At Whistler Film Festival, a Heady Dose of the Great Outdoors

The Whistler Film Festival this week takes flight.

The fest opens Wednesday with The Last Showgirl, director Gia Coppola’s tribute to fading Vegas glories. It stars Pamela Anderson, as well as Jamie Lee Curtis in a dyed-red shag haircut and frosted lipstick. After this bravura kickoff, the festival offers a curious mix this year.

In amongst the more mainstream fare and films dedicated to outdoor culture, there’s a number of urgent documentaries, off-the-wall Canadian features and some truly uncategorizable stuff.

Read on for a few picks for festival goers.

Fairy Creek

In a world of bad, worse and absolutely horrendous news about the state of the environment, Jen Muranetz’s feature documentary comes as a welcome reprieve.

At the outset, it doesn’t appear as if the ragged pack of activists who blockaded logging trucks on one of Vancouver Island’s last stands of old-growth forest stood much of a chance. But hold on to your hats, folks, because sometimes there are happy endings. Or at least sort of happy.

While not exactly the ringing victory that many people had hoped and fought for, the blockade did achieve something significant in bringing global attention to yet another war in the woods.

It is interesting to watch the film in light of other documentaries that have traversed similar territory, including directors Jennifer Wickham, Brenda Michell and Michael Toledano’s Yintah and Christopher Auchter’s The Stand.

Located near the town of Port Renfrew, B.C., the Fairy Creek watershed is a lush forest, fecund with life of all stripes and hues. In the film’s opening scene, aspects of the place both big (giant trees) and small (the delicate filigree of a fern) are captured in all their bucolic splendour.

The deep quiet, broken only by a squawking blue jay and the lower murmurs of a herd of deer, is itself a powerful presence. When the distant whine and roar of chainsaws picks up, you almost feel your heart sink. Cut to scenes of protesters clashing with police, and you’re right into the heat of the struggle.

In stark contrast to footage taken at Fairy Creek is the archival material from the Haida Gwaii blockade that makes up a good portion of the National Film Board documentary The Stand.

Things have gotten progressively more bitter and violent since 1986, when Indigenous protesters blockaded a remote logging road on Lyell Island. Even though the differing ideological convictions of the loggers, authorities and Haida people were very clear, a species of kindness and civility endured. The Indigenous community invited both loggers and RCMP agents to barbecues, and most of the interactions between the police and protesters were gentle, even accommodating.

In contrast, the relationship between the cops and the blockaders at Fairy Creek was violent and divisive. The fact that RCMP officers hid their badge numbers did not speak well to the purity of intention, nor did scenes of burly cops manhandling young women.

But before we get to the most violent parts of the story, some context must be undertaken. In August 2020, protesters set up a blockade to stop the logging company Teal Cedar Products from cutting down trees in the Fairy Creek area. As the interpolating narration makes clear, it was the fact that less than three per cent of B.C. forests are fully intact old growth, as well as the area’s extraordinary biodiversity, that drew people from across the province.

As protesters set up encampments, including a number of tree-sitting platforms lofted high into the canopy, one of the largest acts of civil disobedience in Canadian history began.

Even for the people committed to the cause, it was not easy. Almost immediately, fractures between the local Indigenous community and white protesters became apparent.

Youth from the Indigenous sovereignty movement and environmental activists, while ostensibly both wanting to save Fairy Creek, clashed over a number of issues. If the stakes weren’t so perilously high, scenes of hippie women talking about how Indigenous people didn’t feel safe around white people with dreadlocks would be kind of funny, but the unease between different parts of the blockade movement soon took on a life of its own.

The division between different groups lingered long after the protest was winding down. In the latter part of the film, one of the women, who is Indigenous but can be read as white, is asked to make way for other Indigenous protesters in the midst of a street march. As she tearfully asks of the filmmakers, “What am I supposed to do?”

The warts-and-all approach to documenting the action makes for riveting cinema, as protesters play games of chicken in the woods with loggers and cops.

In one particularly startling sequence, authorities deployed long lines from helicopters to take tree-sitters out of their lofty perches. The costs of policing alone ($18.7 million) almost rivalled the potential profit from logging the area ($20 million), which begs the question: Whose interests are truly being served?

When the provincial government finally took action, suspending logging in Fairy Creek for two years, it seemed like a victory of sorts. But lingering repercussions remained, including court cases against the RCMP.

There is another way.

In the spring of 2024, Gaayhllxid/Gíihlagalgang (Rising Tide), the first law of its kind in Canadian history, returned Aboriginal title to the territory of Haida Gwaii.

Whether this history-making precedent will have future impact on other parts of the province remains to be seen, but it offers a different path forward.

‘Fairy Creek’ screens Dec. 7 at the Whistler Film Festival.

Mountain culture shorts

If you need a little more lightness in your film going, I suggest the collection of short films funded by Vancouver outdoor apparel company Arc’teryx. Unlike other, more corporate-sponsored films (I’m looking at you, Red Bull), these shorts are sweet and homespun in their dedication to telling positive stories about the impact of sports, the natural world and people trying to do their best.

Welcome to the Pit has all these things. And also a giant pit! In Yellowknife, a group of community members decided that since there were no mountainous slopes to slide down, they would use the inverse of a mountain, namely a gargantuan hole in the ground, to ski, snowboard or simply hang out. Thus, the town’s former gravel mine was transformed into a community hub.

As Canadian as can be, Welcome to the Pit is brimming with genuine characters, humour and a lovely sweetness. It’s the total package and a complete hoot to boot.

The Whistler Film Festival runs Dec. 4-8 at various locations in Whistler.