| As the lights come back up after this year’s Calgary International Film Festival (CIFF), Ottawa filmmaker Nadja Drost says the festival neglected an important story about a Canadian energy corporation operating abroad.
Drost’s documentary, Between Midnight and the Rooster’s Crow, explores the environmental and social impacts of Calgary-based EnCana Corporation’s operations in Ecuador, and portrays the struggles of Ecuadorians who live near the company’s operating areas: oily rivers and fish, oil mixed in with groundwater, children with sores on their bodies, and high rates of cancer and miscarriage. Last month, EnCana sold its Ecuador assets to a consortium of Chinese oil companies for $1.42 billion.
Since it was completed in January, Drost’s film has been screened at film festivals all over the world and won an award for best Canadian documentary at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival in Toronto. The film will also be broadcast by the CBC later this year. But when Drost submitted it to the CIFF, it was rejected, and she doesn’t buy the festival’s official explanation that the film wasn’t good enough.
"(The film) has been received very well," says Drost. "It’s travelling across the country at festivals, will be broadcast (by the CBC) and has won awards. It’s more relevant for it to screen in Calgary than any other city in Canada, and yet Calgary is the one place that is not screening the film."
Festival director David Marrelli says the film was treated no differently than any other, and that it never made the cut because of quality and fairness issues.
"I know it just went through the normal process and didn’t make it through," says Marrelli, adding that he never saw the film or made the decision on whether or not to screen it. "And I think I can safely say that (our previewers) thought overall, (the film) wasn’t that well done, and that it was – I don’t want to use the word heavy-handed, but something kind of close to that."
Marrelli says that while the CIFF "would love to have the support of the energy sector," the festival doesn’t decide whether or not to show a film based on whether or not big business would approve.
"There may be a film that is well done that kind of stirs the pot," says Marrelli. "Would I be somewhat concerned? Obviously I would be. But I think at that point you stand behind the film’s fairness, or at least open it up to a discussion where the film serves as a starting point… rather than ‘this is what it is’ – the filmmaker’s opinion."
But since film festivals are often venues for unconventional and opinionated content, Drost says it doesn’t make sense that the CIFF would turn down her film because it contains her opinion.
"Would they turn down a Michael Moore film?" she says. "The reason that we have film festivals is to provide a venue for films that the public wants to see, films that they might not normally see on television."
She says the CIFF’s decision not to screen her film shows the far reach that corporations have over art and commentary that could harm their reputations.
"As far as I know, EnCana had nothing to do with (the film not screening), but the very fact that a festival is worried about jeopardizing future forms of funding goes to show how much power the oil industry has in Alberta," she says.
Drost is arranging for Between Midnight and the Rooster’s Crow to screen in Calgary in early November. |
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