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Winnipeg Free Press
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Winnipeg Free Press
GIFF gold for Matthew Rankin, Noam Gonick
After earning six Canadian Screen Awards earlier this year for Universal Language, filmmaker Matthew Rankin's sunlit roadside memorial to communication and community took home top honours from the Gimli International Film Festival this past weekend. Told in complementary tones of voice and within shades of sandstone, Universal Language received Best of Fest honours from the grand jury and also earned Rankin the Alda Award, given to 'honour the cinematic and creative achievements of a filmmaker from Canada and the circumpolar nations.' Rankin, who also acts in the film, was presented the Alda by festival founder Janis Johnson. MIKE DEAL / FREE PRESS FILES Matthew Rankin's already acclaimed Universal Language took top honours at the Gimli International Film Festival. For her own efforts to usher the festival into existence 25 years ago, Johnson was presented by Gimli MLA Derek Johnson with the King Charles Coronation Medal at the opening reception. Rankin is a longtime festival regular and Winnipeg Film Group student who won short film award honours in 2004 before receiving the fest's On the Rise award for his feature debut The Twentieth Century during a pandemic-altered 2020 festival. This year's best Canadian short comes from writer-director Stéphanie Bélanger, who explores that unshakable era in Lumen, a French-language short with a clickable tagline for anyone who had access to e-tail during COVID-19: 'A 70-year-old with a compulsive lamp-buying problem goes dark when an online seller refuses her offer.' A modern-day victory for queer futures comes via Noam Gonick's doc Parade: Queer Acts of Love and Resistance, which was celebrated as the best Manitoban film. 'An astonishingly cumulative look at Canada's history of queer activism,' wrote Randall King in a Free Press dispatch from the Hot Docs opening in April. Parade was co-produced by Winnipeg's Justine Pimlott, who shared a Peabody Award for best documentary earlier this year for Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story. Two local actors earned ACTRA Manitoba best performance honours for their work in films dealing with loss, both at and of home. In griePH, Winnipeg actor Kris Cahatol stars as an introverted, non-binary Filipinx who returns home for a work trip and struggles to cope with sudden loss upon arrival. Directed by MC de Natividad, the short film had its local première at this year's FascinAsian Film Festival. In Aberdeen, Gail Maurice soars as Kookum Aberdeen in a story of forced climate displacement along the banks of the Red River. Maurice, a Métis filmmaker-producer from Saskatchewan, is the anchor of the debut feature-film directing collaboration between Peguis First Nation filmmaker Ryan Cooper and Walpole Island First Nation's Eva Thomas. Following up 2023's audience choice award-winning positivity doc I Would Like to Thank My Body, writer-director Catherine Dulude returned with Petit Mollusque, which was named best Manitoban short. Narrated by André Vrignon-Tessier, Petite Mollusque tells a story of perinatal grief through vivid animation by Annie Castiblanco and Kaya Schulz, both paid interns through the Sisler Create program. Wednesdays What's next in arts, life and pop culture. Shared worlds torn asunder by shared, translingual trauma are stitched together by a united vernacular of pain in Noam Shuster-Eliassi's Coexistence, My Ass, which won the New Voices Award, sharing a potent message in a one-woman show about Israel-Palestine. Written in English, Farsi, Hebrew and Arabic, the film was written by Rachel Leah Jones and Rabab Haj Yahya. The National Film Board of Canada write-up for Siksikakowan: The Blackfoot Man asks filmmaker Sinakson, Trevor Solway's question in plain English: 'What does it mean to be a (Native) man?' To find the answer, Solway returns to Siksika, not far from Calgary, where he confronts the early pressures to 'cowboy up.' For the answer the artist provides, Solway was presented with the APTN Indigenous Spirit Award. Ande Brown, whose short film Better Late Than Never won the best Manitoban short at 2024's Reel Pride Film Festival, just completed his second short, First Shave. On the strength of those works, Brown won the RBC $15,000 emerging filmmaker pitch competition. The resulting feature, Half Naked, will screen next year in Gimli. 'I want to tell stories that reflect trans experiences with humour and hope,' said Brown. 'If this film helps someone feel seen or brave enough to share their own story, that's a win.' Ben WaldmanReporter Ben Waldman is a National Newspaper Award-nominated reporter on the Arts & Life desk at the Free Press. Born and raised in Winnipeg, Ben completed three internships with the Free Press while earning his degree at Ryerson University's (now Toronto Metropolitan University's) School of Journalism before joining the newsroom full-time in 2019. Read more about Ben. Every piece of reporting Ben 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.
