Doc’s educational approach not riveting

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This article was published 24/07/2020 (2234 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Ostensibly, the sculpture of a tilted streetcar on the corner of Main Street and Market Avenue is a centenary monument to the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike.

But framed in this particular moment of activism, it feels all the more perversely admirable in its conception. Bear in mind, it is a replica of a 1919 streetcar that was tilted off its tracks and set aflame by strikers who were fed up with a capitalist establishment that refused to bargain with workers seeking a living wage. It was a riotous act amid a peaceful protest. It is, in its way, a dedication to righteous revolutionary rage.

Erica MacPherson’s documentary about its creation, streaming as part of the Gimli Film Festival, curiously avoids incendiary talk about the project’s artistic intentions — all the more interesting since Noam Gonick, the filmmaker who devised the installation in partnership with the late sculptor Bernie Miller, actually co-wrote this film with MacPherson.

The director literally focuses on the nuts and bolts of the thing, as her cameras follow the sculpture’s creation in a modern ironworks factory. On one level, this too is admirable, eschewing the high-flown language of the arts grant application in favour of this more nitty-gritty look at how the work was put together.

It emerges that the reasoning for this is that ironworkers effectively kicked off the strike back in 1919. MacPherson treats this as a teachable moment by focusing on an Indigenous apprentice ironworker, Tristan Mason, who learns about the inspiration for the piece at the foot of a veteran ironworker and union hand John Lee.

The charismatic Lee supplies some history. Some of the other informational spaces are filled in with some historic re-creations of Bloody Saturday.

Still, it makes for a somewhat frustrating experience. The sheer radicalism of the piece is muffled by MacPherson’s approach, which too closely resembles the instructional approach of, say, the educational TV series How It’s Made.

The film has blowtorches to spare. One wishes it captured the revolutionary fire of the installation’s origins.

 

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @FreepKing