Latest posts from National Screen Institute - Canada (NSI)

Just a Ploughboy

Posted: 09 Aug 2019 10:29 AM PDT

A film about Canadian writer George Ryga, Just a Ploughboy explores how the land and its people shape the writer, who in turn shapes us.

Creative team

Writer/director/producer: Gina Payzant

Filmmaker’s statement

Just a Ploughboy is about how the land and its people shape the writer, who in turn shapes us. Featured interviews include Alex Krawec, a boyhood school chum and Margo Kane, the “mother of Canadian Indigenous theatre” and the first Indigenous actor to play [George Ryga’s character] Rita Joe.

York University’s professor emeritus Don Rubin discusses the national, and global, impact of Ryga’s work at the 2017 national symposium Rita Joe at 50: A Rethink held at the Ryga Arts Festival in Summerland, British Columbia.

Since its release in 2018, Just a Ploughboy has screened in Edmonton and Athabasca, Alberta, and at the Summerland Ryga Arts Festival. The film was nominated for a Golden Sheaf Award by the Yorkton Film Festival for best Canadian history and biography documentary.

The film has been accepted by Canada’s National Screen Institute to be be part of its 2019 online short film festival. The film will also be archived by the Institute, thereby preserving the film along with the lasting and timely contributions of George Ryga to Canadian literature and culture.

About Gina Payzant

During and after the completion of her MA in Canadian theatre history at the University of Alberta in 1983, Gina Kravetz Payzant worked as a sessional lecturer for seven years at that university’s department of drama. Later she worked with Edmonton’s Northern Light Theatre as dramaturge, and in the 1980s had four plays professionally produced by Edmonton regional theatres.

While teaching Canadian history in the public school system, she continued to write plays, poems and essays. After retiring from teaching in 2010, a new challenge was presented: managing the Athabasca Archives.

In 2017 Gina wrote, produced and directed Just a Ploughboy, a short documentary film about Canadian literary giant George Ryga. Ryga is perhaps best know for his 1967 play The Ecstasy of Rita Joe, a brutal yet lyrical account of the treatment of Canada’s Indigenous peoples.

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Métis Femme Bodies

Posted: 09 Aug 2019 09:59 AM PDT

Métis Femme Bodies is a visual and sonic exploration into the experiences of what has become a repressed identity in both Indigenous and female(-presenting) forms.

The film aims to offer visibility and voice to those who have been denied such luxury in order to accurately represent themselves and correct misleading narratives imposed by greater power structures.

Creative team

Director/producer: Chanelle Lajoie

Filmmaker’s statement

Utilizing digital documenting as a new form of expression, I was able to apply the vocal narrative from those whose experiences mirrored my own – that of a Métis Femme.

With this, imposed narratives and gazes are substituted by the voices and bodies of which the experience of confusion, shame, and resurgence live.

About Chanelle Lajoie

A dyslexic 7w6 who does not know her sun sign from her moon sign, Chanelle Lajoie is continuously striving to align her ethics, principles and goals better than she does her posture.

As a queer Métis woman living on Treaty 1 Territory, community-building is Chanelle’s medicine. Rooting and intertwining her academic studies, work and creative passions to her personal politics aids in merging the communities that reside in each.

Chanelle’s work strives to undo the silence placed upon the communities she exists within through inquiry and inclusion. She believes these voices should be amplified, echoed and valued.

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#IRL

Posted: 09 Aug 2019 09:54 AM PDT

The unsexy realities of a sexy selfie.

Creative team

Writer: Holly Merritt
Director: Christina Hodnet
Producers: Holly Merritt, Christina Hodnet

Filmmaker’s statement

#IRL was a creative collaboration with writer Holly Merritt that stemmed from organically stumbling upon war stories of an all-too-common shared female experience: the sexy selfie by women not as versed in the perils of its execution as their younger counterparts. The struggle, the set-up, the insecurities, the angles, the edits, the doubt, the tears, the frustration, the time, the unsexiness of it.

“If men only knew,” we thought. Sometimes films are meant to be an escape from reality, and then sometimes they’re meant to expose it. Sorry, boys.

About Christina Hodnet

Christina has been in the advertising industry for almost 20 years directing uncompromising performances for global clients such as General Mills, Mazda, Always, Kinder, Colgate, Tylenol, Snuggle and more.

Her work brings about thoughts of insightful honesty and authenticity. She captures moments that are alive with emotion and that connect with her audience. Known for exposing the beautifully awkward and imperfect reality life offers up, she finds the small nuances that make a moment unique.

“I’m interested in the moment in between the moments,” she says. “The photo you don’t post because it’s not perfect, but in reality is more representational of your life than the perfect one.” Her latest short film titled #IRL shows the humorous truth behind the sexy selfie and the process one goes through to achieve this.

Growing up in California, Christina got her first experiences in the film industry as a young teen in front of the camera. Working with incredible photographers and directors ignited a spark that led her to pursue a degree at the ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena.

She now resides between Toronto and Los Angeles with her husband, two children, Snowball the hamster and one large dog named Orvis.

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