Winnipeg Film Group Reflecting Light at 40

Opinion

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This article was published 06/05/2015 (3806 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The qualities of youth — creativity, insolence, passion — can change in a 40-year span, to introspection, nostalgia and maybe a little angst.

As it is with people, so it can be for institutions. In observing its 40th year as a cultural touchstone, the Winnipeg Film Group marks the occasion with a four-day binge of films, panel discussions, tours and a party or two.

It’s more than a celebration, however. After all, when you hit 40, it’s natural to reflect on where you’ve been but also consider where you’re going.

“When people think about the Winnipeg Film Group, they think about the filmmaking community that has emerged from the WFG and of course, they also think about Cinematheque,” says Cecilia Araneda, the film group’s executive director since 2006.

In the Reflecting Light program, which begins today and runs until Saturday, Araneda says she will ask attendees “to think about the whole organization.

“The filmmaking community that’s emerged is super-important and we’re always focused on that in our programming,” she says. “But how we evolve? It’s a bit more of a complex idea.”

Reflecting Light does celebrate the WFG’s glorious past from the get-go. Today, beginning at 5 p.m. at Cinematheque, is Prairie Postmodernists & New Wave Pioneers: 1980s Cinema, an examination of the WFG’s heady prime of life, which saw the rise of star auteurs Guy Maddin and John Paizs.

Paizs will take part in a panel that includes Toronto critic and early WFG champion Geoff Pevere, Cinematheque programmer Dave Barber and Toronto International Film Festival programmer Steve Gravestock in an examination of the Pevere-dubbed phenomenon of “prairie postmodernism.”

It is followed at 7 p.m. by a freshly struck digital master print of Paizs’s feature masterpiece Crime Wave.

Subsequent programs examine what Araneda considers directions the organization needs to consider.

The panel In Dialogue: Canadian Women Directors (Friday at noon) discusses the representation, or lack thereof, of female directors in regions around the country.

The Saturday panel, Expressions: Indigenous Views of Film Production Centres (Saturday at 1 p.m.) brings together filmmakers such as Shane Belcourt, Caroline Monnet and Darryl Nepinak to discuss the role of production centres like the Winnipeg Film Group in supporting indigenous filmmakers.

“I think supporting indigenous filmmakers has been one of our bigger successes of the past decade,” Araneda says. “When I started here, it was a real obvious gap.

“We had to consciously create programs to correct a kind of historic inequity that occurred in our organization,” she says. “The organization can now say there are indigenous filmmakers in Manitoba who have a body of work and they’re doing this because of the early interventions in their careers that the Winnipeg Film Group made.

“The film group needs to stop thinking it’s a one-size-fits-all organization that will include everybody,” Araneda says. “When we stopped doing that with indigenous filmmakers and started targeting programs for them, and prioritizing programming their work at Cinematheque, it made a huge impact.

“Targeting interventions actually help the organization become more inclusive,” Araneda says. “The only way you can get better or take advantage of opportunities is if you find a better way.”

The complete schedule for Reflecting Light is online at reflectinglight.ca.

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca