconic humour, deadpan wit and outlandish setting. Upon learning from their father, posthumously, that they are not …
About arrivals and departures
The epic saga of immigration is brought to human scale in Brooklyn, a critically acclaimed film based on the novel by Irish writer Colm Tóibín, with a screenplay by Nick Hornby. Released in 2015 and available on DVD at the Whitehorse Public Library, Brooklyn follows a young woman who finds herself part of the Irish …
Finding the Right Flick
Suicide Squad is DC Comics’ latest attempt to capture comic book magic on the silver screen. This flick comes in just over two hours and is written and directed by David Ayer. Full disclosure: I am a fan of the Suicide Squad comics and though I have not collected them in some time I am …
Future Past
Young Alex DeLarge and his gang of droogs aren’t choosy about whose lives they wreak mindless havoc on. From the down-at-the-heels to the well-heeled, the young thugs attack indiscriminately, mercilessly and irrationally. One thing leads to another and Alex is charged with murder and sentenced to prison. He’s selected for the fictional Ludivico technique, a …
Pop-Up Drive-In
Movie lovers have a chance this weekend to experience a rare venue for viewing in the north – a pop-up drive-in movie night is set for October 1 at The Cut Off Restaurant and Pub parking lot. The latest creative entry in the fine Yukon tradition of making our own fun, the event is the …
Better Together
Community in the Yukon is small. For filmmakers, it’s even smaller. That sometimes causes competition between people in the territory who try to make it in the industry. But, filmmakers can’t be islands. That’s what filmmaker Naomi Mark thinks — it should be about collaboration; bringing a small group of people together to push projects …
Amazonian Mythology and Western Hallucinations
Somewhere between Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and the writings of Colombian philosopher Santiago Castro-Gómez lies Ciro Guerra’s film Embrace of the Serpent. Shot in stunning 35mm black and white film in the Amazon, Embrace of the Serpent is a dream-like manifestation of the psychotropic diaries of two ethno-botanists’ encounter with an Amazonian shaman. Switching …
Deadly Fascination, or, Better Living with du Pont
Panama Papers got you down? Still feeling the chill of tax season? A dose of the 2014 film Foxcatcher, based on a true story and available on DVD at the Whitehorse Public Library, might be just the thing to remind you to be thankful that you didn’t have the misfortune of being born rich and …
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Through the Eyes of our Youth
“I call this one ‘The Matchmaker’… because she’s the one who matched my mom and dad to me.” Ryan Lawrence, 14, beams at his work on the table. He’s staring at one of about eight photos he is entering into this year’s art show at the ATCO Youth Art Gallery in the Yukon Arts Centre. …
Ah, Salander
Did Stieg Larsson know his character Lisbeth Salander was destined to achieve the iconic status of a Marvel superhero? Maybe not. In the 2011 American remake of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, available on DVD at Whitehorse Public Library, director David Fincher and screenwriter Steven Zaillian elegantly adapt Larsson’s sprawling Swedish noir to …
Living Blues Legends
Director Daniel Cross visits the southern United States with his latest documentary I am The Blues (2016), highlighting living blues legends in the heart of American music origins. As it became more ingrained into the South’s economy during the antebellum years in the early to late 1800s, the cultivation of cotton brought a heavy concentration …
Resisting and Resurging
This year the Yukon Film Society (YFS) returns to the Adäka Cultural Festival with more First Nations programming. The collaboration between Adäka and YFS allows all the screenings to be free. Screenings run July 3 and 4 at the Kwanlin Dün Cultural Centre during the festival, which takes place July 1 to 7. Screenings begin …
Intimate, Insightful and Non-Traditional
It’s 1929, Virginia Woolf publishes her famous extended feminist essay, called “A Room of One’s Own,” exploring the gender disparity between women and men. Fast forward to 2016 and discussion around gender politics has widened to include people living beyond the male/female binary. Cyn Lubow’s documentary film A Womb of Their Own asks the question, …
Deep Ecology within Architecture and Design
The Living Building Challenge is an international sustainable building certificate program to foster the conscious development and design of eco-friendly architecture. It was launched 10 years ago, and pillars of performance include, site, water, energy, health, materials, equity and beauty. Recently the Maori tribe Ngai Tûhoe completed the construction of New Zealand’s first living …
The New Girlfriend is French filmmaking at its best
The New Girlfriend (Une Nouvelle Amie), a French drama from acclaimed director and screenwriter François Ozon, had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2014. It has received several international award nominations and won best picture at Spain’s San Sebastián film festival. The New Girlfriend is loosely based on the 15-page crime …
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The Danish Girl Attracts Controversy on Several Fronts
At some point, perhaps, acting credentials and not gender identity, will dictate who gets what role. Until then, high profile films like The Danish Girl and Dallas Buyers Club will continue to raise hackles in the transgender community for having cisgender (a term coined in the 1990s to denote a person whose self-identity matches their …
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OUT North Queer Film Festival Turns Five
Freeheld Throughout Freeheld we are reminded of how people are so often a combination of the ordinary and the extraordinary. A fictional account of the Oscar-winning 2007 documentary short of the same name, Freeheld is the true story of police detective Laurel Hester (Julianne Moore) and her fight to transfer her pension benefits to her …
A Room within a Room
The intensely charged film Room was the Winner of the Audience Choice Award for Best Canadian Feature at this year’s Available Light Film Festival. If you missed it in February, The Yukon Film Society is bringing it back to the screen March 20th. Adapted from Ireland-born writer Emma Donoghue’s Booker Prize nominated novel of the …
Wonder Dog
In 1918, a young American soldier emerged from the ruins of a military kennel with a frantic, famished German Shepherd and her five newborn pups. Their survival on the battlefield in France was almost miraculous; Lee Duncan, their saviour, kept two of the puppies and named them after dolls worn as lucky talismans – Nanette …
Showing Torontonians What’s Happening in Old Crow
photos from Old Crow, Yukon Territory, and Inuvik, Northwest Territories from youth workshops held by BYTE
Hone Your Craft
This year marks the 14th anniversary of the Available Light Film Festival. Each year, the festival seems to grow and attract greater talent from a variety of places. This year also has a substantial amount of filmmaking workshops, some free and others requiring tickets. The festival’s keynote address will be from Dylan Marchetti, chief creative …
Cinema for Lunch
The Available Light Film Festival running Feb. 6–14 there will be showing films during the daytime, right in the middle of your lunch hour. So pack a sandwich or a smoothie and head over to either the Yukon Arts Centre or the Kwanlin Dün Cultural Centre for some truly fascinating cinema. Here is a rundown …
Awesome Canadian Films
For years Canadian cinema was referred to as invisible cinema for its lack of global impact and struggle to compete with Hollywood’s massive export of blockbuster films. Each year film festivals around Canada aim to disprove this notion and push the potential and visibility of Canadian cinema to other parts of the world – and …
Available Light Film Fest shines on Canada’s North
This year’s Available Light Film Festival (ALFF) features a series of films draw audiences’ attention to the experiences of life in the Canadian Arctic and sub-Arctic regions. The North on Screen series comprises a third of the Yukon Film Society’s 14th Annual film festival, which runs Feb. 7 to 14 in Whitehorse. Nunavut Inuk filmmaker Zacharias Kunuk (Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner) returns …
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‘Novelty is as Old as the Hills’
The film Les Enfants du Paradise (Marcel Carné, 1945) has been called the greatest film ever made since its release. The film’s resurrection of the vaudevillian Paris theatre of the 1820s and 1830s is the most lavish realization of France during that time. It was hailed as France’s answer to Gone with the Wind (Victor …
All for One
They stayed in the game … They’re the most-famous musicians you’ve never heard of. Merry Clayton’s performance in the Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter” is the exemplar of the memorable riff by the unknown singer at the back of the band – it’s their parts you hum. From manufactured girl groups, to David Bowie; and from the …
Love, Ambivalently
Many beloved Christmas films had inauspicious debuts. It’s a Wonderful Life lost money for the studio when it was released in 1946, but television viewings turned it into a bona fide classic 30 years after its release. Similarly, Love Actually has unexpectedly become a Christmas staple in some quarters. Admittedly, I belong in that group, …
Internet Fame
Today the internet is an active place with crazy things going viral all the time. From cat videos to fail compilations, to the latest greatest talent, the internet world holds all the weird and wonderful sides of life within it. One such example of a strange thing to go viral happened last week. A young …
48 Hour Film Festival
Last week, I took place in the YFS 48 Hour Film Challenge. Along with five friends, we created a music video to a Michael Feuerstack song called “Out of Season.” Our team was myself, Bailey Staffen, Graham Lang, Tara McCarthy, Andrew Stratis and Brett Elliot. Our combined film experience is roughly equivalent to our combined …
Soldiering on in the Cold War
No gadgets, guns or trophy girl in sight – John le Carré’s spy universe is stripped of glamour, but all the more fascinating for his intimate knowledge of the inner workings of the inner circle that fought for nebulous ground in the Cold War. The film Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, released in 2011 and available …
Forbidden Love
Montreal filmmaker Maxime Grioux’s 2014 film, called Félix et Meria, is a forbidden love story – and it has been earning wide acclaim. It has been nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Foreign Language Film category, and it has already won Best Canadian Feature Film at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival. It …
Global response to climate change
The systems of the Earth are inextricably interwoven – be they environmental, social, or economic. Naomi Klein, bestselling author of This Changes Everything, The Shock Doctrine, and No Logo, believes that the capitalist model of economics is at odds with the healthy functioning of all other systems on Earth. Klein says that capitalism is a …
Still is Still Moving: Portrait of a Genius
In the 1870s and ‘80s English photographer Eadweard Muybridge was feverishly photographing animals, people in the nude, and people with physical deformities. He is famous for successfully producing a stop-motion sequence of still photographs demonstrating that all four legs of a horse are off the ground at a gallop. Sallie Gardner at a Gallop, as …
The Secret to Russian Hockey Power
Wayne Gretzky once stated that Viacheslav Fetisov was the greatest defenseman he had ever played against. Fetisov (nicknamed Slava) was known to be the “Bobby Orr of Russia.” Winner of three Winter Olympics (2 Gold, 1 Silver), seven World Championships, one Canada Cup, three World Junior Championships and two back-to-back Stanley Cups with the Detroit …
