Latest news with #OntheTrailoftheFarFurCountry
Winnipeg Free Press
05-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Winnipeg Free Press
Some kind of magic
Every July, thousands of people descend upon the tall grass, boreal forest and poison ivy of Birds Hill Provincial Park for the annual Winnipeg Folk Festival. For some, this seminal and iconic coming together of people and music is ritual. It is church or ceremony. Festival goers tell tall tales of how many years they have been attending, who their favourite artists are, who they fell in love with and how many sleepless nights they have endured in festival camping. And folkies are also good for deep conversations as to whether there is too much banjo (or not enough), whether the festival has become too corporate or even the very definition of folk music. This ritual surely did not happen by chance. Like much of human history and the powerful connection between cause and consequence, the right ingredients, including some luck, are required for significance to emerge. DAVE BONNER / FREE PRESS FILES An aerial view shows some of the thousands of folk music fans who flocked to Birds Hill Provincial Park to attend the fourth annual Winnipeg Folk Festival in 1977. More than 24,000 people attended that festival; organizers said the three-day event was, at the time, the largest folk festival in North America. Local filmmaker and popular historian Kevin Nikkel (On the Trail of the Far Fur Country, Establishing Shots: An Oral History of the Winnipeg Film Group) attempts to capture the initial sparks that would erupt into 50 years of the Winnipeg Folk Festival. In Founding Folks: An Oral History of the Winnipeg Folk Festival, Nikkel suggests that the purpose of the history is 'both celebratory — coinciding with the fiftieth anniversary of the Festival — and exploratory; to contribute to the primary source knowledge of the Winnipeg Folk Festival and the broader understanding of culture on the prairies.' How did the festival start? What impact did it have on Winnipeg? What influence did Winnipeg have on the festival? These are all questions contemplated by Nikkel, whose inquiry began by happenstance — tripping over a box of Super 8 film at the Winnipeg Film Group with the late Dave Barber. Within the fragile Super 8 film, they found old footage of a 1975 failed documentary from the Winnipeg Film Group seeking to capture the second version of the Festival, in 1975. Sparks flew and Nikkel and Barber began to develop the idea for this book and an accompanying documentary, entitled When We Became Folk Fest (which was released in June). Framed around multiple 'semi- structured' interviews, Founding Folks is packed with interviews from those involved at the beginning, from 1974 until the early 1980s. MANITOBA ARCHIVES Winnipeg Folk Festival founders Mitch Podolak (left) and Ava Kobrinsky in 1977. Volunteers, musicians and staff were interviewed during the pandemic to help shed light on the why and how of this unlikely community and cultural enterprise. Unlikely, perhaps, because the beginnings were solely locked up in the mind of one person. All roads point to the Mitch Podolak, who died in 2019. (This reviewer was introduced to folk music by Mitch in the form of banjo lessons every Wednesday after school at the West End Cultural Centre, where I clawhammered my way to the top.) A communist, opinionated and passionate, Podolak landed in Winnipeg because of love and a desire to share his passion for folk music with the masses as a means to 'engage in community activism.' The festival, which takes place this year from July 10-13, began as more than spectacle. While working with the CBC, Podolak saw an advertisement for the bicentennial celebration of Winnipeg and an invitation for funding applications. The 1974 Winnipeg Centennial Folk Festival was held in August. Founding Folks It was fully molded on the Mariposa Folk Festival and on the ideals of its artistic director, Estelle Klein, who focused her program on the development of workshops — a critical ingredient to the success of the Winnipeg Folk Festival. Nikkel, through his commentary and his artful way of creating conversations with his interviewees, unearths why the initial decade of the festival was not only successful, but so influential to the cultural landscape of Winnipeg and Western Canada. 'For Mitch, his politics and activism were a source of motivation for the type of work he did before founding the Festival and in the work he did after he left,' Nikkel posits. Through interviews with other founders (such as Colin Gorrie, Ava Kobrinsky and Harry Paine) to legendary early artists including Bruce Cockburn, Tom Jackson and Big Dave McLean, Founding Folks is a story of brute determination and an obsession with Trotskyite ideals founded on respect for everyone — and sprinkled with maniacal and chauvinistic behaviour. For, as Nikkel comments, as a limitation to his methodology, his sources were full of lovely folks 'who are careful not to say anything derisive about their beloved founder, who was all too human.' FREE PRESS FILES A daytime workshop stage at 1983's festival. Weekly A weekly look at what's happening in Winnipeg's arts and entertainment scene. Founding Folks elegantly leaves space for the voices of those who were there — perhaps not all the volunteers, but critical participants who recall the rain, the care and the egalitarian nature of the festival. Big Dave McLean cleverly argues that Mitch Podolak was 'the only communist I know that knows how to work the capitalist system so well.' With over 100 photos (enough reason to grab the book) from the early years and fully wedded to the art of doing oral history, Founding Folks is a tribute to the early ideal, and as Mitch's son Leonard Podolak suggests, to the 'aesthetic' of what happens when audiences, volunteers and performers come together to treat each other well and dream of a new world. As Leonard surmises, 'You can sell lots of tickets. Anybody can do that, but the cultural impact on the community, in terms of how we behave and interact and will pride together, is by far the greatest lasting legacy.' Founding Folks brilliantly captures the early magic, idealism and courage that made Winnipeg just a bit better. Matt Henderson is superintendent of the Winnipeg School Division. PAUL DELESKE / FREE PRESS FILES 40 years of Folk Fest — A square dancing workshop at the Folk Festival on August 15, 1979. The program from 1974's Winnipeg Centennial Folk Festival.
