The Vernon Film Society will screen KONELINE: our land beautiful Monday as its third film of the winter season.
KONELINE is a sensual, cinematic celebration of northwestern British Columbia, and all the dreamers who move across it. Some hunt on the land. Some mine it. They all love it.
Set deep in the traditional territory of the Tahltan First Nation, KONELINE captures beauty and complexity as one of Canada’s vast wildernesses undergoes irrevocable change. An art film with politics, drama, and humour, KONELINE: our land beautiful explores different ways of seeing-and being.
A guide outfitter swims her horses across the vast Stikine River. The world’s biggest chopper flies 16,000-pound transmission towers over mountaintops. KONELINE’s characters delight while smashing stereotypes: white hunters carry bows and arrows and members of the Tahltan First Nation hunt out of a pickup with high-powered rifles. There are diamond drillers, both native and white, and elders who blockade them.
There’s a Tahltan son struggling to preserve a dying language, and a white guy who sings North to Alaska to his stuffed moose.
Winner of the Best Canadian Feature Documentary Award at Toronto’s Hot Docs 2016 festival, KONELINE: our land beautiful does not lecture; it surprises with cinematic action and visual poetry. It is a bold experimental film from Genie award-winning director Nettie Wild, one of Canada’s leading documentary artists.
“Wild says her aim was to ‘create a cinematic experience that audiences can absorb through their eyes and ears, through their skin.’ Mission accomplished,” said June Chua, with Rabble.ca.
KONELINE screens at the Vernon Towne Cinema Monday, Feb. 6 at the regular times of 5:15 and 7:45 p.m. Tickets are available one week ahead at the theatre and the Bean Scene for $7. Cash only. The film is rated PG.