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The Return of the Far Fur Country
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The Return of the Far Fur Country (Documentary, HD. In Development) Project Description In 1919 the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) sent a film crew to some of the most remote wilderness in Canada. They lugged crates full of gear by foot, canoe, dogsled and icebreaker, amassing enough footage to make a two hour silent feature they called The Romance of the Far Fur Country. It is perhaps the most important record of northern life in the early 20th century, a time-capsule showing remote Aboriginal settlements surrounded by a wilderness largely unspoiled by industry. Unfortunately, it is a time-capsule that has thus far remained unopened. For the last sixty years the 35 mm footage has rarely been viewed, stored as part of the vast holdings at the British Film Institute (BFI) archives, in London. Return of the Far Fur Country is a documentary about this lost film. It is the story of the Aboriginal people that were captured on camera, and about the repatriation of the film, bringing it first back to Canada, then back to Aboriginal communities used by the HBC. In February 2010, I curated In the Shadow of the Company: Films on the Hudson’s Bay Company, for the Winnipeg Cinematheque. The weekend festival included rare screenings of various films I unearthed from the Hudson Bay Company Archives (HBCA), as well as a sold out screening of the 1922 masterpiece “Nanook of the North,” with a live instrumentation that included an Inuit throat singer. Support for the event surpassed all expectations, with coverage by local media and generous sponsorship for panels, guest speakers and a master class. The weekend program was so successful that the Metro Cinema in Edmonton has programmed the same event for April 2011. One key sponsor and advocate of In the Shadow of the Company has been Canada’s Historical Society, who commemorated the weekend festival by publishing an article in their flagship publication, The Beaver Magazine. Arctic Visions, written by my collaborator, Chris Nikkel, compared Nanook of the North to the lost film The Romance of the Far Fur Country. This publication confirmed once again the growing appetite for stories about early filmmaking in the northern reaches of Canada’s wilderness. In preparation for In The Shadow of the Company, I read a book by Peter Geller that inspired me to act on my growing interest in northern films. Northern Exposures: Photographing and Filming the Canadian North, 1920-45, is the definitive work on the subject, from one of Canada’s most important visual historians. Excited by Geller’s research, I invited him to Winnipeg to join a panel discussion for In The Shadow of the Company, and am pleased he has joined my team for this film project. Geller’s book includes a chapter devoted to The Romance of the Far Fur Country, which he re-discovered in the BFI archives in the 1990s. Shot in commemoration of the HBC’s 250th anniversary, the film was completed in 1920, hitting theatres two years before its counterpart Nanook of the North. For its narrative, the anniversary film gave a brief history of the Hudson’s Bay Company—from its first charter in 1670—as well as a survey of its contemporary workings as of 1920. It included visits to HBC outposts across Canada, from coastal British Columbia, through the northern Boreal forest to the eastern Arctic. As a spectacle, it staged an elaborate ceremony called the Red River Pageant, at Lower Fort Garry, north of Winnipeg, which created the impression of a successful partnership between the First Nation’s people and the HBC. Two of the most significant scenes in the film are narrative sequences that portray the changing nature of Aboriginal life, in two distinct regions of Canada. The first, titled “Reminiscences/Life Story of an Eskimo,” was shot at Lake Harbour on Baffin Island (now Kimmirut, Nunavut). The second follows a family trap line near Fort Chipewyan, in Northern Alberta. Unlike Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North, the HBC film does not attempt to hide the cultural changes brought on by the interactions between Aboriginal peoples and European culture. I find this interaction and interpretation intriguing, especially as a potential theme for my documentary film. The Romance of the Far Fur Country was released in theatres across Western Canada. Accompanied by a live orchestra, the screenings included a section of the theatre set aside for Aboriginal people, not as an offering for them to see their culture on screen—Aboriginal people were not desired guests in most theatres—but to create an in-house drama in order to sell more tickets. What is more, the tour of Romance did not stray from the big cities, and never went north—it was never shown to the communities where it was shot. Within a few years the silent film disappeared, a victim of the growing interest in the talkies. Today no complete print of The Romance of the Far Fur Country exists. But thankfully, there exists fragments that make up the whole, stored in dozens of film-canisters at the BFI archive. My research in the HBCA has confirmed crewmembers’ diaries, shot lists, and editing notes making it possible to resurrect the film to its original 2-hour run time. My documentary, Return of the Far Fur Country, is about bringing back The Romance of the Far Fur Country. It is about putting the film back on the screen, and about taking that screen to the people who were used as characters in this forgotten film. It explores the serial exploitation of Aboriginal people and their environment by the biggest and most famous fur trade company in the world, as well as the continued exploitation by resource companies today. Can we learn something about how to treat our environment by looking back at a historical record from 1920? Yes, I believe we can. In addition to these questions, the documentary explores the film itself, an unheralded feat of filmmaking. Taking advantage of their two 35mm cameramen, one sequence of the HBC film is called “The Trials and Tribulations of a Cameraman” giving a behind the scenes look at their filming on the winter trails, drifting downstream and across the pack ice—the footage is an incredible window into what it took to make a film in the wilderness in the early 20th century. And of course, the documentary seeks to retrace the film’s journey, finding images and connections from present day that speak to the footage shot nearly 100 years ago. Bringing the film back to show to the communities is a vital component to this documentary, and the commentary given by local people will feature prominently. What will be their response to The Romance of the Far Fur Country? This is what makes this project important. I have a personal interest in the process of showing films as a tool to promote dialogue and engagement with issues, and it dates back to my work as a Masters student at St. Francis Xavier University. My thesis, entitled Learning in Front of the Lens, focused on the transformative experiences of several Aboriginal men who were part of a documentary I shot at the time, called 365 Choices a Year. Participants explored the notion of seeing themselves on film, using the medium as an educational and reconciliatory tool. Building on this academic work, our presenting of Return of the Far Fur Country to communities will uncover the reactions of descendents of the people who first appeared in The Romance of the Far Fur Country, drawing on oral histories to bridge the gap between our contemporary society, and the society captured in the HBC’s 1920 silent film. It is this process of repatriation, first back to Canada from London, then back to northern Aboriginal communities, that is at the heart of Return of the Far Fur Country. Kevin Nikkel |
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