Keeping the Memory Alive
In 1943 Operation Husky was put into motion. Canadian Soldiers travelled deep into the Sicilian countryside to fight against the Nazi presence that had been established there. More than 500 Canadian Soldiers lost their lives during the campaign in Sicily. The cemetery in Agira, Sicily is not a well-known place to be visited in the …
Deep Ecology
The year was 1971. Three Dog Nights’ “Joy to the World” became RPM’s top chart hit alongside The Stampeders’ “Sweet City Woman”. Pierre Trudeau was Prime Minister and James Smith was Commissioner of the Yukon. Smith was instrumental in creating the Kluane National Park and Reserves and designating the Chilkoot Trail as a National Historic …
Spitefulness is best served as satire
Argentinean director Damián Szifron’s 2015 Best Foreign Language Academy Award Nominee Wild Tales is a completely jarring and poetic collection of old wives’ tales and urban legends about vengeance and vulnerability. Its characters plan revenge on instinct, using whatever is at their disposal to aid in their gratification. The film’s common theme of spitefulness and …
Swordplay and Flaming Arrows
Winter is coming. You might say that’s our motto above the 60th parallel, but they’re also words to live by in Winterfell, the northernmost kingdom of imaginary Westeros. The Game of Thrones saga has unexpectedly surpassed cult status, but its mythology may have special appeal for northerners and not just for its keen sense of …
A Comedy That is Actually Warm and Funny
Another comedy that’s not really a comedy – that’s been my reaction to many contemporary films that seem to centre on the sad-clown school of funny, balanced heavily on the side of making me sad, and not in the fun way. So I wasn’t hopeful about Enough Said, a romantic comedy released in 2013 and …
Bring a blanket and popcorn
Between September 25th and 27th the Whitehorse arts and cultural community will present a diverse array of activities to celebrate Culture Days. Launched in 2009, Culture Days is an annual call out to arts and culture organizations across Canada to open their doors, curate an exhibition, develop workshops, or otherwise showcase their contributions to Canadian …
Unravelling the layers of existence
A brilliantly layered and sensitive look at the contrasting stages of life, the 2014 film The Clouds of Sils Maria stars Juliette Binoche as Maria Enders, an accomplished stage actress who becomes painfully aware of the relationships between herself and the characters she portrays when she is asked to perform in the play that kick-started …
The beauty and the decay of life around the planet
Since being presented the Palme D’Or and Best Director credits at the Cannes Film Festival for Paris, Texas (1984) and Wings of Desire (1987) respectively, German filmmaker Wim Wenders continues to be intrigued by the human condition has ceased to allow his intrigue of the human condition to weaken. Wenders’ more recent films Buena Vista …
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Down Highway 61
Near the end of his memoir, Chronicles, Volume I, Bob Dylan recalls the seismic effect of hearing Robert Johnson’s album, King of the Delta Blues Singers, for the first time, in the early 1960s. “From the first note, the vibrations from the loudspeaker made my hair stand up. The stabbing sounds from the guitar could …
Lucy Come Home
Living on a knife’s edge isn’t as exciting as it sounds. It can actually be downright tedious, and that’s what Wendy and Lucy captures — the daily grind of staying upright in a treacherous situation. On the way to Alaska with her dog Lucy, Wendy’s car breaks down and it becomes apparent that this trip …
The Very Bad Thing
Life isn’t fair. Jobs, Wozniak, Gates, Zuckerberg, and Swartz were, or are, all geniuses on the frontlines of the digital revolution, but only one of them met with the wrath of the American justice system. Aaron Swartz didn’t aspire to be a zillionaire; he was a passionate advocate for keeping knowledge free and accessible on …
The Midnight Sun Camera Obscura Festival
A camera obscura is an optical device, and is the prototype of the photographic camera we know today. It consists of a box or room with a hole in one side. Light from an external scene passes through the hole and strikes a surface inside, where it is reproduced and rotated 180 degrees. Camera obscuras …
When the Darkness Bleeds Daylight
June 17 – 21 2015: Dawson City Midnight Sun Camera Obscura Festival. This is the follow up to last year’s Dawson City Solstice Symposium
Alexander Supertramp Was Here
In the North, peril can strike anyone in the summer, or the winter. But when Christopher McCandless died at the age of 24 in August, in an abandoned bus near Denali Park in Alaska, apparently of starvation, the response was intensely mixed: bewilderment, contempt, and for some, awe. Many people have known someone bright, charismatic, …
Cannibalism: What’s the Big Deal?
In early-1993 my mom took my sister and I to see Alive, a film about an Argentinian rugby team that must survive a plane crash in the Andes. But the film was rated R and I was 11, so my mom had to do some research. She phoned our family friend, Hector MacKenzie, who worked …
No Singing, No Dancing, No Silly Cartoons
Walt Disney’s magic touch on celluloid created indelible memories for many moviegoers, but it induced tears of rage in P.L. Travers (born Helen Goff) at the Hollywood premiere of Mary Poppins in 1964. At least that’s what she said. Saving Mr. Banks, released in 2014 and available at the Whitehorse Public Library, revolves around the …
Flowers in the Concrete
Rich Hill, playing at the Yukon Arts Centre on Sunday, is a poignant observational snapshot of three boys on separate, but similar, journeys through the early days of youth, as spent in America’s povertystricken heartland. Poverty is crushing. But it’s always amazing to see that the human spirit, especially in children, is remarkably diffi cult …
OUT North comes of age
Contemplating what to write about this weekend’s OUT North Film Festival, which runs from April 17 to 19 at the Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre, my brain landed on the word “age”, and stubbornly refused to budge. So, with apologies for the occasional reach, what follows is a quick tour of how the thread of age, …
The War At Home
An article that appeared in the Washington Post just before Barack Obama’s inauguration as President of the United States, about a butler who had served over 30 years in the White House, inspired screenwriter Danny Strong to write a historical epic viewed from that perspective. The screenplay that resulted was fi lmed as Lee Daniels’ …
Her Next Plan is Coming to a Television Near You
A television mini-series is being shot in Dawson between April 7 and 17. The two episodes of Her Next Plan are being produced by the newly formed Big Plan Pictures Ltd. Dawson filmmaker Lulu Keating (Red Snapper Films) and Max Fraser (Hootalinqua Motion Pictures), formed the new partnership to bring this short series to the …
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Vivian vs. Vivian
On September 20, 1993 The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air aired episode one of season four. The show documented the comedic hijinks of Will Smith (played by Will Smith), a street-savvy kid from Philadelphia who went to live in a Los Angeles mansion with his aunt and uncle (Vivian and Phillip Banks), and their children (Hilary, Carlton, and Ashley). Season three ended with …
Meds to Media
Dawson City has created a filmmaker out of a doctor. So says Suzanne Crocker, creator of All the Time in the World, a full-length feature film that is making waves around the country. It will be screened in Dawson City at the Odd Fellows Hall on Thursday, April 2 at 7:30 p.m.The film documents the …
Home Truths and Other Stories
The inherent drama of buying, selling, or renovating homes is tailor-made for reality television. You don’t need to own a house to be captivated by the minutiae of managing the large and small choices these programs painstakingly document. Still, it’s common to feel somewhat suspicious of the heightened “reality” on display. In recent years, in …
The Wild & Scenic Film Festival Makes a Whitehorse Debut
The Wild & Scenic Film Festival (WSFF), screening at the Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre on March 5, aims to create a space “where activism gets inspired”; it is the largest environmental film festival in North America. The group behind this festival, the South Yuba River Citizen’s League (SYRCL, pronounced “circle”), is California based organization that …
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On Richard Linklater
In the wake of Boyhood’s lackluster haul at the recently held Academy Awards — it won only one Oscar, despite six nominations — I’ve been thinking about the film’s writer/director Richard Linklater. Boyhood was a momentous task in which Linklater gathered the same group of actors together for a few days each year, for a …
Shakespeare Re-told: Macbeth
Food is a hardworking component of any television or film crew, serving as prop, symbol, characterization, and plot point for numerous scripts. Jerry Seinfeld has a cupboard full of cereal, and pizza-delivery on speed-dial, and when Seinfeld based an entire episode around waiting in line at a Chinese restaurant, it spurred a minor revolution in …
Love, Hope, and Evil Nuns
Imagine being able to pick out a child from an assortment of infants and toddlers, as easily as choosing a puppy from a litter or candy from a dish. You might even take two. It sounds like the plot of a fanciful children’s book, but that’s what people could do at certain convents in Ireland …
ALFF Breakdown, Part Two
Thursday, February 12th The day kicks off with the festival’s final installment of the Fire Hall Film Talks, a series of free lunchtime discussions between filmmakers and artists about behind-the-scene development of projects. Thursday’s talk is on the changing face of music videos and narrative film. Panelists are singer-songwriter John Southworth; Violent director and member …
Film Festival Round Up: Part One
The 2015 Available Light Film Festival is bringing a jam-packed program to Yukon Arts Centre this February. The first half of the festival, Feb 7 to Feb 11, is covered here. Itinerary from Feb 12 to Feb 16 will be in next week’s paper. Prices of events may vary. Get your day planners ready — …
Two 4 One Breaks New Ground
Move over Ben Affleck and Julia Roberts, the Canadian filmmaking world would like to thank you for solidifying conventions for the romantic comedy genre, so Two 4 One can break those conventions into a million pieces. This progressive look at real-life love is refreshing and accessible: a movie about a transgendered Canadian in which an …
Imagination and pain on display in Newfoundland yarn
Joel Thomas Hynes’s blackly tinted, yet poignantly observant perspective, brings you his best film yet. Cast No Shadow, playing at the Yukon Arts Centre on February 10, is a beautifully filmed narrative about the most terrifying demon of all: the one within. Set in the ever-shadowy outport Newfoundland, a world of dilapidated musty kitchens and …
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What Incurable Optimists Can Do
They did impossible things because they were too young to know they couldn’t, and in the late 18th century nothing seemed more unlikely than convincing the powerbrokers of England to abandon the slave trade. Amazing Grace, a British-American production released in 2007 and available on DVD at the Whitehorse Public Library, is a dramatic account …
Popcorn With Maple Syrup
People who bemoan the state of Canadian film, when compared with the media juggernaut that is the American film industry, would do well to watch Popcorn With Maple Syrup: Film In Canada From Eh To Zed, a clever and entertaining 2004 documentary that is still timely. It goes a long way to dispel what at …
