arctic

CBQM (Director: Dennis Allen): 150 kilo­metres north of the Arctic Circle, Fort McPherson is a small town of about 750 inhab­it­ants in the Northwest Territories. At the heart of this com­munity is the citizen-run radio sta­tion, CBQM. This shoes­tring oper­a­tion broad­casts everything from music and news to bingo games and moose calling con­tests. Dennis Allen’s verité por­trait of life in the north is grounded in the oper­a­tions of the sta­tion, and much of the film’s con­sid­er­able charm comes from the filmmaker’s simple obser­va­tion of the details of everyday life. We eaves­drop on a wide range of DJs, including the local min­ister teaching a Bible lesson, an RCMP con­stable issuing a crime report that con­cerns incid­ents of egg-throwing, and sev­eral local char­ac­ters playing live music tune­lessly while the phone rings in the background.

In a com­munity as small as Fort McPherson, people often use the radio sta­tion to send mes­sages to each other, from the simple (“good luck at bingo”) to the hil­arious (“hang up your phone, I’m trying to call you.”). The broad­casting is sloppy but the earn­est­ness of these volun­teer DJs makes it easy to over­look. Allen’s cine­ma­to­graphy is often stun­ning, and his gen­erous use of wide-angle lenses con­veys both the feeling of infinite space in the Arctic as well as the sense of isol­a­tion that the res­id­ents must feel.

In fact, the thread present throughout the film is that CBQM is the voice of a friend to many lonely older people in the com­munity. When winter means that the sun hardly rises above the horizon, this little radio sta­tion is a beacon to a com­munity that might feel for­gotten otherwise.

CBQM is screening as part of the 2009 imagineNATIVE Film and Media Arts Festival on Friday October 16 at 1:00pm at the Al Green Theatre at the Miles Nadal JCC.

(7/10)

Tagged as: aboriginal, arctic, imaginenative, nfb

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