CBC
23-07-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
Flashback: Ups and downs
Bungee jumping: a brand-new trend for thrill-seekers in 1990 6 days ago This month, roller-coaster fans stood in line for hours to try AlpenFury, a new ride at an amusement park near Toronto. One of them told CBC Radio's As It Happens he liked the feeling of doing "something death-defying," and this felt safer than stunts like skydiving or bungee jumping. In 1990, host Knowlton Nash of The National introduced an item about " North America's first legal bungee-jumping centre" in Nanaimo, B.C., and in the report, the CBC's Bob Nixon said he was stupid enough to try the $95 ($199 in 2025) jump. "Here's my cameraman, Pat Bell — he's also stupid," Nixon said as Bell prepared to take the plunge with a camera strapped to his body. We'd call the resulting pictures proto-GoPro cinematography. A different angle A snapshot of the Winnipeg Film Group 6 days ago " The universe begins for me in Winnipeg," said Matthew Rankin, director of the 2024 movie Universal Language, in a recent CBC Arts piece. "That exerts great existential pressure on my meaningless life, which I think is true of a lot of Winnipeggers." The feature — on the city's tradition of "off-centre filmmaking" — also mentions filmmakers John Paizs (who was noticed for his 1984 film Crime Wave) and Guy Maddin, who writer Matthew Teklemariam says is "perhaps Winnipeg's most celebrated filmmaker." In 1991, Maddin (whose latest film at the time was Archangel) told the CBC's Beth Harrington about the city's benefits. "Making films [in Winnipeg] is very easy," he said. "You get lots of money; there's not that much competition; everyone's really helpful; and rent is cheap for equipment and for space." For the love of cats Ottawa man cooks for Parliament Hill cats 2 days ago Retiree René Chartrand cares for a colony of nine feral felines that live near Parliament Hill. Aired on CBC's Midday on Feb. 22, 1989. Coal, the last survivor of a group of feral felines on Parliament Hill, has died at 17, CBC News reported recently. He had been cared for in a sanctuary until 2013, when it closed and all of the cats were adopted. Before the colony was dispersed, volunteer René Chartrand prepared meals for the cats and took a bus to visit them daily, according to a 1989 report on CBC's Midday. Reporter Cory O'Kelly said Chartrand spent "a small fortune" on food and welcomed donations. "René has even built a plywood home for the cats and added insulation," O'Kelly said. "Blankets from his home help the cats survive the bitter cold." Hail no Damaging hail the size of golf balls hit the Calgary area last week, and locals shared photos of the aftermath with CBC News. When another form of precipitation — snow — fell on parts of Alberta in 1999, residents took it in stride. A taste of history Canada's Jersey Milk chocolate bar, originally made by Neilson, is no more, the Financial Post reported recently. Neilson also marketed the Crispy Crunch bar and even tried selling it in the U.S., as the CBC's Venture reported in 1991. A summit in space Cosmonauts and astronauts to meet in space 50 years ago CBC reporter Lloyd Robertson visits Star City, home of the Soviet space program, in 1975. Last week was the 50th anniversary of a meeting in space between American astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts, the New York Times reported. When the Soviets invited reporters to the cosmonaut training centre in Russia before the 1975 event, Lloyd Robertson was there for the CBC.
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.
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.
