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 a writer and filmmaker.
“The isolation helps,” she says.
Explaining that film is a competitive art form, with artists competing for the same financing and grants, she likes to stay away from the “mosquito buzz” and concentrate on writing and creating.
“The most wonderful thing about Dawson is the arts community,” Keating says. While working on multiple projects, she finds the time to be active on the board of directors for Dawson City Arts Society the umbrella organization for KIAC and Yukon School of Visual Arts.
Dawson Town Melted Down was shot mostly on 16mm high-contrast negative film with a Bolex wind-up camera and was hand developed in the darkroom at the Klondike Institute of Art and Culture (KIAC).
Keating learned this technique from Philip Hoffman who came to Dawson to run a workshop on the subject. She enjoys working this way because it adds an element of uncertainty.
“You never know what to expect,” she says of the method. “It’s also cheap and fun.
Keating has been writing, directing and producing documentary, dramatic, and animated films for more than 25 years. Her most recent feature film, about a woman coming of sexual age in the 1970s, called Lucille’s Ball, was shown at the Available Light Film Festival this year.
Jaclyn Killins is a writer, retired treeplanter, and mom who lives in a cabin near Whitehorse. Her family recently splurged on running water.
