White Owl Film Studios celebrates National Canadian Film Day
By Rick Garrick
WAHNAPITAE — White Owl Film Studios in Wahnapitae First Nation plans to feature a film narrated by Indigenous actor Adam Beach as part of its celebration for National Canadian Film Day on April 16. Launched in 2014, National Canadian Film Day is a nationwide initiative presented by Reel Canada to spotlight Canadian films, voices, and creative talent.
“We are showing a French, English, and Indigenous film called The Road to Tophet that was shot in Chapleau in collaboration with the Chapleau Cree First Nation,” says Alex Green, public relations and acquisitions manager at White Owl Film Studios and an actor, producer, and film technician who is originally from Chapleau and now lives in Sudbury. “We have Adam Beach as our storyteller, and the characters in the film are a French Canadian and an English Canadian.”
The Road to Tophet, which was released in 2014 with a main cast of Beach, Green, and Samuel Thivierge, was directed by Steve Schmidt and written by Green, Schmidt, and Jeremy Beal.
“National Canadian Film Day, especially this year with all that’s going on, is a chance for us to celebrate the stories we can tell together and the fact that those stories wont to be heard worldwide,” Green says. “Steve Schmidt will be there for the Live Q and A.”
Green says Wasauksing First Nation musician Zeegwon Shilling will be performing a couple of songs at the National Canadian Film Day celebration.
“He is 19 or 20-years old, a really great Indigenous singer-guitar player,” Green says. “He is a well educated, very intelligent, very talented musician. He played at the Weengushk
International Film Festival last summer as a special guest — we’re honoured to have him.”
Green says White Owl Film Studios was officially opened at the beginning of March after being built about a year ago by Roy Roque, a Wahnapitae citizen, and some silent investors.
“We’re the largest Indigenous-owned studio in Canada, 20,000 square feet, 64-foot ceilings,” Green says. “They wanted to bring something back and they saw a huge potential in the film industry and decided to build a 20,000-square-foot film studio in Wahnapitae. I believe he saw growth and the room for infrastructure to be built around this. There’s a huge amount of potential and a studio this big is a key missing piece of infrastructure for Northern Ontario.”
The National Canadian Film Day celebration is scheduled to begin with an opening ceremony at 2 p.m. followed by opening remarks by Green and a Reel Canada Intro Video featuring the national anthem by Jann Arden.
The feature presentation of The Road to Tophet is scheduled for 3:05 p.m. following a Short Film Screening of a 12-minute Scriptfest selection.
“We thought [The Road to Tophet] was very appropriate for this event because it’s actually a story of the Windigo, but the characters in the story are French Canadian and English Canadian [and] our storyteller is Adam Beach,” Green says. “We thought it very much represented where we are in the world here, we have a lot of French and English and Indigenous people especially where we live here in Northern Ontario and we thought what a better way to represent Canadian film than having something that crossed the most predominant cultures in Northern Ontario and allowed us to all come together.”
The Live Question and Answer session by Schmidt is scheduled for 4:25 p.m.
“It’s a free event, everybody is welcome,” Green says. “We really want to show people that we can create here in Canada as a community and collaborate and encourage and create beautiful things, a beautiful studio hosted by some amazing people on some amazing land.”