Post-screening Q&A with the filmmakers, moderated by Kevin Nikkel.
The Winnipeg Film Group established its reputation on the offbeat films of the 1980s, with the very first project by the artist-run-centre being the collaborative short Rabbit Pie in 1976. Yet it is worth taking a closer look at the early efforts of the founding members of the Winnipeg Film Group to see the roots of documentary in the first years of the young organization—projects we shouldn’t forget as they’re branches of our cinematic family tree.
Leonard Yakir’s gritty doc Main Street Soldier of 1972 fit the social realist approach of the times—a style getting considerable attention with initiatives like the NFB’s Challenge for Change and cinéma verité movement. Yakir’s documentary came out prior to the 1974 Canadian Film Symposium at University of Manitoba, which provided the impetus for the founding of the WFG. Yakir was a founding member of the WFG.
In these early years, WFG members were hungry to make films, and many had their sites on the documentary genre. Several projects were started but left unfinished during the first few years of the WFG. A documentary about a downtown preschool centre, Winnipeg Children’s House was begun in 1975—the Super 8 film reels of the project are all that survive. Also, in 1975 on Super 8 was a WFG collaborative documentary on the Winnipeg Folk Festival—the project that floundered primarily due to technical issues.
Leon Johnson’s 1977 documentary Yardmen was also unfinished due to lack of funding at the time—his attention turning to other short films, and to a career as a sound recordist. The documentary most recently celebrated from this era was Havakeen Lunch (1979) by Elise Swerhone. The documentary embodied the independent spirit of filmmaking in Winnipeg in the 1970s, and was a film that was actually finished. A few years after these projects the NFB expanded with a Winnipeg office that began attracting many of this first wave of WFG filmmakers away to work on projects with actual budgets.
Main Street Soldier (1972) Leonard Yakir, 35min.
World War II veteran Ray LeClair relives his marches through a haze of alcoholism on Winnipeg’s Historic Main Street. The film draws from Ray’s two battlefields, war and the street.
Yardmen (1977/2022) Leon Johnson, 14 min.
A portrait of the CP Rail yard workers of central Winnipeg. A documentary that filmmaker Leon Johnson and members of the Winnipeg Film Group shot in the 1970s but never finished, until now.
Scenes from the Winnipeg Children’s House (1975) Collaborative, 10 min.
An unfinished film about an inner-city Winnipeg daycare centre. The project was lead by Nancy Edell on camera, with Joanne Jackson and Val Klassen helping.
Scenes from the Winnipeg Folk Festival (1975) Winnipeg Film Group, 15min.
An unfinished documentary portrait of the 2nd Winnipeg Folk Festival at Bird’s Hill Park. The project was another attempt at a Winnipeg Film Group collaboration. Contemporary software has solved previous issues around creeping sync on many of the audio reels, a major factor of the initial project’s demise.
The West Quarter (1974) Joanne Johnson Jackson, 4 min.
A visual delight, this film by one of Winnipeg’s most talented photographers explores a field of sunflowers, examining details of the large beaming heads, waving leaves, and bowing stalks, all to the music of Bill Hinkley.
Havakeen Lunch (1979) Elise Swerhone, 28min.
After eighteen years of operating the favourite lunch counter in Manitoba’s Interlake region, Ellen and Martin Kihn have retired. A poignant look at the last day, The Kihns, their friends and their customers, demanding rural life and the place the disappearing institution of the country café plays in these people’s lives. A tribute to the cafes found in small towns.
