POV Magazine

Welcome to the fifth, and hopefully final, “pandemic issue” of POV. It’s been two years since COVID-19 threw us for a loop as we readied our Spring/Summer 2020 issue. The last two years have pushed moviegoing online, and we’ve shifted virtually as well. If you’ve visited POVmagazine.com lately, you’ll notice things look different. Thanks to the Canadian Periodical Fund’s Business Innovation Program, we’ve transformed our virtual presence and aligned it with our print issue. (Many thanks to Jason Gorber and David Donald for their work on the web and print redesigns, respectively.) There you’ll find much of our print archive restored (and more soon), plus reviews, interviews, and festival coverage running 24/7. Virtual life has also allowed us to enjoy more festivals than ever and expand our writers’ base substantially. We’ve sampled…

We’re back. All of us. Walking gingerly, approaching each other hesitantly, wondering whether we should embrace. It’s been two years and we’re not sure what to expect. The festivals don’t know. We’ll be experiencing a lot of hybrids. Films will continue to be sent to us online and, yes, we’ll be Zooming friends and loved ones and colleagues for quite a while. POV #116, our spring/summer issue is an embrace. As editor, I hope you will feel our warmth, our genuine intent to connect again through words and pictures and print on paper. (Just like Gutenberg, baby!) Patrick Mullen has led us through a breathtaking expansion in form, content, and reach. You can experience POV online every day on our website and via social media. If there’s news, we send it to you,…

PERHAPS THE MOST frequently asked question POV receives is “Where can I see the films I read about in POV?” The easiest answer is to visit seeitall.telefilm.ca, Telefilm Canada’s initiative to connect Canadian audiences with the wealth of stories created by Canadian filmmakers. When readers visit the site, they can browse by their preferred streaming location—say, Crave or CBC Gem or the NFB’s free catalogue—with dedicated corners that spotlight Canadian content. Readers can also browse by film title, click a doc, and see where it’s available to stream. One can easily spend as much time browsing the options on a streaming site as one does watching a film, so here are five POV picks to help readers get started—with tips on where to see them! YOU ARE HERE: A COME FROM AWAY…

FAMILY SECRETS, ESPECIALLY VERY OLD ONES, can prove very difficult to pry open, particularly if they contain elements of a socially or culturally shared sense of guilt, terror, or shame. If we look closely enough, personal narratives that unfurl from them have the DNA of society’s narratives and its disastrous hegemonies and ideologies. And if we’re lucky, the stories, too, of those who’ve survived them. I began making Unloved: Huronia’s Forgotten Children after I received a phone call from my half-sister Adele. News headlines landed in December, 2013 about an historic class-action lawsuit settlement in Ontario. The suit was against the province for grave harm and all manner of abuse suffered by children deemed intellectually disabled who had been institutionalized. The so-called “hospital,” called the Huronia Regional Centre, was one of…

“WARE ALL CONNECTED” is not just some hokey phrase spoken stoically by Indigenous people; it’s a fact. In Returning Home (2021), Secwepemc film-maker Sean Stiller interweaves the struggles and displacement of residential school students with the dispossession of the local wild salmon. “This film is less about advocating for a cause and more about getting people to see that worldview and to understand it a bit,” explained Stiller. “It’s about what you can feel for even a couple of moments, that relationship to the land, why that community and that family would feel so emotional about the salmon run being non-existent. It’s not just recreation; it’s a part of who they are. If that can just be felt, for me that’s the gold standard.” Returning Home focuses on the family and community…

BEAUTIFUL SCARS OPENS WITH A MOMENT OF PURE CHAOS. Musician Tom Wilson, best known for his work with Junkhouse and Blackie and the Roadie Kings, is driving to a gig. He’s stuck in traffic and nearly crossing the line between being fashionably late and being an asshole. He then realizes that the car’s out of gas. Wilson’s on his phone and he’s freaking out—not just because he feels like a jerk, but also because it’s his first day with director Shane Belcourt’s crew. The cameras roll throughout the meltdown. Belcourt, who was in another car at the time, admits that Wilson’s vulnerability before the camera crew is a perfect introduction. “When you see Tom go through it, you see that he’s a lot like us,” reflects Belcourt. “You see that he’s…