Have a Wild time at the Cinema CNC Film Festival this weekend.
Nettie Wild is the director of one of the feature films on this year's roster and she will be in person at the screening to meet with the public and answer questions about her work. She is the creative force behind the documentary KONEL NE: Our Land Beautiful.
The film is a close look at the Tahltan First Nation, one of the fiercest and most effective aboriginal communities in the north at blocking unwanted industrial activity and one of the most proactive in the north at giving the green light to industrial activity.
"I don't think I know a Tahltan person who didn't have family members both working for industrial projects and protesting these same projects. Sometimes they are the same people - their opinions change as the realities change - and that, too, has a lot of complexity," Wild told The Citizen shortly before her departure for the Prince George trip.
"I've had the very real privilege of exploring the northwest over the last 20 years, many times by horseback," she said "I've come to know that region more than most urban folk. I saw that this place was on the cusp of huge change and I thought what could I bring to this amazing land, as a person and a filmmaker? I realized what was not needed was a polemic. I decided I'd bring a curious eye rather than a judgmental heart. The job for me and my crew was to find the poetry in every single person in front of our lens, from diamond drillers to the people who protest against them. It's not my job to judge. I was curious if I could surprise myself and in turn pass that surprise on to the audience. I think I succeeded."
The film has been a nationwide hit. It won the Best Canadian Documentary at the Available Light Film Festival and won Best Canadian Feature at the Hot Docs Film Festival. It has openings scheduled for New York and Los Angeles, and Wild is thrilled by all that acclaim, but her best exhilaration, she said, was when she's been able to show the movie in the north itself.
"These are the most important screenings there are for my movie - Highway 16 and beyond," she said. "It's like the whole cast of characters is there in the audience. They're not looking at it from afar, they are completely alive to the subject matter. It's electric. There are several hunting scenes, and the reaction is dead silent in the south, but really engaged in the north. The biggest reaction we're getting from the north is a feeling of gratitude for having it treated this way - their complexity and beauty shining through. It's much different than taking sides - going on a film rant for or against resource industries. People of the north feel enormously disserved when the story is overly simplistic and judgmental of their lives. I feel a poetry in the people who protest and the people who work on the land. The issues aren't one-dimensional and neither are the people living all this out."
The 21st Annual Cinema CNC Film Festival takes place tonight through Sunday at the Prince George Playhouse. Come out for eight screenings of the best in Canadian film from 2016-17. Wild and her documentary will be in the silver spotlight tonight at 7 p.m.
Tickets and festival passes are available at Books & Company, CNC Bookstore, UNBC Bookstore and at the P.G. Playhouse door while supplies last.
For more information go online to: cinemacnc.blogspot.ca.
