New Yukon Media Funds
Media funding for filmmakers has four new funding programs: Predevelopment, Development Fund, Media Production Fund and Training Fund.
Filmmaker
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 …
Hip hip hooray! for local filmmaker Lulu Keating … Read More »
48 hours of music and film
From Friday, August 24 until Sunday, August 26, musicians and filmmakers are invited and encouraged to take part in the creation of a music video that will be completed in only two days.
What Do You Have to Do to Eat Local?
The benefits of eating local are well known and documented; it’s better for the environment, it’s better for your health, and it’s better for the local economy. But when you live north of 60 it seems daunting – even in the height of the summer produce harvest. Fresh local ingredients are more expensive or more …
Using Stories to Make People Think
This is the second of a five part series by Dan Davidson about the professional authors participating in the Yukon Writers’ Festival and the Young Authors Conference during the first week of May. Whitehorse based writer and filmmaker Kelly Milner grew up in the Yukon. She cut her writing teeth doing feature articles for a local …
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 …
Calling Aboriginal Artists!
The Yukon First Nation Culture and Tourism Association is looking for artists, artisans, musicians and performers from the Yukon and abroad to be part of the seventh annual Adäka Cultural Festival, which takes place at the Kwanlin Dun Cultural Centre from June 30th to July 6th. “We generally reach out to the well-established group …
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 …
Yukon 48 hour Film Challenge Back Again this Year Read More »
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
Converting Adventure into Books and Film
Dianne Whelan is an award winning filmmaker, photographer and author who lived, until fairly recently, in Vancouver. At the time of this interview she was in New Brunswick, in the midst of a project she calls “500 Days in the Wild.” “It’s what I do for a living. I do these adventures, make films and …
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 …
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 …
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 …
Marching in remembrance of things past
Mark Zuehlke was a writer-in-residence at Berton House in 2003. At the time he had just finished several books on the history of the Canadian Forces actions in Italy during World War II and had brought along copious file boxes full of material for his work on the D-Day offensive on the other side of …
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 …
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 …
Fun fiction from the Klondike
As the crew who came here to film an episode of the Canadian television series Murdoch Mysteries a few years ago told me, Dawson is a place that’s just a perfect backdrop for storytelling. The particular episode was a lot of fun to watch them film and then see it on TV later on. It …
When the Darkness Bleeds Daylight
From June 17 through 21 Dawson City will host the Midnight Sun Camera Obscura Festival. This is the follow up to last year’s Dawson City Solstice Symposium, which took place from June 18 through 22. Through much of May, Donald Lawrence, along with some students of his from Thompson Rivers University, in Kamloops, B.C. have …
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, …
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 …
Her Next Plan is Coming to a Television Near You Read More »
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 …
Puppet Dreams Coming True
Nicole Edwards was raised on the Muppet Show, and she dreamed of duetting with Kermit since she was a kid. As an adult, she decided to make her puppet dreams a reality. She debuted her new video, Lychee Martini, to a packed house at Epic Pizza last month. Diagnosed with scleroderma, an autoimmune disorder that …
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 …
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 …
Andrew Connors behind the camera or behind a desk Read More »
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
Sports in the Extreme
The biggest lesson is to like what you do and do it because you want to do it – do it for yourself.” While that advice might apply to almost any undertaking, Wade Hoyt is speaking specifically about his career – making films about extreme sports. Hoyt’s company, Standard Films, has specialized in producing snowboard …
A MITY Good Long Weekend of Cinema
DAWSON CITY I t’s a Sunday night in March in Dawson City. Outside, the snow falls lightly in the crisp calm air. But inside the Odd Hall it’s hot. The bulb on the video projector is still cooling while David Curtis, clad in a robin-egg blue suit jacket and a crisp new white dress shirt, …
