Latest news with #WhenWeBecameFolkFest
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.
Winnipeg Free Press
10-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Winnipeg Free Press
Technology helps revive folk fest documentary
The creator of a new documentary and oral history book about the Winnipeg Folk Festival doesn't describe himself as a die-hard folkie. 'I've been more of a casual attender, but still a fan,' says Kevin Nikkel, a local filmmaker and writer with an interest in Winnipeg history and culture. SUPPLIED Filmmaker Kevin Nikkel (left) with collaborator John Prentice. SUPPLIED Filmmaker Kevin Nikkel (left) with collaborator John Prentice. This week, Nikkel releases two parallel projects about the history of the annual summer music festival, which celebrates its 50-ish anniversary at Birds Hill Provincial Park in July. His book, Founding Folks: An Oral History of the Winnipeg Folk Festival, launches at McNally Robinson Grant Park Wednesday; followed by the opening of his feature-length documentary, When We Became Folk Fest, at Dave Barber Cinematheque on Friday. 'I'm really excited to show people this cinematic time capsule of the folk fest,' Nikkel says of the documentary directed with his late collaborator, Dave Barber. It's a movie that almost ended up in the trash. Nikkel and Barber — Cinematheque's founding programmer, who died in 2021 — were working on another local history documentary, Tales from the Winnipeg Film Group, when they started mulling another project. Barber had come across a set of previously unusable film reels that hadn't been watched in decades and were headed for the bin. Captured by Winnipeg Film Group members in 1975, the grainy Super 8 footage shows a young Mitch Podolak, bearded and bespectacled, keeping things afloat during the second-ever Winnipeg Folk Festival. SUPPLIED PHOTO Founding Folks is an oral history of the event. The reels, which also included more than four hours of crowd shots and artist performances, were intended for a documentary that was scrapped in the editing booth because the video and audio were out of sync — a fatal issue at the time. 'We were able to access all this material because, technology being the way it is, it was far more reasonable to sync up the faulty audio with the picture because the software has improved so much,' Nikkel says. 'We picked up a project that had begun and was stalled and has become something completely different than what they had originally intended.' Local composer and sound designer Andy Rudolph helped solve the post-production puzzle and UMFM 101.5 radio host John Prentice, who was present during the original film group shoot in 1975, was brought on as a collaborator. When We Became Folk Fest pairs the vintage footage with archival photographs and offscreen interviews with festival instigators Podolak, prior to his death in 2019, wife Ava Kobrinsky, co-founder Colin Gorrie and others. SUPPLIED PHOTO When We Became Folk Fest is a feature-length doc about the early days of the festival. The film — which focuses on the event's early politics, vision and business model — also includes conversations with the likes of performers Bruce Cockburn, Tom Jackson, Peter Paul Van Camp and Al Simmons. 'I'm really looking forward to sharing this window into our scene, our culture — and people might even recognize themselves or their relatives,' Nikkel says. Creating a documentary is a big enough project on its own, but Nikkel knew from the outset he wanted to pair it with an oral history book. He took a similar tack with Establishing Shots: An Oral History of the Winnipeg Film Group, a book based on interviews from his 2017 documentary with Barber. 'My frustration as a filmmaker or editor is you sit down and have a nice long conversation with someone, but then you only take a couple quotes that end up in the film,' he says, adding writing has become a fitting companion to his filmmaking practice. Founding Folks, published by University of Manitoba Press, features many of the same voices as the film but takes a deeper look at the festival's early days and continued success, which Nikkel says is due in large part to its location and dedicated volunteers. JOHN BACHMANN PHOTO A new documentary revives troubled footage from 1975 for a look back at 50-ish years of Folk Fest. These performers were among the first in 1974. JOHN BACHMANN PHOTO A new documentary revives troubled footage from 1975 for a look back at 50-ish years of Folk Fest. These performers were among the first in 1974. In an era when folk festivals across the country are failing, he hopes readers and viewers will recognize the rarity of a grassroots event that's managed to carry on since 1974. 'For both of these projects, I'm really wanting to contribute to that sense of place and the fact that we have this very rich history and heritage,' Nikkel says. 'We often see this kind of archival material and think about Woodstock and some of these other highly important cultural gatherings from that era, but you never get to see that about yourself and about Winnipeg.' 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. 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. Every Second Friday The latest on food and drink in Winnipeg and beyond from arts writers Ben Sigurdson and Eva Wasney. Eva WasneyReporter Eva Wasney has been a reporter with the Free Press Arts & Life department since 2019. Read more about Eva. Every piece of reporting Eva produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press's tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press's history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates. 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.
