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 …
The Japanese Canadian Association of Yukon (JCAY) recognized the 30th anniversary of the success of the Redress campaign in 1988.
Yukon Backcountry Skiing’s owner, Claude Vallier, introduces his two girls, Kiona and Heidi, to the world by making a movie of skiing the wild Yukon mountains. “I didn’t really want to make a movie, but after participating in other movies and TV shows, I wanted to show more what I want,” said Vallier. “People always …
Halloween is most certainly a North American pastime, but this tradition has slowly morphed into a worldwide event for both kids and adults. I love Halloween … Ever since I was a little kid, I envied the kids I saw, on TV and in movies, who got to dress up and go trick or treating. …
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 …
Hip hip hooray! for local filmmaker Lulu Keating … Read More »
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.
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.
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.
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 …
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.
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 …
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 …
This year’s 16 Days of Action to End Gender-Based Violence was packed with some powerful events.
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.
“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 …
“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 …
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 …
Celebrating Film During the Arts and Music Festival Read More »
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? …
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 …
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 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 …
The cupboard behind Dan Sokolowski’s head is still covered with the multi-coloured Post-it notes he’s been using to assign the 86 short films in this year’s Dawson City International Short Film Festival to various categories for Friday, Saturday and Sunday screenings that will fill up this Easter Weekend. The films were selected by a group …
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 …
I was 12 years old when I first remember putting on a mask to face the day. My mask was that that of a joker, a dependable friend, a fun guy. I used it to hide the sadness and helplessness I felt over my parent’s disintegrating marriage. I used it to face down the taunts, …
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. …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
“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 …
Organizers for the Christmas Eve Pageant Photo Shoot were on edge as October 2 dawned. Would there be a lot of snow on the Bonanza Road sites where the pictures were to be taken? Would it be too cold that day? Would there be enough sunlight to get good shots? It was, after all, a …
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 …
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 …
Geneviève Doyon and Jessica Hickman have, once again, combed through silent films, searching for excerpts to play on a screen to an audience. This is the third year they’ve done it. Doyon and Hickman are the co-artistic directors of Open Pit Theatre. Doyon is based in Whitehorse, Hickman in Victoria. The film nights have become …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
Hello, dear readers. The Annual Territorial September Scramble is on in full force. Up the Klondike Highway where the winters are darker and colder than in Whitehorse, the stakes of the dating game are stacked even higher. I went to Dawson for five days, and swiped and liked and Tindered away. In the efforts of …
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 …
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 …
The Atlin Arts and Music Festival, music, visual arts, film and food, is about building community through music and art.
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 …
When a group of Dawsonites dressed up in Gold Rush garb to meet a Canadian Pacific Airlines riverboat in 1962, they had no idea that this simple one-off publicity stunt would put down roots and that the fledgling Klondike Tourist Bureau would evolve into the Klondike Visitors Association (KVA) about 10 years later. Today, the …
The International Tabletop Day celebrates board gaming around the world and an event is being hosted in Whitehorse this year by the Yukon Comic Culture Society (YCCS) on Saturday, April 30. The free event takes place at the Whitehorse Public Library from noon to 5 p.m. The YCCS is supplying board games for the event …
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, …
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 (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 …
The New Girlfriend is French filmmaking at its best Read More »
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 …
The Danish Girl Attracts Controversy on Several Fronts Read More »
On Easter weekend the ballroom of the Oddfellows Hall will be filled with hundreds of short film fans celebrating the 17th edition of the Dawson City International Short Film Festival (DCISFF) and cramming in as much as they can of the 500 hours of screen time that will fill up the days. This is the …
Year 17 sees an abundance of Yukon Films at the Festival Read More »
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 …
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 …
Often mistaken for the French version of the Yukon Sourdough Rendezvous Festival, Les Rendez-vous de la Francophonie (RVF), from March 3rd to 23rd, is a national initiative lead by the Canadian Foundation for Cross-Cultural Dialogue. The RVF is an event surrounding the Journée Internationale de la Francophonie (March 20), which is organized every year around …
Reducing our solid waste is not an easily digested subject. An upcoming conference in Whitehorse hopes to break down solutions into manageable bites. The Working Towards Zero Waste in the North Conference will bring together approximately 120 representatives from governments, businesses, non-profits, academia and the public to share success stories from other northern regions. The …
I have mined to come up with activities that might make Valentines Day as awesome as any other day of the year, even if you’re flying solo.
