(stories from) The Land of Cain 1995
(stories from) The Land of Cain was made while I pursued an MFA at Concordia University in Montreal.
The film grew out of an experience I had when visiting Montreal in 1990 for the Montreal World Film Festival. The Oka Crisis (aka the Kanesatake Resistance) was happening at the time – and I found myself wandering around the ruins of the Expo 67 site. Its crumbling condition seemed like a useful metaphor for the state of Canada at that moment.
The film chronicles a road trip from Batoche in Saskatchewan to the Plains of Abraham in Quebec City. I was joined on the road by Regina filmmaker Brett Bell, and our travels included an unexpected encounter with the Federal Minister of Communications in a Quebec City restaurant (she seemed perplexed to find two Anglos from western Canada having dinner there).
As I was making the film, Quebec was moving towards the 1995 referendum on independence.
The film was shot on 16mm Kodak colour negative, mostly with an Arri S camera. It also used home movies my parents shot on Super 8mm film when I was a child (including footage of my father’s visit to Expo 67), which I re-photographed with an optical printer. The film was edited on a 16mm Steenbeck, and the sound was mixed at Concordia University.
The Etobicoke band Rheostatics very kindly let me use a couple tracks off their album Melville.
The film was produced with the support of grants from the Canada Council, Saskatchewan Arts Board, the Saskatchewan Filmpool, and the NFB PAFPS program – all the film was processed at the NFB’s Montreal laboratory.
The film had its debut at the 1995 Vancouver International Film Festival, and shared the festival’s Best Canadian Short prize.
