The Time Is Now for Canadian Film. Six Movies Light the Way

Elbows up! The slogan has become shorthand for the movement to stand up for Canadian sovereignty and identity against an increasingly aggressive, unhinged U.S.

The phrase is borrowed from Gordie Howe, a Canadian hockey legend infamous for leaving opponents doubled over from a well-placed elbow or two. It’s a fitting declaration of the idea that a good defence is always good offence. Or is it the other way around?

As Canadians have increasingly turned away from the U.S. by cancelling travel and boycotting American goods and services, it seems fitting that the country will be looking for other sources of entertainment. Canadian cinema, this is your moment!

Enter National Canadian Film Day, which takes place on April 16. It’s stepping into the fray, elbows aflame with the argument that cinema made by and for Canadians is as compelling as anything from our southern neighbours.

Events are taking place across the province from Prince George to Victoria. In Vancouver, VIFF is offering an entire team of films ranging from documentaries to sweet romantic comedies.

The lineup is diverse, to put it mildly, with highly experimental films marching alongside more accessible fare. But taken in concert, it’s a bravura showing of Canada, in all its multiplicity and complexity, onscreen.

In ‘Universal Language,’ poetry in film

If you haven’t yet had the opportunity to see Matthew Rankin’s ode to Winnipeg weirdness Universal Language, hie thee to the theatre lickety-split.

After interviewing Rankin at the Available Light Film Festival in Whitehorse in February, I have even greater appreciation for the man and his film.

Language blends Canadian and Iranian filmmaking traditions into a mythic new creation. The film sometimes feels a little like a gryphon, a fantastical melding of different creatures, the head of an eagle, the body of a lion with wild wings to carry it aloft.

Three different narrative strands combine to offer up something that feels like a fairytale wrapped inside a snowdome, all served up with Burton Cummings’ sauce on the side.

In one storyline, a pair of children find money frozen in the ice (an incident inspired by Rankin’s own grandmother’s experience during the Great Depression). In another, a sad man (played by the director) heads home to Winnipeg to see his mother. In the third story arc, a tour group wanders about a frozen city, taking in thoroughly uninspiring landmarks. Along the way, there are any number of oddities, like a Tim Horton’s that serves only Persian tea and cuisine and a store that sells different kinds of tissue.

It helped to hear from the director how much of the multi-layered narratives are drawn from real stuff. There are many examples, each funnier than the last, such as the Rod Stewart look-a-like Winnipeg realtor, whose image graces public benches across the city. This dude isn’t a figment of a fevered cinematic brain, but a very real person.

So too, is Rankin’s childhood obsession with Groucho Marx that resulted in him using his mother’s eyeliner to draw outsized eyebrows and a moustache before heading off to elementary school, where, as he explained, a battalion of school counsellors tried to metaphorically beat the Marx Brothers out of him.

But there is more than quirky humour. Genuine pathos and astounding beauty make up the bulk of the film, supported by precisely orchestrated sequences. It’s exquisitely staged and flavoured with a melancholic sweetness that lingers long in the brain.

A true cinema poem in the finest Canadiana tradition.

In ‘Sweet Summer Pow Wow,’ a welcome hit of sunshine

A few provinces over from wintery Manitoba is Sweet Summer Pow Wow from writer/director Darrell Dennis. Like summer itself, Pow Wow is a charming film imbued with light and warmth. The story is as classic as it comes: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, girl dances her heart out.

True love has a way of finding its own path, and so it is here on B.C.’s pow wow circuit.

Jinny (Tatyana Rose Baptiste) is the only daughter of Cara, Chief of the Coyote Lake Tribe. Like most mothers and daughters, these two have some issues. After a misspent youth, Cara has remade herself as a paragon of ambition — driven, demanding and controlling to a fault.

Cara has big plans for her daughter including law school in Toronto, before returning to take her place as the leader of her community. But Jinny’s true passion lies elsewhere, even as she appears to be a dutiful daughter.

Meanwhile, a young man named Riley (Joshua Odjick) from the White Bluff Indian Reserve has his own ambitions to design fashion that honours his Indigenous heritage. While his father is battling as serious alcohol addiction, Riley’s uncle offers him the opportunity to play drums on the pow wow circuit. It’s a means of escape from his tumultuous home life.

With shades of iconic romances from the past like West Side Story, Pow Wow has just the right amount of sweetness and struggle. It’s all the more endearing for its homespun quality.

Sure, the acting is occasionally a bit wobbly and the story is conventional, but there is genuine heart here and that makes an enormous impact.

The presence of Graham Greene offering wry assessments of the action as a colour commentator on the dancers and musicians is worth the price of admission alone.

In ‘Crocodile Eyes,’ a clear-eyed look at life and death

On the other end of the filmmaking spectrum is Crocodile Eyes from Toronto’s Ingrid Veninger. In this deeply personal cinematic essay, Veninger uses raw material to draw out the patterns and rhythms of life. I use the word “raw” advisedly, as there are unflinching scenes documenting birth and death.

In her eighth feature film, Veninger sets herself the task of capturing 100 moments on camera. These range from the mundane to the profound, but most often take the form of daily stuff like cleaning dead animals off the road, hanging out with her incredibly precious granddaughter Freya (this kid talks like she is two going on 35) and visiting a rather cranky psychic. In between the polarities of life’s biggest moments, the more ordinary stuff of daily life plays out.

To be frank, I took a while to warm to the film. At first, it is difficult to feel like you should be witness to the most emotional moments in a family’s life. Not that it is inappropriate, but it’s unclear what exactly is happening, and why.

But Veninger comes by her theatricality honestly. I remember first watching her as a teenager on CBC’s Airwaves in the 1980s and having mixed feelings about her even back then.

By the time the film’s resolution rolls about, its idiosyncratic approach has been revealed.

As the filmmaker’s bright pink post-it notes taped to a wall indicate, there is purpose here. The audience is allowed to sew these different moments together in a way that is the most meaningful to them, fashioning individual experiences into universal understanding.

Local inspiration, and how to make a better world

There’s a cornucopia of Canadiana on offer for National Canadian Film Day ranging from the romp that is Young Werther to classics like 1985’s My American Cousin.

In addition to narrative films, there are great documentaries including Incandescence from B.C.-based filmmakers Velcrow Ripper and Nova Ami.

Incandescence begins in the heat and smoke of the summer of 2021, a terrible wildfire season that saw the town of Lytton, B.C. burnt to the ground.

Following the tradition of the filmmakers’ earlier work like Metamorphosis and Fierce Light: When Spirit Meets Action, Incandescence offers a literally bigger picture. It zooms in from an eagle’s-eye view of the land to take in the tiniest of inhabitants. The film tracks the bees, beetles and tiny seedlings making their way through the charred remains of the forest.

The effects of climate change have resulted in mega-fires that conventional prevention methods can do little to forestall. In efforts to find a better way forward, firefighters have returned to ancient methods of managing the forest, techniques that have been implemented by Indigenous people for millennia.

Controlled burns not only reduce the amount of fuel in the forest but also forge a path for new growth to take hold.

Taken together, this varied collection of films is a powerful reminder of the vast creative potential that lives here in Canada, and which has been with us for generations.

Bring your elbows, maybe a friend or two and take in all the wondrous stuff that Canadian filmmakers have fashioned out of wit, wisdom and fighting spirit.

National Canadian Film Day is taking place on April 16. Find screenings and local events across the province.