Grain, Gas
16mm/HD, 2014, 5 minutes
This is a 5 minute film shot over two summers at Saskatchewan Beach with my son William. The first shoot didn't turn out due to errors in hand processing of the footage. This began with a true story about a road trip I had, alone on the trans-Canada highway in Saskatchewan in 1991. I've told the story, with varying degrees of embarrassment, many times over the years and finally wanted to depict it on film. However, I had also noticed that the more I told it, the more even I became convinced of the truth of it. No one else was there who would remember the events and dispute them. The nature of truth in storytelling therefore became another important factor in the film. To suggest some degree of doubt in the minds of the viewers, I had William read the story for the soundtrack (he was nine when that recording was done). To further play with the viewpoint, I filmed him playing with construction trucks, which stood in for the road crew trucks described in the story. Elements of this film sat on the shelf for four years as I pondered whether or not to add additional material before deciding to allow the simplicity of the image/story relationship to stand for itself.
World premiere at the Underground Short Film Festival in Cork City, Ireland, August, 2014. It's Canadian premiere is at the Antimatter Film Festival in Victoria, BC, in October, 2014.
Part of the ongoing "Grain" series of films, funded by the Canada Council.