The David Suzuki Foundation and The Northern Miner have quite surprisingly come together to co-present a film called Koneline: our land beautiful showing in Vancouver this month. These strange bedfellows - an environmental charity and a publication dedicated to the mining industry - appear not quite so strange together after you've seen this film which is being described as a "poem", offering a balanced look at a mining project that will forever change British Columbia. In a province where we're used to seeing the interests of the environmental movement butt heads with the interests of resource extraction, this partnership is at the very least refreshing.
To say that the film is beautiful is obvious. I mean it's right there in the title, and within 30 seconds of it beginning you're struck by the quality of the cinematography as well as the soundscape on offer. Capturing the outward allure of the wilderness it also tells, in a non-linear fashion, the stories the people who make Northern BC what it is. It shows how these communities - settler and First Nations alike - are dealing with the changes that are happening around them, and within them. It shows how their traditions and their relationship with the land are changing, and it displays it without judgement but simply put it there for you to make of it what you will.
In the end the message it conveys is not dire, but haunting. It's Baraka meets Petropolis meets... well... nothing that's ever been produced before. I can't recommend it more. Watch this trailer here:
It's playing now until November 10th at the Vancity theatre (details and showtimes HERE), and then at the Rio on November 20th and 24th.