Film: Boyhood
The Yukon Film Society is very excited to present a film that is currently at the top of many “Best Films of 2014” lists, as well as the award season buzz (5 Golden Globe nominations): Boyhood, by Austin-based filmmaker Richard Linklater, plays on Sunday January 11, at the Yukon Arts Centre. Starring Ethan Hawke and …
Beautiful Designs, Tools of Destruction
Hayao Miyazaki, of Japan’s Studio Ghibli, has declared that The Wind Rises, playing at the Yukon Arts Centre on December 28, will be his last film. It is a truly beautiful piece of animation, complete with painterly landscapes and a remarkably textured soundscape. Listen for strange human voices that imitate the sound of an airplane …
A New Normal
No one gets out of paradise unscathed. That’s what Matt King says as The Descendants, a drama set in Hawaii, begins. Matt (George Clooney), a lawyer and descendant of a mixed marriage between a missionary and Hawaiian royalty, knows what he’s talking about. His wife, Elizabeth, lies in a coma in the hospital. He’s not …
Dining on Ramen and Talking to the Dead
On November 23,The Old Fire Hall will once again host a free mini-festival of Japanese films, hosted by the Japanese Canadian Association of Yukon (JCAY). This time it’s a double bill, with one film extolling the virtues of a noted Japanese food staple and its creator, and the other exploring communication with the dead. God …
War Stories
“We were praying and killing each other at the same time.” — A German soldier reflecting on D-Day Once peace is waged what do we remember about the battlefields? Tales of war can become like the whispering game after a few generations have passed, apart from the “official versions” of the truth. But World War …
Get Moving
A glance at the credits of a film reveals that it’s a collaborative art form involving a lot of people over a lot of time. Now imagine that there is only 48 hours to assemble a film, from start to finish. That’s the operating premise for the Yukon 48 Challenge, an event held by the …
Catholic Guilt and Teenage Dreams
New Waterford Girl, playing at the Yukon Arts Centre on October 24, is a film about juggling tradition and modernity. Living in a small and extremely tight-knit community, being normal is the only way to have any privacy; anything out-of-the-ordinary is scrutinized in a giant game of Chinese whispers. All Mooney Pottie’s (Liane Balaban) parents …
Being Caribou
Being Caribou kicks off Yukon Film Society’s (YFS) Kitchen Party on October 24 at the Yukon Arts Centre. The Kitchen Party is a month-long celebration of Canadian cinema and media art for YFS’s 30th anniversary. The film exemplifies the struggle environmentalists face against the interests of oil companies. Karsten Heuer and Leanne Allison, wildlife biologist …
Green Burial in the Yukon
What happens when a person dies? We don’t truly know the answer, but death does hold one certainty: a once animated body stills. We do know what happens to the bodies of the dead. The standard North American options are casket burial in a cemetery, or cremation. In most jurisdictions they are the only options …
Endless Forms Most Beautiful
Everyone has a doppelganger somewhere in the world, so they say. Sarah Manning, a small-time drifter, sees hers seconds before her double jumps in front of a train. Not one to miss an opportunity, Sarah snatches the bag the tragic woman left behind, and proceeds to borrow her life. It looks like a good score; …
The Scientific Lens
The Yukon Film Society and Yukon Arts Centre present the return of the Available Light Cinema series on Sunday, September 21 with two films of the scientific variety. The science fiction film screening at 9:00 p.m. is Jonathan Glazer’s chilling parable Under the Skin. Scarlett Johansson stars in it, and it has been compared to …
I’m not a comedian, I’m Lenny Bruce
If you have ever watched an HBO show, or have listened to an LP with a Parental Advisory, it is your duty to tip your hat to the man who made taboo language not taboo. It’s your duty to give thanks and praise to Lenny Bruce — a man who died for our freedom, and …
Dan Sokolowski Can’t Stay Away from the Dempster
Dan Sokolowski doesn’t disguise his fascination with the Dempster Highway area. “There’s something in the air that makes you feel the people that have been before you, or the caribou that have been through there, but you can’t see,” he says.“I think there’s lots of good old ghosts and spectres that are somehow affecting everybody …
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Shadows from Light
One road in, one road out — that’s Broadchurch, a picturesque town on the Dorset coast of Britain. So when 11-year-old Danny Latimer is found murdered on the shore, the evidence indicates that the killer is a local, hiding in plain sight. Danny’s parents and his teenage sister Chloe prepare a list of suspects that …
The Ballad of Llewyn the Luckless
There’s at least one struggling musician who doesn’t need Bob Dylan to tell him failure is no success at all. Llewyn Davis is in Greenwich Village in February 1961, with a guitar, a repertoire of traditional folk songs, and a fiercely-held ‘life of an artist’ set of ideals.He also recorded an album that hasn’t sold …
Robin, Layne, and Misunderstood Pain
In April 2002 I was lying on my bed in Lethbridge, Alberta listening to the same clock radio that is still perched on my dresser today. The local DJ took to the airwaves and announced that Layne Staley — lead singer the seminal Seattle grunge band, Alice in Chains — had died of an apparent …
The Competitive Spirit of a Yukon Photographer
Calling all Yukoners; one of your own needs humble support. Photographer Peter Mather is a finalist in the biggest natural wildlife photography competition in the world. It’s called Wildlife Photographer of the Year, and is co-produced by the Natural History Museum (NHM) in London, and the BBC. Everybody who’s anybody in the wildlife photography business …
The Art of Wes Anderson
The opening image of The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) provides a valuable portal into the mind of director Wes Anderson. Accompanied by dream-like music, we see a book placed on a wooden desk. The book is rotated, opened, and the library card within is stamped. The book is then closed — revealing its title, The Royal …
A Free Woman
Life doesn’t hold many nice surprises for Norma Rae Wilson. She was widowed at 21 and left to raise two children from different fathers by working in a sweatshop-like North Carolina cotton mill. She finds her fun where she can, dating from the shallow, sometimes treacherous pool of the mill town, trading barbs with mill …
The Tramp of My Heart
Actor and filmmaker Charlie Chaplin had the soul of a poet and the heart of a clown. He lived by his own moral code and sometimes his common decency led to his downfall. He made true enemies when he refused to play quietly; and his comic genius led him to places he didn’t know existed. …
Six Sides of Bob Dylan
He wakes up as one person and goes to bed as someone else completely; that’s what Bob Dylan said about himself in a long-ago interview. I’m Not There, released in 2007 and available on DVD at the Whitehorse Public Library, is a fittingly non-linear journey “inspired” by some of those lives, and the music Dylan …
Andrew Connors behind the camera or behind a desk
If you ask Andrew Connors to explain the appeal of film, the answer is simple and direct. “It transports me,” he says without hesitation. A self-professed “art nerd” who loves to read, Connors sees a strong parallel between the storytelling power of film and that of books. “It transports people into other worlds in that …
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An Ode to a Girl’s Best Guy Friend
Listen, guys, I know you don’t like to talk about your feelings, but have we told you how much we love you? Twenty-five years after When Harry met Sally, people around the Internet are still asking whether or not “cross-sex friendships” are possible. The topic can be tiresome; let’s assume we can, and move on …
Wanted: Dead or Alive
The FBI hunt for slippery John Dillinger was the match of the century. He was the bureau’s first public enemy number one during the crime wave of the 1930s. You won’t find out what makes John Dillinger tick in Public Enemies, released in 2009 and available on DVD at the Whitehorse Public Library. Instead, director …
Heart and Soul
Soul music calls to Jimmy Rabbitte, an Irish lad living in Dublin in the mid-1980s, and it’s telling him to put together a local band. That’s not so easy when people around him are listening to everything but Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin and Wilson Pickett. But with his powers of persuasion, Jimmy prevails and soon …
We’re all works-in-progress
Sometimes it’s hard to believe you’re related. That’s the reality for Maggie and Rose Feller, the central characters in the 2005 film In Her Shoes, a comedy-drama available on DVD at Whitehorse Public Library. Maggie (Cameron Diaz) is a freewheeling party girl who doesn’t seem to ha ve much on her mind except men and clothes …
Canadian Indie Filmmaker Heads Our Way
The Animal Project, a new feature film by prolific Canadian indie filmmaker Ingrid Veninger, began as a leap of faith. To begin creating the film, Toronto-based Veninger met 100 actors, one at a time, with no script in hand, no concept for the plot, and no characters. “The project was born out of a desire …
Zuckerberg’s Cool Idea
Facebook marked its 10th anniversary this February, a few months before its creator, Mark Zuckerberg, turns 30. It’s not every 19-year-old that changes the world. The success and background drama of Facebook inspired the 2010 film, The Social Network, available on DVD at Whitehorse Public Library. While the film recounts true-life events, it’s not a …
More Quality Films to See on a Big Screen
Fresh from one of its most successful festivals to date, the Yukon Film Society presents a trio of superb films in its monthly Available Light Cinema series, March 22 and 23. Headlining the bill is the triple-Oscar winning Twelve Years A Slave, followed by award-winning documentary Cutie And The Boxer, and a new Coen Brothers …
Films from the Out-side
The Yukon Queer Film Alliance are hosting the third annual film festival OUT North this weekend at The Old Fire Hall in Whitehorse. The eclectic festival delivers a variety of lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender-related films. “The first OUT North was in 2012,” says festival co-producer Debbie Thomas. “We take it a tiny bit at a time and try …
Triple Threat
With three noticeable talents, namely photography, singing, and fashion design, Emma Blair is exceptional – and not afraid to be loud and proud about her interests. Her father ignited her passion for photography when Blair was four years old. It was 2005, Christmas time in the Yukon. The family had just moved to the Yukon …
Love and War
How do you relate to someone after you discover they’ve committed monstrous acts? The generation born in Germany after World War II – who Berthold Brecht called “those who came after” (Nachgeborenen) – faced that question every day. The 2008 German-American film The Reader, available on DVD at Whitehorse Public Library, explores the effect of …
Remembering Philip Seymour Hoffman
It can’t be easy to find your identity as a chubby performer in Hollywood. In an industry notorious for its worship of physical perfection, overweight actors must sometimes feel adrift. Case in point: Phillip Seymour Hoffman. He didn’t settle on an identity for five years. Of his first 15 television and film appearances he is …
The Little Film Festival that could
It’s a film festival in a town that doesn’t have a theatre. It’s an international film festival in a town that doesn’t have an international airport. But the 6th Dawson City International Short Film Festival is still a hot ticket. Its producer, Lulu Keating, says she was impressed when she first attended as a guest. …
Gay Themes From Hollywood: Lesbians and mobsters and flicks, oh my!
Since the Oscars are less than a month old, I decided this week’s column should be about movies and, in particular, about movies that are well known in the gay as well as the straight world. One of the most famous is called Desert Hearts. It is derived from the 1964 novel by Jane Rule …
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Looking Inside the Hearts and Minds of Human Clones
Somewhere in England, students congregate daily on the pastoral grounds of the Hailsham boarding school watching soccer, gossiping, and daydreaming about the future. They playfully crowd around a teacher as she approaches the entrance, but she shrinks from their contact and scurries inside. The teacher’s reaction is a common one, although mystifying to the students. …
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Lost in Translation: Making Movies with “The Duddy Kravitz of Tokyo”
It all started with a voice mail message left by a then-unknown cell phone caller on my phone at home. It sounded something like this: “Hurro…Rod…this is Haru. (Long pause…) Please call me at 333-…” After that, my ability to decipher went downhill faster than the ratings of a CBC television comedy. It turns out …
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One Day, Ample Big-Screen Film Options
The Princess Bride is the ideal post-Christmas movie fare for the whole family. It’ll be playing at the Yukon Arts Centre on the afternoon of Jan. 12, as part of the Yukon Film Society’s Available Light Cinema series. First released in 1987, it has become an all-time classic, inspiring the contemporary success of films like …
DVD Review: Cranford
It’s 1842 and Lady Ludlow is appalled to discover that a young woman applying for a position as her maid has learned to read and write. It must not be allowed, she tells her land agent, Carter. “Dissatisfaction will result” she says “and the proper order of the world will be undone.” Ludlow is one …
Muscle Shoals
It’s not too early think about movie fare in the New Year, and one of the highlights of the upcoming season is the new music documentary Muscle Shoals. Originally premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, it’s now featured as the first offering in Available Light Cinema’s January lineup. Muscle Shoals is a vibrant and loving …
57 Channels and Nothin’ On
You’d be forgiven for thinking The Wire and Breaking Bad are American television shows — that’s certainly what they appear to be. But actually, they’re 19th century novels — or at least, these days, they’re the closest thing we have to the epic, moral, and popular storytelling of Dostoevsky, Dickens, and Hugo. Those two shows …
Life Before Fame
There’s an emotional charge watching a biographical drama and knowing where the road a character is on will take him. But the triangle at the heart of the 2009 film Nowhere Boy – with a young John Lennon, his mother Julia, and his Aunt Mimi – doesn’t need to rely on Lennon’s future fame as …
New Film Highlights Struggles of the Finnish Labour Movement in Thunder Bay
On Monday the Yukon Film Society’s Available Light Cinema series presents a little-known but fascinating story in the history of Canadian Labour, with its showing of Under The Red Star. Employing archival footage and reenactments in a seamless fashion, the film tells of the historic Finnish Labour Temple, built in 1910 in Port Arthur, Ontario, …
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An Adrenaline Kick-Start to the Season
It’s beginning to look a lot like winter, and the fresh blanket of snow in town must mean fresh snow for backcountry skiing and snowmobiling. With great adrenaline comes great danger, and the Yukon Avalanche Association is hosting two film nights that straddle both. On Friday night they are showing an extreme snowmobiling film at …
Just Everyday Life; Through David Byrne’s Eyes
“I deal with stuff that’s too dumb for people to have bothered to formulate opinions on,” David Byrne says in his 1986 film True Stories. Byrne, front man for the band Talking Heads at the time, directed and starred in the film, which is a quirky mockumentary that purports to portray everyday life in the …
Poignant Labour Docs Screen in Whitehorse
The Canadian Labour International Film Festival (CLIFF) celebrates its fifth anniversary in the Yukon on Wednesday, November 20. CLIFF is an initiative of the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), presented locally by the Yukon Employees Union (YEU). Designed to showcase the realities of working life in Canada and around the world, CLIFF will present …
Gearing up for 48 Hours of Filming Madness
The date may have changed this year, but the timing is the same. Contestants in the Yukon 48 Challenge still have just 48 hours to devise, film and edit a short film for presentation. While usually held in January, this edition of the contest will take place Nov. 15 to 17 in both Dawson and …
The Amazingly Consistent Downward Trajectory of M. Night Shyamalan’s Films, 1999 – 2010
Before I turned my attention to carousing in the early 2000s, I watched a lot of movies, and as a young film buff I couldn’t believe my good fortune when I stumbled upon the Internet Movie Database (IMDB). Here was a website with a seemingly endless stream of information, reviews and statistics on nearly every …
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The three faces behind the Yukon Film Society: There’s more than one way to eat popcorn
A group of movie lovers gathers on a frigid Sunday in Whitehorse. In an apartment living room, they watch movies and eat popcorn. They laugh with a good comedy and are swept away with a gripping drama. But the home of Yukon Film Society president Michael Vernon is not being used just for a good …
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Short films advertise short films: For the Dawson City International Short Film Festival
DAWSON CITY — CBC North is looking for short films to advertise a festival about short films. The Dawson City International Short Film Festival is again looking for the best public service announcement to be aired on CBC North. The winning entry will receive $100. “Story, story, story,” Lulu Keating tells people who are looking …
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Get Your Freak On
These days, a scary movie will likely consist of some predictable devices. There will be dramatic music. The characters will investigate a series of false alarms such as ravens suddenly flying out from behind the shed, or a crash in the next room that turns out to be a cat knocking over a vase. There …
We Open on Charlie Kaufman
The film Adaptation (2002) was directed by Spike Jonze, but it’s really screenwriter Charlie Kaufman’s movie. Kaufman, who is also responsible for such mind-bending classics as Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, writes himself into his own script and sets the stage for one of the most literary flicks of our …
The Good, the Old and the Creepy: A look at the Available Light Cinema’s eclectic new season
Andrew Connors has you in mind. All of you. And it isn’t even creepy. Well some of it is — like Upstream Colour — but most of it is just harmless fun. “Diversity in programming was the point,” says the Yukon Film Society’s executive director about this fall’s Available Light Cinema roster. “We are trying …
Every Photographer is a Snowflake
If you line up four people and compare their photographs of the same subject matter, you start to see into their minds. There’s an opportunity to do this little experiment – and at the same time check out some beautiful photography – right now at The North End Gallery in Whitehorse. The gallery is hosting …
Former Yukoner Steven Cree Molison stars in the APTN TV series
Blackstone is a raw, authentic drama that tells the story of the fictitious Blackstone First Nation, suffering disintegration by its own corrupt leadership. From within the community, young leaders emerge opposing the status quo to create lasting and substantial change. Steven Cree Molison, of Cree and Scottish decent, plays Daryl Fraser, the owner of the …
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A Front-Row Seat into the Lives of Musicians
Each summer the population of Atlin, B.C. swells from its normal 400 to 2,500, as the Atlin Arts and Music Festival swings into gear for a weekend in mid-July. This year, the festival’s tenth anniversary, will be no exception. The Yukon Film Society has scheduled free showings of music and arts-oriented films at the town’s …
Available Light Film Festival promises great stories, great film
For the sixth year, Northern film buffs will have the chance to “reconnect with the world and immerse themselves in great film”. Andrew Connors, the director of the annual Available Light Film Festival (ALFF), is satisfied he and his volunteers have found enough feature films to satisfy its mandate of telling great stories. If one …
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Down Under to the Top of the World: Why Dawson City’s Film Fest Draws International Attention
It’s a little festival with a big handle: Dawson City International Short Film Festival, March 20 to 23, 2008. But compared to festivals I’ve attended from Toronto to Chicago, from Tromso, Norway to Cannes, the DCISFF offers a plethora of programs, an exhilarating assortment of guests and the fun and flavour of a Yukon celebration. …
Old Films Provide New Attractions in Dawson
Back when Dawson City was at the end of the road, some of the consumer goods that arrived here stayed here because it wasn’t worth anyone’s time and money to haul them away. Such was the case with a treasure trove of 500 nitrate-based reels of silent movies, newsreels, shorts and primitive cartoons that were …
The Provider heads to Cannes
For a novice filmmaker, Moira Sauer has been getting a lot of mileage from her six-minute silent short. The latest victory for her film, The Provider, is an invitation from Telefilm Canada to screen at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival in mid-May. The Provider started life as a last-minute entry in Cold Snap, a competition …
Artful stories of the Children of Gaia
Of the thousands of photos from the devastation of Sept. 11, photo editors around the world chose one photo that would tell the story of that day. It wasn’t of the Twin Towers burning and it wasn’t of the plane hitting the second tower. It was The Falling Man. It was a photo of a …
Shedding Light Through Film
The films are heavy, intense and, more importantly, thought provoking. Tory Russell makes no attempt to sugar coat the fact these films are “super-heavy” as we chat about the upcoming Amnesty International Film Festival that runs during the final weekend of November at The Old Fire Hall. Triage follows Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr. James …
Shakespearian Shenanigans
Musicians perform Daniel Jankey’s new score for the The Grub-Stake Revisited in Vancouver at the Vogue Theatre. The Yukon Arts Centre presents a live showing on April 29 The Yukon Film Society (YFS) is taking it’s production The Grub-Stake Revisited on tour in early May as part of Northern Scene at Ottawa’s National Arts Centre …
LuLu Keating
Originally from Nova Scotia, Lulu Keating often gets asked the question: “Why the hell did you move to the North?” Her short film, Dawson Town Melted Down, to be featured at Northern Scene in Ottawa, is her attempt at an answer. For Keating, Dawson is a town that allows space and opportunity to flourish as …
The New ‘Face’ of the Same Great Race
Emilie Joslin is the friendly person who will welcome you when you enter the Yukon Quest office. The walls of Joslin’s office are covered with posters from each and every year of this amazing annual dog sled race, from 1984, right on through. The office is a busy spot and there’s a lot going on, …
Pretty and Witty and Gay
The Old Fire Hall in downtown Whitehorse will host the second annual Out North Film Festival on the weekend of April 19-21. Buoyed by last year’s successful debut of the only Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual,Transsexual (LGBT) film festival North of 60, organizers Fiona Griffin and Debbie Thomas have assembled a package of five features and six …
Arts Underground goes to the ‘dogs’
It is that particular configuration of the Hougen Heritage Gallery at Arts Underground that really astounds you about this latest show. From the name, Man’s Best Friend: Mutts, Malamutes and Huskies in Yukon History, you know there will be a lot of dog photos (because, you know, if Yukoners are nuts about dogs today, it …