Winnipeg Free Press
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Winnipeg Free Press
Tribute to famous festival in denim, long hair, old footage
From local filmmaker Kevin Nikkel and the late Dave Barber, Cinematheque's longtime programmer, this new documentary is a suitably shaggy, grainy and low-key look at the early years of the Winnipeg Folk Festival. Now one of the longest-running folk fests in North America, this dearly loved four-day weekend is a highlight of our town's cultural calendar. There's a lot of information here, but mostly this doc catches a mood, a feel, immersing us in a totally 1970s scene of denim and long hair, mandolin players and barefoot dancers, tired toddlers and happy dogs. SUPPLIED The doc is a suitably shaggy look at the soon-to-be summer tradition. Put together from Super 8 footage shot in 1975 for a Winnipeg Film Group project that was shelved because of technical issues, When We Became Folk Fest incorporates scenes of performances, workshops and festival crowds, mixing in sound recordings from the Folk Festival collection and audio overlay of later conversations with musicians, volunteers and staff. Nikkel and Barber worked with sound designer Andy Rudolph and John Prentice, who was part of the original '75 crew. Perhaps picking up on the co-operative ethos of its subject, the film's opening credits also cite the contributions of 'a lot of good folks.' Nikkel has done evocative work engaging with archival material in films such as On the Trail of the Far Fur Country. While working within the limitations of this found footage — and the visuals can feel a little repetitive — he and Barber still manage to put a distinctive and contemporary spin on the material. There isn't a strong narrative line — it's more about vibes — but the doc gently touches on a cluster of related ideas. First off, there's an indirect but still vivid portrait of the late Mitch Podolak, who founded the fest in 1974 along with Colin Gorrie and Ava Kobrinsky. The film starts with a printed quotation from former Free Press writer Ted Allan, who calls Podolak 'a transcontinental telephone screamer and cajoler … a strategist, romantic and catalyst for an event that has become a North American institution.' From some footage of the man himself, as well as interviews with friends and colleagues, we get a sense of the tenacity and ingenuity needed to keep any grassroots not-for-profit arts organization going. 'First you tell the lie, then you have to make it happen,' says one commentator, describing Podolak's idiosyncratic, audacious and seat-of-the-pants approach in those tricky early years. The inaugural fest was a free three-day event at Birds Hill Park in 1974, made possible by the abundant funding around Winnipeg's centennial celebrations. BETSY THORSTEINSON PHOTO The footage captured by the Winnipeg Film Group in 1975 suffered the then-fatal flaw of out-of-sync images and sound: today's technology was able to save it. A cranky Winnipeg Tribune columnist suggested the festival was fine as a one-off, but it would be 'folly' to run it as an annual event. Fortunately, Podolak and his dedicated collaborators had other ideas. While some outsiders wondered why the festival was located seemingly in the middle of nowhere — Podolak told American musicians who didn't know where Winnipeg was to head to North Dakota and then keep going — it turned out there was an advantage in being far from the big centres. With its homegrown scrappiness and strong community feel, our underdog music festival became influential, with festivals following in places such as Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver, eventually forming a western circuit. Folk music and money aren't an easy fit, the documentary suggests. There was initially a lot of debt, and cash crunches might be solved by bottle drives or emergency pass-the-bucket appeals. And once the festival started charging for admission, the organizers needed to be able to fence off the site. Volunteer Lorna Hiebert recalls trying to dissuade fence-jumpers with moral arguments. The following year they hired a wrestling team to patrol the perimeter. There's also plenty of talk about the bugs, the heat and the rain (cue extensive footage of soggy music fans wrapped in plastic tarps). As Podolak says, 'Weather is weather.' Other commentators suggest bad weather could even be a good thing: people found solidarity in surviving a big old Prairie thunderstorm together. The sound system could be iffy in those early years, as a few people point out, but there was a real sense of intimacy and connection. Stages were low, maybe a metre off the ground, with the audience starting a metre or two away. And maybe even more important than the performances were the workshops, the impromptu jamming and the casual conversations. John Bachmann photo Performances at the inaugural folk festival were intimate affairs. There are questions about how to define folk music, how to promote it, how to convince funders it is a worthwhile artform. Weekly A weekly look at what's happening in Winnipeg's arts and entertainment scene. We hear Indigenous music, Celtic music, bluegrass, Mississippi blues, protest and union songs. We see footage of Tom Jackson, Sam Chatmon, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Floyd Westerman, Cathy Fink and Duck Donald. This isn't really a performance film, though. Fundamentally, it's a lovely and life-affirming tribute to a temporary town created for one weekend a year. As Hiebert suggests, the Winnipeg Folk Festival is about 'people looking for a beautiful world.' That makes this documentary just as necessary now as it was in 1975 — maybe even more so. The 7 p.m screening tonight (Friday, July 13) features a Q&A with filmmakers Kevin Nikkel and John Prentice, moderated by John Einarson. Alison GillmorWriter Studying at the University of Winnipeg and later Toronto's York University, Alison Gillmor planned to become an art historian. She ended up catching the journalism bug when she started as visual arts reviewer at the Winnipeg Free Press in 1992. Read full biography Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber. Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
