Snk’mip Dig Deeper, the documentary film co-produced with our Indigenous allies the
Autonomous Sinixt, has thus far received several official selection laurels and a Best Feature Documentary award from international film festivals.
The film's co-producers have been busy, submitting it to film festivals around the globe. Snk'mip Dig Deeper has thus far won ELEVEN laurels (awards) from festivals as far away as Dublin Ireland, New York and other US locations, Calgary, Vancouver and more.
Particularly gratifying has been an award for Best First-Time Director (shared by co-directors Marilyn James and Lorna Visser) and Best Women Empowerment Film. Our publicist Yasmin Rodriguez Toro is pleased to have received an award for Best Movie Poster. And the film has received praise from an Indigenous film festival in Los Angeles, having been made an Official Selection in the RNCI Red Nation International Film Festival.
Take a look at the film poster above to see all the awards it has won!
Our other big news: after a successful series of community screenings last fall, we have now issued a revised, streamlined, one-hour re-release of our production. It is with considerable pride and excitement that Marilyn James and I as co-directors launched this new version of the film. We’re calling this the Broadcast Version in that very hope: that the film will get distribution and be picked up by a broadcaster. More on that below...
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Gulf Islands film tour a huge success!
We were invited to present Snk’mip Dig Deeper by collegial land trust and conservation organizations based in the Gulf Islands (located in B.C. between the mainland and Vancouver Island) in BC. In June, to coincide with Indigenous Peoples Day, we made presentations to groups on Mayne, Galiano, Denman, Lasqueti, Thetis and Pender islands. We enjoyed many scenic ferry rides and beautiful places to stay and best of all was sharing the film with wonderful people at community screenings.
A personal story about our film-making journey
A lot of friends and colleagues have asked why we made this film when our primary mandate as an organization is conservation: saving wild places for wild things. It’s true that during the past several years I’ve been pretty much the full-time ‘show-runner’ for Snk’mip Dig Deeper — that's the person who makes the production happen.
Fortunately I have trusted colleagues such as biologist Amber Peters and our wonderful board members including biologist Wayne McCrory who have kept our other work progressing.
But to answer the question: why make a film? Because it’s not enough to just do the work, you also have to empower and motivate others to do this work -- and film is the most powerful communication medium there is.
For me, the journey of making this film from inception has been an incredible experience full of twists and turns. The story told in the film is literally true: my Valhalla Foundation colleagues and I did not know that Snk'mip was an ancient Sinixt village site when we started the complex task of doing ecological restoration there. It was a hot day in the summer of 2019 when heavy equipment rolled in to start digging out compacted road surfaces, following the restoration plan developed for us by wetland expert Robin Annschild. The work was so visually dramatic that I jumped on the phone to my film-making colleagues (and lifelong friends stretching back to journalism school days in the late 1970s): Kerry McArthur and Mark Wolfe. Excited by what I was witnessing, I practically yelled into the phone: "get over here now, you've got to film this” — and bless them, they did just that.
It was a hot and sunny day…
That began the process of filming the wetland restoration work that continued over several summers. No easy task given the difficult terrain at the marsh property, not to mention the dust and intense heat and wildfire smoke we experienced during several consecutive summers.
The project took a dramatic turn when my friend and colleague K.L. Kivi told me about that area having been the location of a Sinixt village: we certainly did not know that! That knowledge required a total re-thinking of our relationship to the land, our work at Snk'mip, and whether we should be making a film that was only about wetland restoration.
We take a sharp turn...
With that knowledge, we established closer ties to the First People of this area through Autonomous Sinixt matriarch Marilyn James and her cohort of allies. It quickly became clear this was no longer to be a film that was just about wetland restoration: it was now about deep history and the compelling need for Indigenous reconciliation.
The film's title, which was originally simply 'Dig Deeper' (a reference to the deep decompaction needed to restore compacted road surfaces) took on more nuanced meanings as we investigated the deep history and tragic past treatment of the First People here. Through that process of relationship-building the film became a co-production with the Autonomous Sinixt and Marilyn James joined me as co-director. Together we crafted a script that served as an outline for very skilled film editor Kerry McArthur, who over many months of work stitched the film together.