‘How People Got Fire’ premieres at ALFF
It’s been three years, but How People Got Fire is ready for its world premiere at the Available Light Film Festival. “I started calling it, ‘How People Finally Got Fire’,” says Daniel Janke with a tone of weary fun. Janke, the writer/composer/director, is better known as a composer of contemporary music and creator of the …
2009 ALFF is bigger and better
Andrew Connors is very pleased with his 32-page program for the upcoming Available Light Film Festival. “Last year, it was 24 pages,” says the festival’s director. He explains that there are only slightly more films being presented this year. The difference is in the “value-added events”. Connors says these include panel discussions, information sessions and …
One guy’s opinion of the best movies: Part 1 of 2
(Part 1 of 2) My brother and I were on a road trip and, to pass the time away, we tried to list the Top 10 movies of all time. Three hours passed gloriously, even though we never did agree on the definitive list. Sharing a home for the first 18 years of our lives …
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The Hordes Will Gorge on Film
The roar of the sand grinder is enough to give anyone a headache. But Dan Sokolowski, producer of the Dawson City International Short Film Festival, likes the sound. The sanding of the new ballroom floorboards is the second last step. After that is the varnishing and – fingers crossed – the ballroom will be ready …
Please Make this Movie Disappear
We’re all used to seeing films about broken-down musicians, but broken-down magicians? Based on the evidence of The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, it’s a category best left unexplored. The film opens with a young boy being chased by bullies. He arrives home breathless, only to find a note from his mother, wishing him a happy birthday, …
Local filmmakers rub shoulders with the world
Upwards of 1,500 film lovers will be flowing into Dawson City during the Easter long weekend to soak up a non-stop extravaganza of short films. The Dawson City International Short Film Festival (DCISFF) features a series of films as short as one minute, each one being a window into the minds of filmmakers from around …
A Mish-Mash of Cliche’s
“Dark Skies” was the title of a short-lived NBC series during the 1996-97 television season. It was a smartly designed, intriguing and timely show, which the network cancelled, ostensibly for low ratings. But constant pre-emptions virtually guaranteed the show’s demise, which may well have been the way NBC wanted it. “Dark Skies” combined fact and …
All Apologies
What do you do if your family is “the most apologized-to family in Canada?” If you’re Mitch Miyagawa, local writer and filmmaker, you create a documentary about it. Miyagawa’s documentary, A Sorry State, chronicles his family’s experience of receiving three official government apologies for historical injustices: one issued to his First Nations stepmother for the …
New Film Gives a Child’s Eye Perspective on Residential Schools
Generations of First Nations Peoples across Canada are still trying to come to terms with experiences they and their families had in residential schools. A new film called We Were Children is a visual narrative of residential school survivors’ experiences. At the heart of the film are the real-life experiences of two survivors, Glen Anaquod …
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You Can’t Fight in Here, This is the War Room
Between 1964 and 1971 director Stanley Kubrick released three movies, each significantly altering the course of film history. The first of these films was Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Produced in the shadow of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, Dr. Strangelove openly mocks the possibility of mutually …
Not Every Silver Lining Leaves You Satisfied
I wanted to like Silver Linings Playbook more than I did, and really anticipated seeing it when it came to Whitehorse, two months after its release practically everywhere else. It has eight Oscar nominations going for it, plus a solid cast of Robert De Niro, Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper. The film also deals with …
Zero Dark Thirty Delivers
American actress Jessica Chastain redeems her loopy performance in The Tree Of Life with her role in Zero Dark Thirty. The film tells the story of how the CIA ultimately captured and killed its arch enemy Osama Bin Laden after 10 years of pursuing him. Chastain plays an intelligence agent named simply Maya, who is …
Her mountain glories; Her alpine angels
They are not mountain goats to Shirly Ambrose, who, in her own words is an “amateur professional photographer”, they are her “Mountain Glories”. “All of my life I’ve admired the mountain goat. I find them beautiful … bright-whit e, long shaggy coats … “Glorious,” completes Ambrose with a somewhat dreamy expression in her eyes and …
The Old Fire Hall ‘blazes’ with films
Firehall Films, like most ventures, had humble beginnings. It began in a tent at LePage Park, back in 2002-03, with a loaned big-screen television from Erik’s AudioTronic. “We had to lug a 200-pound TV each week and there was a lot of glare from the tent’s door and traffic would drown out the sound,” says …
So You Want to Be a Filmmaker?
I was lucky enough to see the two winning entries from the recently held Yukon 48 competition, in which filmmakers had exactly two days to shoot and edit a movie. Gordy by Traoloch O Murchu is about a man living in the aftermath of childhood sexual abuse. Told with stark, snow-swept vistas and unflinching voiceovers, …
Local Filmmaker Chronicles Extraordinary Journey
Mike Faughey-Scraggs is an orthopedic surgeon at Leeds Teaching Hospital in England. He’s a former high diver and an experienced mountaineer, having scaled Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. In the summer of 2008, he participated in the grueling Yukon River Quest, paddling his one-man kayak from Whitehorse to Dawson City. Added to these impressive qualifications is …
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Lights, Camera, Action!
On January 18, Yukoners have the opportunity to make a film in 48 hours. Sound impossible? Not according to Dan Sokolowski, co-organizer of the Yukon 48 Hour Filmmaking Festival. “It can be daunting to think about making a film,” says Sokolowski. “This challenge is a kick-start for people to realize they actually can make films, …
Indo-Canadian Filmmakers Shine a Light on Contemporary India
Tickets are on sale now for the Yukon Film Society’s annual Available Light Film Festival, which takes place Feb. 4 to 10 at the Yukon Arts Centre in Whitehorse. Among the lineup are two films by Indo-Canadian filmmakers delving deep into the culture of contemporary India. Midnight’s Children Midnight’s Children is Deepa Mehta’s newest effort. …
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Digital photography still needs a photographer
I thought digital photography is supposed to be easy. Sure, it’s easy to handle digital images, but I found out last week that capturing a compelling image for the front cover still requires the artful touch of a true photographer. When Rick Massie asked for the week off to spend time with his new baby …
Thank you, Carol!
The Yukon was lucky to have been chosen as the location for the filming of Anash and the Legacy of the Sun-Rock. Yes, we have talented film people here in the Yukon – both in front and behind the camera – and, by all reports, the production was handled smoothly. But we have to admit …
Lining Up for the 2010 APTN Lineup
Of course, our big news for this year is APTN’s February coverage of the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Winter Games as the world’s first Aboriginal official broadcaster. I’ll have more details about our coverage and schedule in next month’s column. For now, let’s see what January is bringing to APTN North. What better way to spend …
Harmonica Virtuoso With a Heart of Gold
When Whitehorse musicians Kate Weekes and Grant Simpson attended the Ontario Council of Folk Festivals this past fall, they were amazed and touched by a screening of A Walk In My Dream, about harmonica virtuoso Mike Stevens. They have been instrumental in bringing the film to Whitehorse, showing tomorrow at the Old Fire Hall. Mike …
A Brace of Ron Mann Films at YAC
Yukon Film Society scores again, with a special double bill at the Yukon Arts Centre this coming Monday, November 1. Featured will be two of the newest films from Canadian pop-culture icon Ron Mann. As if that weren’t enough, the Toronto director himself will be in town with his films. Fresh from its showing at …
A Kick-Ass Movie
”I was just a regular guy, no radioactive spiders, no refugee status from an alien world. My only super-power was being invisible to girls,” intones Dave Lizewski at the beginning of Kick-Ass, describing his life and his main motivation for becoming a super hero. Equipped with “just a perfect combination of optimism and naiveté”, along …
Available Light Film Festival shines on unique films
A powerful film about grassroots-level punk music in a religion not traditionally open to diverse musical tastes, Islam, blends with a heartfelt, passionate documentary following a young woman with cystic fibrosis. On the surface, these films are unrelated, but their beauty and truth have led to them being carefully handpicked for the Available Light Film …
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Stories of the Olympics in Eight Aboriginal Languages
Our chance to showcase the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Winter Games to viewers across Canada as the world’s first Aboriginal Official Broadcaster is upon us, and we don’t intend to disappoint. Over 214 hours of live coverage in eight Aboriginal languages, English and French, will be broadcast from coast to coast to coast, in standard and …
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It Takes Two Great Comedians to Make It a Comedy
Steve Carell, from NBC-TV’s hit series The Office, and 30 Rock‘s Tina Fey work well together in Date Night, a screwball-comedy that quickly morphs into a rather confusing, but still enjoyable pseudo action-thriller replete with car chases, strip clubs and encounters with gun-toting hoodlums and crooked cops. Fey still manages to look like Sarah Palin, …
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This 3-D is Better in 2-D, with 1-D Characters and 0-D Plot
For what it is, Clash of the Titans isn’t a bad movie. The battle and action scenes are arresting enough; the computer-generated imaging works well. If you can hark back to the days of sitting in the balcony, munching popcorn at the Saturday matinée, the film should satisfy fairly well. Just don’t expect much in …
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Real-Life Stories Come to APTN
One of the things some viewers may not realize about APTN is that we regularly broadcast award-winning, informative, inspiring and thought-provoking documentaries. Anyone who has checked out the APTN documentary strands, Reel Insights andVoices of the Land, knows that when it comes to documentary filmmaking, the Aboriginal production community is at the top of its …
Film Festival Goers will be Reeling On Easter Weekend
On the day we met to discuss the 11th Dawson City International Short Film Festival, producer Dan Sokolowski was just finishing getting the 40-page program into final shape to go to the printers. He looked a little tired, but I was on deadline and showed him no mercy. “What’s new this year?” I snapped, clicking …
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Follow Alice to explore your playful otherworldly self
Who wouldn’t follow Alice down the rabbit hole? Really. She’s following adventure. She’s leaving behind her sterile, affluent, predictable world and putting herself in the hands of the White Rabbit — who is late for an “important” date. Once in that world, she is looking for a way home. She is, in Daniel Janke’s words, …
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Firehall Films Gets ‘Real’
Rep cinema returns to Whitehorse this week with a vengeance, as the Yukon Film Society expands its Firehall Films offerings to a mini-festival of film. Kicking off its three-night program on Wednesday, Aug. 4, is the 2009 documentary,Babies, from French director Thomas Balmes. With no narration or commentary, it turns the camera on four infants …
