Adjusting the Lens

Everett Sokol and Sam Burns (Motion Picture Arts, 2018) are a filmmaking duo to watch. Their most recent project, a short film adaptation of the stage play Whiteface, won Telus StoryHive’s 2018 Indigenous Storyteller edition, a $20,000 funding award.

A NUMBER OF GRADUATES from RDC’s Motion Picture Arts program have had success with the Telus Storyhive contest. Recent grads, Everett Sokol and Sam Burns are confident the program helped set them up for success in their careers, giving them a realistic idea of what to expect by encouraging them to become familiar with the Alberta film industry.

“Through the program, we were able to develop our craft as storytellers. I was able to prepare my own ideas and concepts, because I’d taken classes dedicated to narrative short films, so I could confidently prepare my application for Telus’s StoryHive,” Sokol says. “I always had the intention of being a creative director in the field of short and feature films, and I definitely felt confident I could make a name for myself after graduating from the program.”

Sokol and Burns have been producing short films together since they met at Red Deer College. The young filmmakers completed a number of well-received shorts through their coursework, including The Dancer (2017), which was featured at festivals across the world, and Yard Work (2018). “Yard Work is pretty close to our hearts because it was made in about a week,” says Burns. “We put it together really fast, and I think we were really proud of how it turned out.”

“We’ve produced all the work that we’ve ever done together, with varying roles,” says Sokol. “We were able to get a few of these short films sent through festival circuits. We had films premiere in India, England, the United States and Canada, and we also had two short films nominated for Rosie awards just this past spring.” The Dancer and Brian were nominated for the Fil Fraser Award for Best Student Production Category at the 2018 Alberta Film and Television Awards (Rosies).

The Whiteface project has been on their radar for some time, but it’s one that presents a lot of challenges. “Whiteface is a 45-minute show written by Lady Vanessa Cardona and Todd Houseman. It premiered at the Edmonton Fringe Festival, and it’s basically a vaudeville show,” explains Burns. “It’s over the top, it’s campy, but then there’s also these elaborate dance pieces that are choreographed throughout the three acts, so the task of shortening it will be tricky. We have to get it down to 10 minutes, so it will be an abbreviated form that uses film techniques to pack more in quickly, and hopefully have the same impact.”

Whiteface is performed by two Indigenous actors playing white actors playing Indigenous characters. The show is about the appro- priation and colonization of Indigenous culture in white society. It demonstrates that the dominance of the white perspective in storytelling creates a culture that prioritizes that view of Indigenous people. “These actors portray a very stereotypical white character who has taken advantage of Indigenous society and abused the images of Indigenous people,” says Sokol. “Throughout the show, you see these actors take on three separate masks representing a very satirical view of Indigenous people.”

Sokol describes how the first mask is the character of the Sexualized Indian – the Pocahontas, the sexy Halloween costume, the plastic headdress – and it demonstrates how white culture has assimilated that aspect of Indigenous culture. The second mask is the Criminal mask, which embodies the way society views Indigenous people as criminals or as dangerous, unstableindividuals. This shows, through a very absurd, theatrical style, the chains put on Indigenous people. The third mask is the Poverty mask, which expresses a character of the Indigenous person on the street. The audience is shown the white perspective of these people in poverty, and it demonstrates the cycle of poverty and how hard it is to get out.

“Throughout the story, we get these three themes and then, in the end, the final mask symbolizes the Savage. This relates to the Cowboys and Indians narrative, and circles back to the idea that the problem begins with how Indigenous people have been depicted as less cultured and sophisticated in cowboy movies,” Sokol explains. Whiteface demonstrates how the dominance of a white perspective in Indigenous stories is damaging, and that made it a perfect fit for the Telus StoryHive Indigenous Storyteller award.

“This edition of the award is great way to encourage and support more Indigenous filmmakers, like me, to have their work seen,” says Sokol. “It was really important to me, after seeing this play in the summer, to find a way to translate it into a work that can be seen on an iPhone or theatre screen. Adapting it for film will allow it to be seen by so many more people. And by creating a work that is hiring and using so much Indigenous talent, we hope to inspire future artists who are Indigenous to continue working in their dream field within the arts.”

Check out http://rdc.ab.ca/notebook/sokolandburns for more information about their short films, including demo reels and the Whiteface project short.