Documentarian and daughter pair up for personal project

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This article was published 26/02/2010 (6049 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

THANKS to co-directing the 1992 Noam Chomsky documentary Manufacturing Consent, Montrealer Peter Wintonick is one of the most successful filmmakers in Canada.

But it’s his 25-year-old daughter, Mira Burt-Wintonick, whose name you may recognize, at least if you’re a CBC Radio listener.

Mira is a producer for Jonathan Goldstein’s whimsical comedy program WireTap and an aspiring radio and video documentarian.

“She’s got a job and I don’t,” Wintonick quips over the phone from Montreal prior to his flight to Winnipeg.

“You hear her name on the radio all the time. You don’t hear mine.”

With at least a dozen documentaries to his credit, plus a prolific resumé as a producer, writer, programmer, editor and lecturer, Wintonick, 56, is here this weekend as the guest of the Winnipeg Film Group.

He’s conducting a seminar on Saturday on documentary storytelling to a class of aspiring filmmakers.

At 7 p.m. tonight he will be on hand for the Cinematheque première of his most recent doc, PilgrIMAGE, a tour of cinematic history which he undertook with Mira.

Then at 4 p.m. Saturday, he will introduce a newly released DVD version of the 1986 Newfoundland comedy The Adventure of Faustus Bidgood, directed by Mike and Andy Jones.

“It’s a classic, the forerunner of CODCO, This Hour Has 22 Minutes and that whole strain of Newfoundland satire,” says Wintonick (pronounced win-TON-ic).

“When it came out I wrote a piece that had to be the best review in the history of Canadian cinema.”

Surely, modest Canadian that he is, he means “most positive”?

“That, too,” he responds. “But I’m willing to own the podium. Next week we’ll all stop bragging.”

PilgrIMAGE is a highly personal and lighthearted view of media and film history, which he conducts alongside Mira, whose esthetic represents that of a new generation of film and documentary makers.

“They’re very comfortable with new technologies, but if they’re going to make good art, it’s important they understand the history of what they’re doing.”

Wintonick is front and centre for much of PilgrIMAGE, and with his chubby physique, left-leaning politics and shambling persona, he could be accused of imitating his American counterpart Michael Moore.

“I don’t have his obsessive need to be in front of the camera,” Wintonick says. “But I generally support his right to lie in service of the truth.”

Wintonick has a strong Winnipeg connection. His paternal grandparents arrived here from Ukraine before the First World War, raised their family in East Kildonan and died here.

Though he grew up largely in Ottawa, Wintonick visited his relatives here regularly as a boy. He is a natural fit with Winnipeg’s arts community, given his low-budget sensibility, his self-deprecating wit and the “vow of poverty” he took in 1982 when he became a documentary maker.

These days, he spends much of his time serving as executive producer for other documentary projects.

“I get a thrill out of finding stories,” he says, “and putting the right people together to realize them.”

morley.walker@freepress.mb.ca

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PilgIMAGE

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7 p.m. Friday