Toronto documentarian Stephanie Weimar is writing and directing a four-part documentary series WRITING THE LAND, coinciding with the 2020 Frankfurt Book Fair, where Canada is the Guest of Honour. Produced by Primitive Entertainment, it will air on Arte in Europe and on CBC in Canada in 2020. From October 2019 to October 2020, German Film @ Canada will check in with Weimar as she develops and realizes the series and chat about treatments, funding, the beauty and challenges of Canada's vast geography and diverse literature and its intersections and dependencies.
Dear Stephanie, in your treatment for the WRITING THE LAND you say "Canada is in the midst of a cultural revolution." How so and how do you want to reflect a shifting landscape by visiting a diverse group of writers across the country?
This fall we’re heading into a federal election and it seems Canada is more divided than ever. From Newfoundland to the Yukon and BC -- across the country debates about anything from politics to the environment and economic concerns are extremely heated and polarized.
In this explosive atmosphere it seems we could all do with some guidance. I believe literature and storytelling can play a key part in providing some perspective. As one of the writers we have filmed with for this series, Edem Awumey, has aptly put it, “we read literature because we want to feel the soul of a place and its people.” In this spirit, Writing the Land is traveling across the country to visit with the people who have made it their lives’ vocation to observe, think and tell a story. Indigenous people, people of colour and first generation immigrants, who traditionally have not been listened to as much in this country, and whose stories about the land and its people provide a fresh outlook and a new vision.
You have just finished your first cross-country visits with some of Canada's best known authors. What connections between land and writing and dreaming have you learned of?
The crew --
director of photography Stephen Chung and sound person Jason Milligan are both invaluable collaborators--and I have just finished our first whirlwind tour across the country. From spending time with
Eden Robinson and Madeleine Thien in BC, to Katherena Vermette in Winnipeg, Edem Awumey in Gatineau, Catherine Hernandez in Scarborough and Michael Winter in Newfoundland, it’s been an enormous honour and privilege to visit with these amazing writers. They all have been so incredibly generous and have granted us intimate access to their homes and lives. It’s pretty unreal sitting next to Eden Robinson in her home office in Kitimaat Village where she’s just made pancakes for her teenage nieces and watch her edit and re-write sections of her next book, the last in the Trickster trilogy. All the while chatting away that she couldn’t sleep last night because something about the structure was just not quite right. For a literature nut like me, it doesn’t get any better than this.
What’s more, we’ve been getting an amazing sneak peek into each of these writer’s next work! It’s been such a joy to have the authors share their stories and intense love they feel for “their land,” their home regions. For all of them their homelands and their writing are intrinsically intertwined. And while they all have very different approaches to raising issues close to their heart --
Catherine Hernandez next book is about BIPOC LGBTQ+ folk taking up arms in resistance to a fascist regime in Canada, while Edem Awumey spins a tale involving farmers versus the agricultural industry, and Katherena Vermette is creating a poetry collection based on old family photographs during a turbulent time for Winnipeg’s Metis community -- their voices creating a chorus, a web of interconnectivity spanning the country.
We have six more writers to go and I can’t wait to start the edit and actually see their stories interweave!
From the treatment for WRITING THE LAND:
Canada hardly ever makes international headlines and yet, the world looks to Canada as the country continues to top the charts of desirable places to inhabit: Canada the good, the free, wild and pristine, a beacon of hope and a haven for the world’s poor and persecuted. And while we don’t have to scratch very deep or look very far to see that perception as naïve and partially untrue, public opinion is pervasive and persistent.
The cliché of Canada as a country characterized by innocence and fairness, meritocracy, exemplary ethical and environmental standards, inclusion, and humanitarianism sticks. But it seems as if things are finally being shaken up. After 500 years of colonial history,
Canada is in the midst of a cultural revolution. Public debates are raging about societal privileges, racism, sexism and inequality.
In this series, Canada’s leading writers, poets and storytellers take us on an exhilarating journey across a country in the throes of deep and intense soul-searching. While Canada has come a long way since Margaret Atwood’s Survival, and the country’s literary output is larger and more diverse than ever before, the seemingly age-old question, “what does it mean to be Canadian?” is usually accompanied by an eye-roll and considered a cliché in itself – but it nevertheless remains pressing. What do we want being Canadian to mean?
The land is at very the heart of the debate. A place of mind-boggling beauty, great meaning and significance. As a recently colonized land, who does it belong to? If we’re all treaty people, what is it going to entail to become truly post-colonial? What shall be our guiding principles to interact with this precious land and each other? In the past 500 years there was mainly “conquest,” “exploration” and “discovery” as Indigenous voices have been silenced. How shall we move forward? Literature, poetry, spoken word and the land itself are critical components of that process. For millennia, storytellers have turned to the land for guidance. Here in Canada, the land is old and it is powerful.
"The land speaks – but what does it say?" Each episode of WRITING THE LAND is dedicated to one of the primal elements: ROCK, TREES, WATER, and LIGHT. Ravishingly beautiful, bold and in your face: From the barren and rocky interior of Newfoundland to the Great Lakes, the forests of Quebec and the clear cuts of BC, from the urban centres to the tar sands and the vast tundra beyond – each episode dives deep into Canada’s current cultural and philosophical revolution.
This visually stunning expedition brings to life the creative process of Canada’s leading authors and poets. This is writing at its most vibrant – up close and personal, tactile, and tangible. And this is literature at its most relevant, as Canada’s brightest provide a vision for all of us, and their stories are reshaping the world we live in.
WRITING THE LAND is created by Stephanie Weimar. Stephanie is an award-winning German-Canadian documentary filmmaker based in Toronto, who has produced hours of documentary programming for APTN, Arte, and the Smithsonian Channel. She studied film and video art at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University in Halifax. Ever since immigrating to Canada from Germany in 2003, life and work have taken her all over the country, from Newfoundland to the Arctic, to every province and territory. Canadian cultures and landscape, and the immigrant experience, have always been central themes in her work. Ever since moving to Canada from her native Germany, exploring the country’s literature has been a passion project as she tries – like so many others – to make sense of the place she now calls home.
Her work includes MOTHERS, a documentary following the lives of three teenage moms in Inuvik, which was
nominated for Best Documentary at the Winnipeg Aboriginal Film Festival; her experimental doc REGION AROUND THE HEART about the search for home; the doc series WATCHERS OF THE NORTH featuring the Canadian Rangers; her award-winning feature MY BROTHER'S VOWS following her brother’s path to become a Catholic monk; and the groundbreaking transmedia project POLAR SEA 360 (ZDF/ARTE), which won a Grimme Online Award. She was the writer and creative producer of the doc series ARCTIC SECRETS (Love Nature, Smithsonian Channel), as well as one of the directors of the documentary series EQUATOR: A NEW WORLD VIEW.
interview by
@JuttaBrendemuhl
photo by Edem Awumey courtesy S. Weimar, shot on location in Gatineau, QC, with Stephen Chung (director of photography) and Jason Milligan (sound person)
