September 30, 2024

By Rachel Ho

This past weekend marked the inaugural County Adaptation Film Festival (CAFF) in Prince Edward County. What began as a “meeting of the minds” between two of the county’s most ardent advocates, the Regent Theatre’s Alexandra Seay and the Royal Hotel’s Sol Korngold, came to fruition showcasing the beauty of its landscapes, the power of the art community, and their love for film.

The Regent Theatre served as the epicentre of the festival on Picton’s Main Street with movie screenings, Q&As, and music performances taking place inside the century-old cinema. The lobby transformed into an exhibition about residential school survivors curated by the Tsi Tyónnheht Onkwawén:na Language and Cultural Centre (TTO). In combination with other carefully selected programmes, it formed Pathways to ReconciliACTION, an event series weaved throughout the festival. The programming was timely given the festival’s proximity to the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.

As with any large event, organizers weighed scheduling against multiple considerations: weather, hotel availability, and competing events of a similar nature (i.e. TIFF), but once they settled upon the last weekend of September, CAFF understood its significance.

“We knew that we had to integrate [the day] and make space for that within the festival programming,” said Seay, the festival’s founding artistic director, as well as the current artistic director of the Regent Theatre. “In order to do that, we needed to give [the] curatorial voice to [the] Indigenous community and partners, because it has to be Indigenous-led — ‘Nothing about us without us.’”

In addition to TTO, CAFF partnered with the Gord Downie & Chanie Wenjack Fund to put together ReconciliACTION. Seay refers to TTO and the Downie-Wenjack Fund as “our guides and our community connectors,” leaning on their knowledge and archive to form the series.

The results of these efforts came to pass over the weekend. Attendees were treated to an engaging and thought-provoking layer to the festival that spoke directly to CAFF’s adaptation theme.

Six Strings and The Secret Path

ReconciliACTION kicked off in earnest on the festival’s second day with a traditional Mohawk welcome from Grandmother Kathy Brant, a Haudenosaunee (grandparent) and Traditional teacher and mentor from Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory, followed by an intimate musical set from Tyendinaga-based singer-songwriter Jennifer Brant. Jennifer performed songs from her album, Resilience, which was inspired by Kanyen’kéha (Mohawk) language and culture.

Jennifer’s gentle vocals and powerful lyrics put attendees in a stoic state of mind to start the day, leading organically into Six Strings, a Mohawk-language short film about a violent dispute between rival factions within the Mohawk Village on the Bay of Quinte. The film, produced by TTO, featured no English subtitles in an effort to revitalize the Mohawk language, an aspect of the film Seay asked the audience to sit with and reflect upon.

Following Six Strings, CAFF screened The Secret Path (2016), an animated visual interpretation of Gord Downie’s 10-song album telling the story of Chanie Wenjack, a young boy who died trying to escape from the Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School in 1966. The film itself offered an adaptation of Downie’s album, as well as Jeff Lemire’s graphic novel published in tandem with the album.

“We really wanted something in our programme that would be appealing to a younger audience,” Seay said about the selection of The Secret Path beyond the obvious connection with the Downie-Wenjack Fund. “We were very conscious in the curation of the whole festival about access and community engagement, so Pathways to ReconciliACTION was one of our entry points to that. We wanted to [remove] all the barriers so that people can participate.”

A Path Forward

Located a short 10-minute walk from the Regent, CAFF shone a light on the Macaulay Church Museum. Built in 1823, the church originally stood as Picton’s main Anglican church until 1913 when St. Mary Magdalene opened its doors and remains in operation today.

TTO and the Downie-Wenjack Fund co-curated “A Path Forward,” the free permanent exhibit housed inside the museum,. Designed to be taken in via a horseshoe pattern, “A Path Forward” explores what truth and reconciliation mean in the county, retracing the history, reflecting upon the present, and envisioning the future of Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in Prince Edward County.

Being a former church added a symbolic weight to the exhibit — even more so when considering the graffiti mural on the back wall of the church, existing in combination with the church’s stained glass. The exhibit brought historical artifacts into the setting, as well as stunning artwork, each speaking to a lived experience.

Biidaaban: First Light

Lisa Jackson and Mathew Borrett’s VR experience, Biidaaban: First Light, offered the last official part of the Pathways programme; however, Jackson’s work actually marked the starting point for Seay. “We started with Lisa Jackson’s [project] and then we built out and approached Indigenous partners,” noted Seay

A 10-minute short, Biidaaban introduced users to a Toronto reclaimed by nature where viewers are asked to engage with the written text of the Wendat, Mohawk, and Anishinaabe (Ojibway). Biidaaban visualized a desolate Tkaronto through the lens of Indigenous futurism, emphasizing the fleeting nature of buildings and sites and the enduring quality of nature and the land’s ancestors.

In conversation with The Secret Path, Biidaaban explored the “adaptation” element of the festival. While the premise of CAFF was rooted in the creative relationship between film and literature (poetry in Biidaaban’s case), the VR worked inspired attendees to consider adaptation on a meta cultural level as these texts help change the nation’s narrative in light of reconciliation.  “Here we have a physical manifestation of an adaptation,” Seay explained. “We’re taking Toronto’s Nathan Phillips Square, and we’re transforming it, reimagining it as a futuristic Tkaronto. If we take a very broad approach to that concept of adaptation, it fits.”

Over the weekend and through the ReconciliACTION programme, CAFF’s adaptation moniker revealed itself to go beyond literature (the presumed starting point). Through art, films, and conversation, the festival not only expanded attendees’ initial idea of adaptation but it used the concept to immerse audiences in how history, philosophy, beliefs, and our rights and wrongs can be recontextualized to create new learning experiences.

The Knowing

The final entry in CAFF’s In Conversation series wasn’t billed as an official part of Pathways, but the discussion between renowned author and journalist Tanya Talaga and filmmaker Courtney Montour (moderated by actress Jennifer Podemski) about their latest project, The Knowing, touched on many of the same issues.

The Knowing retold the history of Canada through the lens of Talaga’s family, beginning with her great-great-grandmother into the present. During the talk, Talaga shared a conversation she had with her editor when she pitched the ideas of both The Knowing and the now-award-winning Seven Fallen Feathers (2017) wherein her editor recommended she write the latter book first as Canada wasn’t ready for the former.

In exploring Talaga’s latest book and its translation into a four-part docuseries, CAFF unofficially capped off Pathways by reinstating the value of art in understanding our history and forging a path forward.

“I think it’s the artist’s job to dare, because when no one else can dare, they can. I frame art as action. I truly do think by engaging with art at some level, you are making a choice,” Seay said emphatically. “Art can bring people together. It’s human beings expressing themselves in a medium, and that is so powerful because that lasts beyond us.”