The Other Guys Not as Good as ‘The Other Movie’
The Other Guys is another of those films that can’t seem to make up its mind about itself. Is it an action thriller, a buddy movie, a cop drama, a comedy or an exposé of corporate wrongdoing and manipulation? Or is it a combination of all of the above, never quite landing solidly in any …
Middle Row, Centre: Salt is the New Flavour of the Month
It looks like perhaps the season of sequels has passed, to be replaced by the season of spy thrillers. After Knight and Day and Inception, which had a semi-spy theme, along comes Angelina Jolie’s latest starring vehicle, Salt. Salt is the kind of film that could have been made in 1975. It could not have …
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Two Worlds, One Film Night
Thanks to the Yukon Film Society, Whitehorse has its own de facto repertory cinema, in the form of the once-monthly Fire Hall Films series, shown at The Old Fire Hall at the foot of Main Street. This month’s offering is an entertaining double bill on Thursday, July 8, showcasing a unique look at a northern …
Labour Films Highlight Workers’ Plight
The Canadian labour movement has designated November as Labour Films Month, and has put together a package of films highlighting the history and struggles of workers in North America and worldwide. These will be shown in 50 different locations across the country. Locally, the Yukon Employees Union is sponsoring CLIFF, the Canadian Labour International Film …
Middle row, centre: Red: Inspired by Two Key Predecessors
Many movies dealing with the CIA seem to draw from two seminal films for their inspiration. One is the 1962 thriller The Manchurian Candidate, starring Frank Sinatra, Angela Lansbury and Laurence Harvey, (later remade in 2004, with Denzel Washington and Meryl Streep). The other is Three Days of the Condor, filmed in 1975 with Robert …
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Know Your Ron Mann
Veteran documentary filmmaker Ron Mann is in Whitehorse this week, hosting workshops through the Yukon Film Society. Mann will discuss the process of making independent documentary features from development to distribution, amply illustrating his presentation with clips from his more than a dozen feature and medium length documentaries. Ron Mann is that rarity among Canadian …
Three Films in One … But Only One Real Character
The word antihero could well have been invented for the likes of Jonah Hex. His story is yet another in the summertime crop of comic books or old TV series adapted into films, this time one of DC Comics’ longest running, but lesser-known series. Maybe that’s because it features a protagonist from out of the …
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Cyrus Review
Playing at the Qwanlin Cinema this Sunday and Monday is Cyrus, the second-last in this season’s Art Film Series. Featured in its cast are John C. Reilly, Marissa Tomei, Catherine Keener and Jonah Hill. Together, Tomei, Hill and Reilly form an Oedipal sort of love triangle, as they play a sweet-natured divorced mother, her emotionally …
Art Film & Firehall Films Preview
It’s a good week for film, as the Qwanlin Cinema presents the last in its fall season of the Arts Film series, and the Yukon Film Society presents a musical double bill in its Firehall Films series. Wednesday night features two documentaries. Ferron: Girl On A Road and Sounds Like A Revolution play at the …
Middle Row, Centre: Using Food to Make a Village Healthy Again
I have a friend, a long-time Yukoner, who returned to live in her native France last year. I plan to visit her next summer in her new home nestled beneath the Cevennes Mountains, where she gardens in the Languedoc-Rousillon region of south-central France. A scant half–hour drive southwest of her is the village of Barjac, …
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Middle Row, Centre: The Power of Community
It’s a pretty safe bet that not too many of us will be worrying about peak oil during the holidays. But it’s an equally safe bet that it’s something we’ll all have to deal with in the coming years, perhaps sooner than we think. As oil becomes scarcer and more expensive, our petroleum-based North American …
Blackstone Buzz and Fish Magnets
While APTN is ushering in the New Year with a number of great new shows, perhaps the biggest buzz will come from the premiere of the long-awaited, controversial dramatic series based on a pilot of the same name that debuted on APTN in the fall of 2009. Blackstone, the series, promises to give viewers more …
Films and Dreams
Okay film-lovers, try this. Go stand close to a mirror, eight or nine inches away. Look steadily for a full second into one eye, then into the other eye. Now move your gaze back and forth as quickly as you can. Can you see your eyes moving? Or does your brain, like most people’s brains, …
Middle Row, Centre: Sure it’s Cornball, but Well-done Cornball
The subject of cheesy musicals came up in a conversation the other day.Oklahoma was mentioned, as was South Pacific. “You want cheesy, go see Burlesque,” exclaimed one of the conversants. I had to agree with him: Burlesque is cheesy. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth seeing. In many ways, Burlesque is an anachronism, really …
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Community Film Showings
There’s a lot happening in Whitehorse at local community venues for film this upcoming week. The Alpine Film Night series returns with a powerful documentary, the Yukon Film Society highlights two features in its Fire Hall Films series, and local filmmaker Max Fraser has scheduled a special showing of six short documentaries. Look at What …
Amnesty Films at Old Fire Hall
Amnesty International brings its annual film festival to Whitehorse this weekend, featuring an amazing array of films dealing with themes of social justice at the Old Fire Hall. This year Amnesty is cooperating with the Yukon Film Society and the Yukon Anti-Poverty Coalition, with one of its best lineups ever. Sure to be extremely popular …
High Quality Meets High Quality
I went to see The A-Team last week. It was a violent, confusing and moronic mess, and I hated it. End of review. And now for something completely different: Landmark Cinemas, the owners of our two movie houses in Whitehorse, is showing the Opus Arte film series every two weeks on Saturday mornings at 10:00, …
Middle Row, Centre: Student Filmmakers Get a Crash Course in Moviemaking
Graduation time for local high schools is almost here, and with it comes the usual round of bush parties, barhopping and celebrations, too often combined with poor judgement when it comes to transportation. In an effort to curb incidents of impaired driving during grad celebrations, a number of secondary school students have joined forces with …
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Firehall Films: From Alberta to Jamaica by Sky
Yukon Film Society’s Firehall Films series has an exciting lineup this month. On Thursday, June 3, the evening leads off at 6:45 pm with Petropolis: Aerial Perspectives on the Alberta Tar Sands. It’s a fascinating 45-minute documentary from award-winning Toronto director Peter Mettler, which was first shown at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival. Since …
Help Us, Entertain You
Which APTN programs do you like to watch? Would you watch them online? What do you like most about our network? What would you change if you could? We want to know. Each month I write to tell you about the great things we’re doing here at APTN, but are we doing the things you …
Love and Be Loved
A feeling of human warmth beams from the eyes of the people in Norm Hamilton’s black and white portraits on the walls in the Guild’s Other Room. Portraiture, for him, is more than capturing an image. It’s about “capturing the essence of that person.” Environmental portraiture is key to his work. This means sitting down …
Free Film Festival Brings Stories of Working Life to Four Yukon Communities
There is passion driving a new set of films about the struggles of workers in Canada and around the world. The Canadian Labour International Film Festival (CLIFF) is showing a lineup of the films in 50 cities across Canada this year, including in four Yukon communities next week. The festival will be showing several films …
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Middle Row, Centre: Improbably Entertaining
If you’ve ever wanted to take extreme measures against your employer, then Horrible Bosses might just be your cup of tea. Not that the exploits of the bumbling trio who star in this comedy would actually be of any help. Jason Bateman, whose work in Juno and the TV series Arrested Development renders him the …
Middle Row, Centre: One Ba-a-a-d Teacher
Elizabeth Halsey, played by Cameron Diaz in Bad Teacher, is a woman who knows what she wants. What she wants is a new pair of breasts, to help her snare a rich guy and escape the teaching profession she hates so much. As the film opens, the school year has come to an end and …
Travel Photography
As I sit here in Pisa, Italy, I’m thinking a short column on travel photography is in order. My first recommendation for a really important piece of equipment to take along with you is a good pair of shoes so you stay comfortable during the long walks you will be taking. As for your photographic …
Flies, Fish & Film
According to What’s Up Yukon fishing columnist Dennis Zimmermann, fly fishing is no longer the “stuffy old pretentious sport” some people consider it. “It’s become much more accessible. There’s lots of women getting into it, lots of children, lots of families.” That’s one reason Zimmermann expects a good turnout from the local “community of fly …
Mountain Passion on Film
Twelve sumptuous films about mountains, snow, skiing and other adventures come to Whitehorse this weekend in the form of the Banff Mountain Film Festival – the top films chosen from the original 60 shown over nine days in Banff last fall. The thread that ties these films together is the personal stories that lead people …
Battle: Los Angeles
Throughout the years, films such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, Close Encounters of The Third Kind, Contact and ET have presented us with thought-provoking perspectives on extraterrestrial life. Battle: Los Angeles is not one of them. Perhaps it should have been retitled US Marines Save the World (Again). The film follows a company of marines …
Boot Heels and the Beast
Rango is a clever, offbeat animated feature from George Lucas’ Industrial Light and Magic that features the voice of Johnny Depp as a frustrated playwright lizard clad in a Hawaiian shirt who finds himself in the middle of an Old West satire. He adopts the identity of Rango, the sheriff of a parched desert town …
Hot Truths and Half-frozen Films
A film director is pivotal in creating the environment and tone for people to work in, and in Lulu Keating’s recent short films the setting has involved some challenges. Cameras and actors worked in sub-zero temperatures for Her Man Plan (2010), for example. Many of the scenes were filmed on the frozen Yukon River and …
Two from Japan
This weekend the Japanese Canadian Association of the Yukon presents a free showing of two excellent films from Japan. Playing on Friday is Departures, a gentle and profound semi-comedy on life and death.Kagemusha, an epic drama from the great Akira Kurosawa, is featured on Saturday. Departures tells the story of Daigo Kobayashi, a cellist in a …
Film on the Fly
Beware of shooters in Whitehorse this weekend. It won’t be outlaw gangs roaming the territory’s capital, but camera crews taking part in the Cold Snap filmmaking event. Teams of varying degrees of experience will be attempting to shoot, edit and produce projects that could range from simple 30-second short-shorts to more complex genre pieces of …
Black Swan
Forget everything you thought you knew about the glamour of the world of ballet. Black Swan casts it all aside. This Oscar contender shows us that ballet is damn hard work, with very little glamour going for it. Beyond the billowy white tutus, it’s a nasty, brutal scene, replete with intense competition, jealousy and rivalry. …
Capturing Rendezvous
