Bringing over 150 films (all produced within the last 20 months) from 50 different countries to play at three classic Edmonton venues. Edify caught up with two filmmakers with strong local ties to talk about what they’re bringing to this year’s festival.
Synopsis: A thrilling stop-motion animated short film about a gender-fluid warrior who protects their community from forgotten monsters.
When: Saturday, Sept 28, at 5 p.m., Monday Sept. 30 at 4 p.m.
Where: Landmark Cinemas 9 City Centre, 10200 102 Ave NW, Edmonton
Every time Edmonton-based writer Richard Van Camp goes to work on a story, he tries to imbue it with the lessons he learned while growing up in his hometown of Fort Smith, NWT.
“I was the Handibus driver in our community, and I learned a lot from my Elders,” says Van Camp, who is Tlicho Dene. “I’m always worried that if anything happens to me, some of those stories that were entrusted to me maybe won’t survive.”
So, it makes sense that the film, Inkwo for When the Starving Return, adapted from Van Camp’s short story Wheetago War, warns about the dangers of forgetting. In the film from Michif/Métis director Amanda Strong, insatiable monsters who were long forgotten return to continue their endless hunt for human flesh.
“When people forgot our connection with the land, we lost ourselves as well,” Dove, played by Paulina Alexis, says near the beginning of the film.
But what’s incredible to me is how the story has been passed down, adapted and now ultimately persevered in beautiful stop-motion animation.
At one point in the story, Dove encounters a frog who had been badly beaten by some children. After Dove saves the near-death frog, the critter offers them his Inkwo, his medicine power.
This story about the frog is one that Art Napoleon (host of APTN’s Moosemeat and Marmalade) shared with Van Camp and originally came from Napoleon’s grandmother.
With Napoleon’s permission, his grandmother’s story was adapted into the short story, and now the movie. But Van Camp says he also wanted a way to honour Napoleon’s grandmother.
“I said, ‘When we make the movie, I want you to be the voice of the frog.’”
Synopsis: A documentary about the life of Jackie Shane, a Black transgender woman who dominated the 1960s Toronto music scene and then mysteriously disappeared.
Thursday, October 3 at 6:30 p.m. at Telus World of Science Edmonton Imax. 11211 142 St NW, Edmonton
Friday, October 4 at 2 p.m. at Landmark Cinemas 9 City Centre, 10200 102 Ave NW, Edmonton
Michael Mabbott was sitting at home in Little Italy, Toronto, the first time he listened to Jackie Shane’s now infamous live album. It was on vinyl, blasting through his record player on a bootlegged pressing given to him by a friend. Mabbott was blown away.
“My memory is almost like that I saw her in the club, because it was that intimate and that beautifully recorded,” Mabbott says of the (now gone) Sapphire Tavern on Yonge Street in which the album was recorded.
Mabbott says he almost couldn’t believe he’d never heard of Shane, and that this music was being made out of Toronto in the 1960s by a Black transgender woman. He thought it already might be an incredible story, and that was before he even met Shane.
In 2017 after Shane had re-emerged, Mabbott phoned her up hoping to pitch a movie idea. But, before making the movie, the two spent over a year on the phone, chatting for over 100 hours with conversations lasting anywhere from one hour to four. The two kept chatting up until her passing in 2019.
“[Our] all-time record was 11 hours,” Mabbott recalls. “She taught me so, so, so much. She knew the bible backwards and forwards, she knew politics backwards and forwards, and she knew music.”
Now, Michael is taking Shane’s teachings, and her story on the road with him as he tours film festivals all over the world with Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story. While he just returned from a screening in South Korea, he’s excited to bring the film to his hometown.
“All the elements that made me want to become a filmmaker were seeds planted in me in Edmonton,” Mabbott says. “I’m really excited to see the screening and just see the festival.”
Escape into some exceptional movies at the Edmonton International Film Festival from September 26 to October 5.