Fabulous music enlivens the production...
Last spring, after film-making colleagues Kerry and Mark delivered a very presentable first-cut of the film, we commissioned composer Noel Fudge to add a custom film score -- pretty rare for a documentary (most use canned music that is purchased online). Noel created an entire soundscape for the film, adding additional sound effects and a recurring majestic orchestral theme, plus clever and comical musical interludes such as 'frog theme' and squirrel theme' (watch for those moments and listen carefully!).
In the fall of 2024 we held community screenings of Snk'mip Dig Deeper in about 15 communities throughout Sinixt tmxʷúlaʔxʷ (territory), reaching some 2000 viewers, to excellent acclaim. You can read reviews of that on our film website at: https://www.digdeeperfilm.ca/watch#Reviews
Everyone local enjoyed the 71-minute production which often included footage of people they knew. The lengthy credits roll literally thanked every. single. person. who worked on the project in any way, shape or form. That 'Community Screenings' version of the film has served us well as an outreach and education tool in this geographic area.
At that same time we also began submitting the film to film festivals and thus far have received 11 'laurels' of which we are justifiably proud (and the film festival submissions continue).
High praise from a film professor...
We were stoked to get this feedback from the very respected Canadian documentary filmmaker and media arts professor Ali Kazimi (who also kindly provided several clips from one of his films for us to use in Snk'mip Dig Deeper). This Toronto filmmaker was awarded the 2019 Governor General's Lifetime Achievement Award in visual and media arts for his cinematic work exploring race, racism, and stereotyping. This is just one of the many complimentary reviews the 'Community Screenings' version of the film received:
“A truly inspirational film about reclaiming, restoring, and rewilding an incredible wetland. I was moved to tears seeing the remote-camera images of wildlife moving back in, after the restoration work was done. I loved the way the complexity of restoration is woven in with the challenges from the community — and how the colonial history is unflinchingly woven in.”
Review by: Ali Kazimi, Associate Professor - Department of Cinema and Media Arts at York University (Author, Media Artist, and Documentary Filmmaker of nine films including Beyond Extinction & Continuous Journey)
Why we made a new version...
Every step of this project has been a learning journey and one of the hard truths we learned was how film festivals evaluate submissions. We naively thought film fest judges would watch every moment of our inspired documentary and, of course, give it full marks! But unfortunately, that’s not what actually happens. We discovered that hard-pressed film reviewers may only watch a few opening scenes so we needed to grab their attention right off the hop. We decided we needed a somewhat shorter film (71 minutes being an awkward length for a broadcaster) and that we needed to enhance the first 5 or 6 minutes of the film.
It was not quite back to the drawing board...
It was back to the footage to find some additional clips to jazz up those all-important first six minutes. Then we carefully edited some scenes that we felt dragged on just a bit too long. We removed the lengthy credits roll, replacing it with the much condensed credits one typically sees at the end of a documentary. And importantly, we added a couple of new illustrations that inject some additional notes of light humour.
Next, an incredible amount of fiddly work was done by Noel Fudge to smooth out rough sound and visual transitions, add subtle audio improvements, add lovely 'pads' of sound under the action, and compose additional music to fit the edited visuals. As well, we completely re-recorded all the voice-over narration -- once more with emotion! Huge thanks to Noel for going beyond the ‘second mile’ in creating this second edition of the film.
I would be remiss if I didn't mention my colleague Yasmín Rodríguez Toro (publicist, graphics designer, illustrator, emotional support) and her incredible dedication to this project. Most recently, Yasmin worked hard creating another illustration for the new version of the film and, once it was re-edited, she had to completely rebuild the closed captions for the deaf and hard of hearing. Doing all that extremely detailed work took many more long hours.
Speaking on behalf of myself, Marilyn James, Mark, Kerry, Marty, Noel, Yasmin and all the other talented people who contributed to making this documentary film: we all wanted Snk'mip Dig Deeper to be the best representation of our work that we could possibly achieve. We feel we've done what we set out to do: made a film that moves people to take positive action for the earth and for social justice. As Ali Kazimi said: "this film is an inspiration."