The Yukon Sourdough Rendezvous is about to bless us with its annual appearance – a great opportunity for you to capture all the activities and events as digital images. Are you up to the task? Is your equipment ready to meet the challenge? You’ll need quick reflexes and an ability to anticipate the best moment …
The Rite
Based on a series of true events and featuring a gripping performance from screen veteran Anthony Hopkins, The Rite is the story of a modern exorcist. There’s no pea soup or spinning heads here, and The Rite relies less on shock special effects than on the tension between skepticism and belief. Swedish director Mikael Hafstrom …
Uncovering an Ancient Tradition
On Wednesday, May 9 at 10:00 pm CT, as part of the documentary series Reel Insights, APTN will broadcast Tunniit: Retracing the Lines of Inuit Tattoos. The story follows a young woman’s journey to revive the ancient Inuit tradition of face tattooing. Inuit tattoos have been forbidden for a century, and almost forgotten. Inuk woman, …
Middle Row, Centre: Human Spirit at its Best
Bethany Hamilton is a 21-year-old resident of Kauai, Hawaii who says that she was born to be a surfer. On the morning of Halloween, 2003, she lost her left arm to a 15-foot tiger shark while surfing. The true story of Hamilton’s ordeal comes alive in the new film Soul Surfer, starring Helen Hunt, Dennis …
Old Bottle, New Wine
Aremake currently playing in Whitehorse that is in some respects actually an improvement on the original is Arthur. The 1981 version, which starred Dudley Moore in the title role, earned Shakespearian actor Sir John Gielgud an Academy Award for his memorable role as Hobson, Arthur Bach’s manservant-protector. The current version of this comedy is reasonably …
Learning to Say Hello
Tansi! For those unfamiliar with Aboriginal languages, ‘tansi’ is a friendly greeting in the Cree language somewhat akin to ‘hello’ in English. It is a word used often in one of APTN’s most popular children’s programs, Nehiyawetan. Set to premiere its third season on APTN February 15, Nehiyawetan is an energy-driven, interactive series that invites …
2011 ALFF at a Glance
Among the 25 international and Canadian features at next week’s Available Light Film festival are four of the films the Toronto International Film Festival ranked as “Canada’s top ten” for 2010 (www.tiff.net/topten.ca). The Yukon Film Society’s ninth annual festival will also offer the official selections from three countries for the 2011 Academy Award for best …
New Free Film-and-Chat Series Has a Place for You on the Couch
It’s a nice feeling when you come up with an idea for good times with people, and you make it happen, and it works. That’s what’s going on with Heather Finton and Bianca Martin right now. They came up with the idea of hosting a series of free film-and-chat nights at the Sundog Retreat and …
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Horror Picture Show
As a child, storyteller and projection artist Daniel Barrow shielded his eyes from glimpsing the jackets of horror films in the video store. With puberty, his fear of the horrific and obscene became an obsession with the genre. I interrupted Barrow at home in Montreal last week, watching the 1993 comedy-fantasy-horror film Leprechaun before heading …
Bean Goes Bond Again
In a week when every film playing at the four screens in town was either a remake or a sequel, I flipped a coin and ended up seeing Johnny English Reborn. A sequel rather than a remake, it stars Rowan Atkinson in a reprise of 2003’s Johnny English. Atkinson, of course, is famed for his …
Joy of Slow Photography
Photography, practised as an art form, has the power to transform your life … or at the very least, the way you look at things. The power of today’s digital cameras makes it possible for us to create images quickly, efficiently and without thought. But I ask you, is that why you take photographs? For …
90 Minutes Well Spent
When I came home from seeing Source Code on May Day evening, I turned on the TV and heard that Osama Bin Laden had just been captured and killed by the Americans. The film I had just watched dealt intimately with terrorism, and I couldn’t help thinking, with the news from Pakistan, and the Canadian …
Meatier McConaughey
The Lincoln Lawyer has some good things going for it, not the least being a gripping portrayal by lead actor Matthew McConaughey. He plays a character for whom the word cynicism could have been invented, and he plays it well. Mick Haller is a streetwise Los Angeles lawyer who knows his way around a courtroom …
It May Get Worse
I have begun to despair that The King’s Speech was the last we will see of intelligent films until Academy Award season rolls around again. Already, the summer “blockbuster” season, with its mind-numbing array of uninspired sequels and recycled remakes, is nearly upon us. The two offerings currently playing at the Qwanlin do little to …
Stories Move Through Still Films
When you go to see Still Films at the Yukon Arts Centre, bring your imagination. Better yet, bring a friend and tell each other stories there, in the gallery, spinning off the images in front of you like jazz musicians. Curator Lance Blomgren explores many ideas of story in this show. Blomgren is a writer …
Be your own director
What would you say if someone handed you a video camera and asked you to produce, cast, direct, shoot and edit a film in two days? Can’t be done? Think again. The Klondike Institute of Art and Culture’s (KIAC) 48 Hour Film Competition offers just such a challenge this coming weekend. Here’s how it goes. …
Mr. Movie Picker’s Yuletide Flicks
Ah, the holidays! The value of the season is perhaps easy to overlook amidst the calorific parties and ominous-sounding “Black Friday” shopping sprees. Nevertheless, whether you call it Christmas, Xmas, or something else, this time of year offers a moment to reflect on a few high-minded ideas like peace on earth and goodwill toward, well, …
Rum and Loathing in San Juan
The Rum Diary should be a better film than it is. The main problem with it is that there’s not one character with whom we can identify, or who is even remotely likeable. It’s based on a 1959 novel by Hunter S. Thompson, when the gonzo journalist was just 22. It remained unpublished until 1998. …
Candy’s Dandy
Season two of The Candy Show is coming to APTN on October 27. The exciting and hilarious Candy Show is back with your backstage pass to see some of Canada’s best musicians and performers, every Thursday at 9:30 ET/MT. The host and co-producer of the show, Candy Palmater, hand-picks all of the guests on her …
APTN’s New Programming
Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN) is pleased to announce its new fall line-up, including some brand-new shows as well as new seasons of old favourites. Beginning on Tuesday, September 6, APTN will premiere two new shows called Untamed Gourmet and Working It Out Together. Untamed Gourmet explores the connection between food and the land. Each …
Films of Struggle & Resistance
Amnesty International’s annual film festival returns to Whitehorse and Haines Junction this week, with a powerful lineup of feature documentaries. The festival plays December 2 and 3 in Whitehorse, and December 5 in Haines Junction. Kicking off the festival at 7 p.m. Friday night is Korean-Brazilian director Iara Lee’s feature documentary, Cultures of Resistance. This …
Not So Wildlife Photography
Where is wildlife considered to be “not so wildlife”? In a zoo, of course. Here are some tips and ideas about shooting in a zoo that may be some help should you find yourself at one during your next vacation. I made the photos accompanying this column at the internationally-renowned Frankfurt Zoo this past summer. …
iCame, iFilmed and iConquered the iPad
Tell me a joke” our instructor, Richard, says to the class on the first day of our iPad movie-making course. Awkward silence. All eight participants stare at the iPads in front of us. “Ok, I’ve got one,” I pipe up, “A magician is driving down the road, he signals, then turns into a driveway.” More …
Fine Art Photography
Andy Warhol once said, “Photographers feel guilty that all they do for a living is press a button.” The digital era has made it possible for most everyone to take “good” pictures, so what sets fine art photographers apart from the rest? In my view, fine art photography has more to do with the creative …
Middle Row, Centre: Fixing Flawed Lives
Atractor-trailer winds its way along the Alaska Highway from Terrace, B.C. Its cargo is a single gigantic log, 30 feet long, weighing 13,000 pounds. Within weeks, the massive red cedar will be transformed into something that hasn’t been seen in the Yukon for hundreds of years – transforming 19 young lives in the process. “The …
Ghosts, Bees and Wagons
The Yukon Film Society offers its Available Light Cinema showings again this Sunday at the Yukon Arts Centre. The varied bill of fare includes an iconic comedy classic that features lots of Canadian talent – just in time for Halloween, a fascinating documentary, an offbeat western, and an array of animated films geared for the …
Respectful Nature Photography
Taking your digital camera along for a trek in the tundra or through the woods allows you to capture all the wonders and visions that being outdoors can offer. Yukon has some of the most pristine wilderness areas anywhere on Earth. However, taking advantage of the opportunity to visit it carries some responsibilities. You are …
Filmtastic Fare
Athree-week vacation in France accounts for the recent absence of this column. One of the highlights of my holiday was the Cinema au clair de Lune, an open-air free showing of films in Paris, with the movies projected on a wall, just as in Giuseppe Tornatore’s 1988 Cinema Paradiso. Watching the 1982 James Garner and …
Capturing Canada’s Boreal Forest
Kelly Borgers considers herself a family photographer. Except that her subject matter is not human faces, but Canada’s boreal forest. “I probably have at least 15,000 pictures of the boreal,” she says. “The pictures to me are little individual portraits. They show different little nuances of the forest, whether it’s a rock or a flower, …
New Option for Film Fans
Whitehorse filmgoers have a new monthly option to indulge their tastes. The Yukon Film Society (YFS) and the Yukon Arts Centre (YAC) have teamed up to present the Available Light Cinema series, starting this Sunday. “This is a vision that I’ve had for a few years, based on the response to the Available Light Film …
Artrepreneur: Visit Another North
Karine Genest offers us a view of Churchill, Manitoba during the polar bear migration season during her show Un Autre Nord: Les Ours Polaires de Churchill, at the Centre de la Francophonie on Strickland Street. A selection of digital photographs turns a lens on the largest, whitest and furriest temporary residents of that community on …
Murder and Mayhem
I fail to see why films like Safe are made. Nasty, cynical, and of no redeeming social value whatever, its convoluted plot seems only to serve as underpinning to the constant barrage of violence it subjects us to. Safe tells a story that could well have been an interesting one, were it not for its …
Double Take on Marriage
Two romantic comedies currently playing locally present two different takes on the institution of marriage. The Five-Year Engagement stars Emily Blunt (The Adjustment Bureau, The Devil Wears Prada) as research psychologist Violet Barnes, who wants to advance her career, but doesn’t want it to be sidelined by motherhood. Her fiancé Tom Solomon a sous-chef in …
Middle Row, Centre: Superheroes in 3-D
The summer blockbuster season has truly gotten underway with the launching of The Avengers onto local screens. A fairly mundane plot-line is helped along immeasurably by 3-D, now availably locally for the first time. The film has been much awaited by Marvel comics aficionados, and has been breaking all box office records, with a return …
In a Different Light
My first conversation with Andreas Horvath was right after I’d seen Views of Retired Night Porter at the Dawson City International Short Film Festival. The movie is his intimate 38-minute portrait of a security guard who’d come across as a monster in From a Night Porter’s Point of View, a 1977 film by director Krzysztof Kie?lowski …
Middle Row, Centre: Remake of a ’60s Soap
