The province of British Columbia, according to its arts funding agency Creative BC, is a “great backdrop for any story,” offering everything from “soaring conifers, vast tundra, majestic mountains, and lush rainforests to sparkling cityscapes on the ocean.” Movies like Deadpool (2016) and series like Showtime’s Yellowjackets (2021–) are part of an entertainment industry that has poured $30 billion into the economy between 2011 and 2021, according to the Vancouver Economic Commission.
As well, amid the mountains and conifers, there are people who live here. For the Documentary Organization of Canada’s western chapter, DOC Northwest, formerly DOC BC/YT/NT, representing BC, the Yukon, and the Northwest Territories, the social terrain is as varied as the landscape. With an estimated population of 5.5 million, British Columbia is Canada’s most ethnically diverse province with the highest proportion of visible minorities, including East Asians (14%), South Asians (10%), Indigenous people from more than 200 First Nations (6%) and Southeast Asians (5%). The Yukon and the Northwest Territories each have populations between 40 and 50 thousand people, with slightly less than a quarter identifying as Indigenous in the Yukon and about half in the NWT.
These demographics drive DOC Nortwest’s advocacy goals. Since DOC introduced the national two-year free membership to BIPOC filmmakers, the far-west chapter has more than doubled its size, according to regional board chair Baljit Sangra.
Sangra’s Vancouver-based company Viva Mantra Films focuses on underrepresented voices from the South Asian community. Her best-known film is the National Film Board documentary Because We Are Girls (2019), about the sexual abuse of three Punjabi–Canadian sisters from Williams Lake in central BC, which, within a year, received 18 million minute-views just on Prime Video, reaching viewers from California to England. Sangra’s other films include Warrior Boyz (2008), about the Indo-Canadian gang scene in the Lower Mainland; Many Rivers Home (2014), about an assisted living centre for the elderly; and a documentary about hockey players of South Asian descent, Mareya Shot, Keetha Goal: Make the Shot (2023).
Though she’s concerned about the fact that the number and the budgets of documentary features have dropped across Canada over the past five years—according to DOC’s latest Getting Real report—Sangra is enthusiastic about the improvements in diversity representation in BC during that same period. Among the funding opportunities she mentions is the $800,000 Documentary + Factual Development Fund established by Creative BC and the Rogers Group of Funds, which has been running for the past three years. BC-based Telus’ decade-old Storyhive moved into the documentary space in 2018 and has prioritized Black and Indigenous filmmakers. The company also funds Telus Originals, which focuses on established filmmakers making feature documentaries and series with a social impact.
For the past three years, DOC Northwest has offered its own program, Breakthrough, to provide more opportunities and marketing mentorship for BIPOC and LGBTQ+ emerging producers, with more than 50% of the participants getting development deals.
DOC Northwest recently brought about a significant change in the funding practices of the province’s educational channel Knowledge Network. After more than a year of lobbying by DOC, along with the Vancouver Asian Film Festival and the Racial Screen Equity Office (a Vancouver-based national advocacy organization), the network submitted to an audit of its film commissioning practices. The audit revealed that, over the previous seven years, more than 98% of the network’s pre-license funding went to “non-diverse” owners. After an internal shakeup, a new mandate was introduced: At least 50% of Knowledge Network’s features and shorts must be from independent BPOC-led production companies and 25% from Indigenous-owned companies.
Dr. Jessica Hallenbeck, who also serves on the boards of DOC Northwest and the national organization, says this is strongest equity mandate across the country, and she hopes it sets a precedent for provincial and federal funders and broadcasters nationwide.
There’s another equity barrier that rankles British Columbia documentary filmmakers:
“We’re stuck in a situation where we don’t have regional equity,” says Hallenbeck. “British Columbia has about 14% of the Canadian population, but gets 7% of Telefilm funding across all streams. Likewise, the National Film Board’s BC and Yukon studio: The allocation was very small compared to other provinces. And only 6% of English-language CBC shows are shot in British Columbia.”
Filmmakers throughout BC and the territories report that they are “told the local stories they tell don’t seem universal.” Hallenbeck adds, “I think everyone outside Toronto and Montreal has experienced that from federal funders and broadcasters.”
One area that particularly worries Hallenbeck is that the federal government’s three-year funding commitment for the Indigenous Screen Office (ISO), which ends on March 31, 2024, has not been renewed. “The ISO was a massive corrective in funding for Indigenous filmmakers across the country. That financing has been essential, supporting the next generation of Indigenous filmmakers,” says Hallenbeck. “And with that being cut, it will affect the province, especially since we have so many [of them].”
The work of Hallenbeck’s production company Lantern Films reflects her academic expertise in geography and critical Indigenous studies, a combination of particular relevance to BC, which was historically developed through an extractive natural-resource economy—what Martin Robin in his 1972 history of the province called “the rush for spoils.” The emergency of climate change and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s focus on Indigenous cultural and land sovereignty have compelled BC filmmakers to re-evaluate ethical questions in documentary practice.
The record-setting destruction of the wildfires that ravaged British Columbia and the Northwest Territories in 2023 brought home the urgency of addressing climate change. The wildfires disproportionately affected Indigenous residents, resulting in evacuations, economic hardship, and destruction of traditional lands and cultural practices.
For ethical filmmakers, says Hallenbeck, “it’s not just about going in and getting a story. It’s figuring out what we as filmmakers need and what the community needs. How can the way that the film is made, as well as the story of the film, contribute to the future? We need to support filmmakers who have unique voices and different ways of telling stories that are grounded in their communities. Also, we have to make sure that the filmmaker is able to hold on to their copyrights, their intellectual property, and their creative vision.”
Currently, Hallenbeck is developing a new documentary feature, Nechako, by director and writer Lyana Patrick, about the Saik’uz and Stellat’en First Nations’ bid for an injunction to restore the natural flow of the Nechako River, dammed 70 years ago to produce electricity for mining giant Rio Tinto’s aluminum division and the province’s power grid.
BC’s hydro projects are the subject of two other documentaries by First Nations directors: Haida Nation filmmaker Heather Hatch’s 2021 film, Wochiigii lo: End of the Peace, about the Site C hydro dam currently under construction on the Peace River, and Tsay Key Dene First Nation director Luke Gleeson’s DƏNE YI’INJETL: The Scattering of Man, which chronicles the destruction of the First Nation’s ancestral home by flooding in the early 1960s due to the building of the W.A.C. Bennett Dam.
Perhaps it’s time the province’s license-plate slogan “Beautiful British Columbia” be updated to something more suitable—like “The Beautiful and the Dammed.” At the very least, it’s time to acknowledge that the “great backdrop” offered for commercial location shoots is in a precarious state.
“On the one hand, we do have the beauty and the drama of the BC landscape,” acknowledges Hallenbeck. “On the other hand, the landscape outside the Lower Mainland has been transformed by industry. More documentaries that I’m seeing from BC filmmakers focus on the transformation of the landscape. It’s important that we support those filmmakers outside the urban centres, where most of the Indigenous filmmakers live, because they are the ones witnessing the impacts of the industry and climate change in ways that are still less seen in other parts of the country.”
For more perspectives on the state of documentary filmmaking across Canada, read more about the Winnipeg scene, Ontario, Atlantic Canada, and Alberta, plus Quebec in issue 120.