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
Available Light Film Fest shines on Canada’s North Read More »
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 …
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 …
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, …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
Dig out your poodle skirt and put on your saddle shoes. The Open Pit Theatre is hosting a 1950s Sock Hop Film Night in Whitehorse on Saturday. The evening features five films with an on-the-spot, improvised soundtrack by live actors and musicians. “The movies are the main entertainment,” says Geneviève Doyon, co-artistic director of Open …
The Yukon Rendezvous Society is throwing a Halloween dance party again this year, and the theme is Back to the Future Part II. The trippy concept is that in 1989, when Back to the Future Part II came out, our man Marty (Michael J. Fox) time-travelled to the future and landed in 2015. And now …
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 …
On Friday, October 23, the Yukon Arts Centre will be presenting a multimedia experience that weaves together dance, video, music and costume. It’s called Eunoia and is based on Canadian poet Christian Bök’s book of the same name. Denise Fujiwara, of Toronto-based Fujiwara Dance Inventions and a veteran of the Canadian contemporary dance scene, heard …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
The beauty and the decay of life around the planet Read More »
Yes, TV and movies in colour are enjoyable and entertaining, but there is something about black-and-white film that sparks intrigue – especially the genre known as film noir. In my opinion, the acting in these films was perfect. You didn’t have to endure a team of B-list actors, cheesy plots, or special effects gone wrong. …
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 …
We all know the story of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl. I can’t help but wonder what it would be like if Mr. Wonka had a secret room that produced fine cigars. I imagine the room would have the scents of chocolate, butter, baking spices, and the room would be free from …
My favourite line from Forrest Gump comes near the end. Gump’s beloved Jenny has died and he stands over her grave: “Mama always said that dying is a part of life, but I sure wish it wasn’t,” he says. It’s not often quoted, but I like its honesty. He is faced with a sad truth, …
A few years ago the Yukon Film Society (YFS) unsuccessfully bid on a lease for the Hatch House in Shipyards Park, in hopes of hosting an artist residency. Although that didn’t work out, it planted a seed that has borne fruit this summer. Throughout the spring, summer, and fall YFS will support an artist residency …
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 …
June 17 – 21 2015: Dawson City Midnight Sun Camera Obscura Festival. This is the follow up to last year’s Dawson City Solstice Symposium
While many artists who find their way to Whitehorse are from nearby communities, Hemant Puri is making a special trip from the far reaches of the globe. The Indian artist will take flights, stopovers, connections, and jet lag in stride to make it in time for a 12-hour non-stop performance, “Bollywood Night,” for Whitehorse Nuit …
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, …
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 …
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 …
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, …
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 …
Her Next Plan is Coming to a Television Near You Read More »
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 …
The Wild & Scenic Film Festival Makes a Whitehorse Debut Read More »
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 …
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 …
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 …
Imagination and pain on display in Newfoundland yarn Read More »
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 …
In Dawson we are of two minds regarding the Discovery Channel’s Klondike mini-series — that six hour reimagining of history, geography and culture that aired this winter. We celebrate six hours of free advertising that will probably draw some visitors to our town, and we lament that it had so little to do with anything …
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 …
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 …
Whitehorse resident Daniel Janke has two passions: film and music. Janke has been writing and directing his own films in addition to creating music for theatre, dance, and concerts. He’s also toured Canada multiple times with different groups, including his own Daniel Janke Quartet. Recently, Janke combined his passions by composing music for the short …
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. …
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 …
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 …
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 …
Friday at 4:30 p.m. It is a time that belongs to the working man and the working woman. It is a time when the boss — “the man” — has no influence and the workers can freely enjoy good company, good beer and good talk. In Whitehorse, the workers have a place, too. It is …
For a skeptic, I sure do scare easy. While I stand by the tenet that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof”, it really doesn’t take all that much to scare the living bejeebers out of me. I’m a nerd. Suspending my disbelief is a part of my genetic code. Look at horror movies. Most of us …
The Yukon’s cultural contribution to the Vancouver Winter Olympics is all coming together. On Tuesday, Feb. 16, at the Yukon Arts Centre, audiences will see what the world will see later that week from B.C. Place. One Word: The Yukon Experience, pulls together select performances from The Yukon Experience and What the Land Remembers. It …
Creative magic—the kind that turns charcoal-pencilled drawings into animation—that’s the magic of KINO (the German word for “film”). Edward Westerhuis says he’s the “official unofficial organizer” of KINO. He’s also the momentum behind KINO Returns, after boasting a sold-out audience last December. “It’s a movement that originated in Montréal, Québec, an incentive to help filmmakers …
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, …
Follow Alice to explore your playful otherworldly self Read More »
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 …
Middle row, centre: Red: Inspired by Two Key Predecessors Read More »
The year is 1985. A young Anthony sits crossed-legged in front of the television. The flickering images flashing across his eyes barely register in his stunned mind. Leonard Maltin just gave Ghostbusters a bad review. Indeed, this is a story of great trauma from my childhood. A highly-positioned critic just pooped on what I, as …
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 …
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 …
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 …
“MITY” stands for Made in the Yukon,” says Curtis, the founder and volunteer director of North America’s most northerly film festival.