As the summer blockbuster season begins to unroll itself before us, the latest among the current batch of remakes is Dark Shadows. It first saw light of day as a gothic daytime soap opera back in the ’60s on ABC-TV, and its current incarnation is a mixed bag indeed. Johnny Depp appears as Barnabas Collins, …
Middle Row, Centre: Take 2 for Two Hits
Fresh from the success of its recent Out North film festival, the Yukon Queer Film Alliance has scheduled a repeat performance double-bill of the festival’s two most popular films, Cloudburst and Tomboy. They’re both warm and vibrant films that regale us with moving insights into love among the very old and the very young. Cloudburst …
Middle Row, Centre: Sparkle a Fitting Swansong for Whitney Houston
Playing this week is the last of the Qwanlin Cinema’s Filmtastic Films series for the fall season, formerly dubbed the Art Films series. It’s a musical effort entitled Sparkle, a remake of a 1976 film of the same name. The updated Sparkle features a trio of young women loosely resembling the Supremes, a performance by …
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Informing and Inspiring
Inspiring and informative, Cheryl McKenzie puts the top news stories affecting Aboriginal Peoples in Canada into perspective. Every Friday, Cheryl takes an in-depth look at the headlines that matter most. The season kicked off in early September with a panel of Canadian and Aboriginal pundits as they discussed the recent federal ministry name change of …
A Ready-made Crowd
When Paris-based film director Patrick Hadjadj needed a crowd demonstration for his short film Le Citron vert (The Lime), playing at the Francophone Film Festival on Thursday, October 6, he had two choices. As he told me when I spoke with him in France last month, either he could go out and pay big bucks …
Painting With a Camera
André Gallant proves that you don’t need a brush to be a painter. His expressive photography creates the impression of a painting for the viewer through a series of techniques he has been perfecting over the last decade. “I had been working as a photographer for about 15 years, focusing on travel photography because it …
Strange Things on Film
Braden Brickner’s first job was dishing out popcorn at the Yukon Cinema. Now, the 19-year-old Vanier Catholic Secondary School grad is about to produce his first indie film. With a marquee-filling title lifted straight from the most famous poem Robert Service ever penned, it’s an unusual take on the discovery of gold in the Klondike. …
Always an End Result
Chris Rodgers doesn’t mind being called a tinkerer. After all, he’s been playing around with audio equipment since he was a teenager. “I was really addicted to loudspeakers and stereos, but loudspeakers in particular. I still am,” he says. “It’s almost like a hoarding thing, you can never get enough. I’ve got a whole stack …
Not Depp, or Deep
At the risk of alienating a packed theatre full of 18 to 25-year-olds, I must confess after a recent viewing of 21 Jump Street, to finding it easily the worst film I’ve seen so far this year. I know, there will be lots of comments on how it’s such a great spoof of the endless …
Out on Screen
The territory’s first queer film festival, OUT North, is coming to Whitehorse March 24 to 25. The festival features two days of award-winning films, and local, national and international filmmakers. The goal, say OUT North producers Debbie Thomas and Fiona Griffin, is not only to bring together the Whitehorse queer community, it is to enhance …
Middle row, centre: Therapy and psychodrama
The last in Landmark Cinemas ‘Filmtastic Films series for this season screens this week at the Qwanlin. A Dangerous Method is the latest film from Canadian director David Cronenberg, and explores the historic origins of modern psychoanalytic theory with three very fine actors. Viggo Mortensen, (Eastern Promises, A History Of Violence) stars as Sigmund Freud …
Documenting Polar Change
Ark Terry sees himself almost as an interpreter. As a filmmaker who has documented rapid changes in both the Arctic and Antarctic regions, his goal is to make complex scientific information about global warming and climate change understandable, especially to policy-makers. “We’ve got to remember that policy-makers are just politicians, which means they’re kind of …
Wilder, Wiser Women
Twelve Yukon filmmakers are travelling to Vancouver for the 7th Annual Vancouver Women in Film Festival, held March 8 to 11, at the Vancity Theatre. Curated by Dawson City filmmaker, Lulu Keating, the showcase of films, “Wise + Wild”, consists of works all made by women. Keating has been paving the way for women in …
People and the Land
This year marks the tenth anniversary of the Yukon Film Society’s Available Light Film Festival, highlighting an impressive array of more than 30 feature films ranging from documentaries to political thrillers to comedies, with a fiercely Canadian – and international – scope. One of the overriding themes clearly apparent from a survey of the festival’s …
Glamour Girl No More
what happens to the Homecoming Queen when she’s past her prime? That’s the question posed for Charlize Theron in her new film Young Adult. Theron plays Mavis Gary, an attractive 30-something divorcee, whose career as a ghost-writer for a series of teen romance high-school novels bodes well to be supplemented by a burgeoning second career …
No Rest for the Wickedly Creative
can you make a film masterpiece in 48 hours? Yes! Or, at very least, you can say “I’ll try” when Dawson City International Short Film Festival producer Dan Sokolowski blows the trigger whistle on January 27 to kick off Dawson City’s second annual 48-Hour Film Competition. I entered last year with some friends and we …
Game-style Mythology
It was exactly two years ago this week that this column first graced the pages of What’s Up Yukon, with a review of Clash of the Titans. Ironically, its sequel is currently playing at the Yukon Cinema. While Wrath of the Titans is a somewhat better film, it’s not better by much. Sam Worthington reappears …
Stimulating and Varied Line-up
The onset of fall signals the start of a new season for the Yukon Film Society’s Available Light Cinema series at the Yukon Arts Centre. Kicking off the series on September 16 is Beasts of the Southern Wild, a winner of this year’s Cannes Film Festival Camera D’Or award, as well as the 2012 Sundance …
Expendable Morality?
I’m probably not the best person to review The Expendables 2, not being a particular fan of its genre to begin with, and having a low threshold for screen violence. To compound matters, I never saw the original Expendables, which apparently garnered a cult following of some size. Its sequel managed to climb to top …
The Power of Belief
The Odd Life of Timothy Green is a strange little sort of movie that borders on being maudlin, but still manages to bring forth its own peculiar charm. Sympathetic portrayals by veteran actress Jennifer Garner, 15-year-old Israeli-born newcomer Odeya Rush and juvenile actor CJ Adams make us want to believe in its essentially implausible and …
Middle Row, Centre: Bourne Again (sort of)
The Bourne Legacy is the fourth in the highly successful series of films adapted from Robert Ludlum’s spy novels, featuring Matt Damon as renegade intelligence agent Jason Bourne. But don’t look for Damon in this film. You won’t find him—or Jason Bourne, for that matter. Damon took a pass on this one, as did series …
Totally Recalled
The summer onslaught of sequels and remakes continues unabated, without showing signs of letting up. One of the latest entries in Hollywood’s parade of sameness is Total Recall, a remake of the 1990 film of the same name that featured Arnold Schwarzenegger. It’s not a bad effort, although it doesn’t have the same excitement as …
Movies with Brooms
The Whitehorse Curling Club will undergo a transformation a little over a week from now, taking on a picnic/drive-in atmosphere for Movie Night at the Rink. Families are encouraged to bring a lawn chairs or blankets and watch a trio of specially selected all-time favourites on the club’s two large screens. The evening double bill …
Middle Row, Centre: Humanizing the Heroic
It seems the summer blockbuster season this year isn’t turning out all that badly after all, with the quality of major films already a lot better than last year’s crop. A case in point is The Amazing Spider-Man. Although it has started slipping from its initial number one box-office position, it still deservedly commands a …
Middle Row, Centre: Two for the Summer
Yukon Film Society’s Available Light Cinema series is scheduled for at least one summer showing at the Yukon Arts Centre, although it’s been switched from Sunday to Thursday performances. This month’s offering is a dynamic double bill, featuring a documentary on one of the most influential musicians of our time, as well as New Zealand’s …
A Bear with a Bong
Thirty-five year old Boston rental car agent John Bennett has been dating his girlfriend, Lori Collins, for four years. Lori wants to get married, but John is reluctant to commit himself. What’s holding him back? Would you believe… a teddy bear? It all starts when John is eight, and finds himself friendless, unpopular and alone. …
A Sokolowski Twin Pack
Visitors to the Atlin Arts and Music Festival this weekend can look forward to an excellent lineup of films to round out their entertainment schedule, thanks to the Yukon Film Society. Featured on Saturday is a pair of films that feature some breathtaking vistas of the beauty of Canada from a Yukon filmmaker, as well …
Middle Row, Centre: Formulaic, but Sandler Pulls it Off
Adam Sandler’s latest starring vehicle is a crude and lewd piece of low-life comedy that may well offend a certain demographic slice of the population, and will probably endear itself mightily to yet another. In That’s My Boy, Sandler is teamed with fellow Saturday Night Live alumnus Andy Samberg to play a loutish boor of …
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Sci-fi or Horror?
Director Ridley Scott broke some real ground in science-fiction films, first in 1979 with Alien, and again in 1982 with Blade Runner. Both films flew in the face of the sanitized and gleaming other worlds presented in Star Wars, the most successful model for the genre to that date. Alien took place on a very …
The Magic & Whimsy Return
Men in Black 3 doesn’t do badly at all, in a season that’s already beginning to regale us with remakes and sequels. Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones manage to recapture a goodly share of the magic and whimsy that graced the original some 15 years ago, and was missing from its successor in 2002. …
Set to Fly
Picture the serenity of pristine mountain scenery, contrasted by the fast action of snowmobiles launched upside down on soaring jumps. That’s exactly what Whitehorse filmmaker Blake Wildfong is capturing for his new film, Syndicate of Snow. Using a high-profile lineup of professional snowmobilers and recreating a Winter X Games environment,Wildfong plans to showcase the northern …
Using Flash Photography
There are some photographers who frown on the use of flash photography. I believe that, used effectively, flash is a tool that can sometimes make the difference between getting the shot… or not. Electronic flash is provided by an in-camera pop-up, an accessory unit attached to the top of your digital camera, or even by …
Space Race: A Toy Story
We’re in the thick of it now. Blockbuster season has arrived, with its bumper crop of sequels, remakes and films based on comic-book heroes. Still to come are Captain America, a Planet of the Apes sequel and, of course, the last of the Harry Potter films. Transformers 3: The Dark of the Moon is this …
Short Film Fest Flurry
A close look at goths who ride Winnipeg buses, an animation about Yukon sledding, and films about climate change will appear among more than 100 short films that will screen in Dawson City from April 21 to 24. This year marks the 12th edition of this annual event that has increasingly become a highlight of …
Photography as big as Canyonlands
“On top of everything else, you are a photographer, too?” Didier Delahaye has a bemused look that I don’t quite understand. As the marketing director of the Yukon Arts Centre, I knew he was handy at graphic design as he creates much of the advertising. And I knew he is a songwriter, musician, singer and …
A MITY Good Long Weekend of Cinema
“MITY” stands for Made in the Yukon,” says Curtis, the founder and volunteer director of North America’s most northerly film festival.