Fri & Sat Oct 24 & 25 / 7 pm
Sun, Oct 26 / 2 pm
Directed by Kevin Nikkel
2014, Canada, 80 min
Introduction and Q&A with Kevin Nikkel on Oct 24 & 25
Panel to follow Sunday on Oct 26: A Shared Rediscovery – several panelists will explore contemporary responses and future possibilities of the rediscovered silent feature film.
Panelists for Sunday, October 26 @ 2 PM
Amelia Fay, Curator of the HBC Museum Collection at the Manitoba Museum
James Gorton, Archivist at the Hudson’s Bay Company Archives / Archives of Manitoba
Kevin Nikkel, Director/Producer with Five Door Films
In 1919, a film crew set out on an epic journey across Canada’s North to capture the Canadian fur trade in a silent feature documentary – The Romance of the Far Fur Country which was released in 1920, two years before the legendary film Nanook of the North. Filmmaker Kevin Nikkel set out to re-trace this journey with a film crew to bring this lost film back to life, taking it to the northern communities where the film was originally shot. As people watch the footage from 1919, something special happens. Images come to life; people recognize their family members, their landscapes, and their lost traditions. Contrasting then and now, On Trail of the Far Fur Country is an intimate portrait of Canada and its Aboriginal people, and a chronicle of how life in the North has changed in the last century.