Transcript
Speaker: Hello and welcome to today's episode of Red Eye. I'm Jane Williams. On the podcast today I speak with award -winning Haida filmmaker Christopher Ochter about his new feature -length documentary, The Stand, showing at this year's Vancouver International Film Festival.
Speaker: On a misty morning in the fall of 1985, a small group of Haida people blockaded a muddy dirt road on Lyle Island, demanding that the government work with Indigenous people to find a way to protect the land and the future.
Speaker: The stand is a riveting new feature documentary drawn from more than a hundred hours of archival footage from that first blockade and the months that followed. Christopher Ochter, director of the award -winning documentary Now is the Time, recreates the critical moment when the Haida Nation took a stand to protect their land. Christopher Ochter joins me this morning from Burnaby. Hello, Christopher. Hello, good morning.
Speaker: Let's start with situating where that happened. Where is Lyle Island and what was happening there that fall? Yeah, so Lyle Island is located on Haida Gwaii in the south islands of Haida Gwaii. And Haida Gwaii's cluster of islands located off of British Columbia. And this is where all the action was happening in 1985 in terms of the Haida making their stand to stop the logging.
Speaker: That was going on down there. The landslides were happening. The Haida had been talking with the British Columbia government in Canada to stop the logging in this area because the Haida wanted to protect that area. And it was looking good for a little bit. They were getting some nice talk from the BC government.
Speaker: and they were delaying the new TFL license through the logging companies in the area, Frank Beban Logging Western Forest Products, and then all of a sudden BC green lights the new TFL license, a new fresh landslide as well in the area, and the Haida said that's enough, and they went to the island and blockaded.
Speaker: The film begins as a block hider's already started and there's a helicopter flying over a road where I think about 15 people are standing. What led up to that moment, to that tactic? What discussions among the hider?
Speaker: Yeah, well, it was really what the Haida felt as it was their last resort because they tried talking. They tried to get it done in that manner without being disruptive to families and to people that were working in the area. But it was just going on deaf ears and they would get promises and then, you know, they turn their back and make another promise to somebody else in terms of issuing fresh new TFL licenses for cutting permits in South Moresby.
Speaker: So the Haida felt just after so long, like literally since contact and since the smallpox wiped out the large number of our population, residential schools, all that really. The Haida said enough was enough and they felt strong enough to stand up for ourselves again. And I had a presence down there to say, there'll be no more logging here. So it says the Haida Nation. And that shocked a lot of people.
Speaker: they took a nonviolent route. I mean, they just stood in the road and said, no, we're here. Yeah. Yeah. And that was really the key strategy. It was the mantra and you couldn't step beyond that. And it was the strategy of the Haida to use that because they knew like, if we tried force, if we tried taking over, you know, the logging camp and stuff like that, then they'd be dealing with a much different
Speaker: Canada, there would be, you know, militarization and stuff like that. And the Haida can't really stand up to a military force in that way. So they brought the fight in the way that they knew that they could win, or at least a possibility was good that they could win through the means of the Western playbook, I guess, you know, like courts and public opinion, all those things. So it was really quite an intelligent
Speaker: play on the part of the hiatus and a strategic one. Some elements of what we see on the screen are still happening today. They're very familiar to us now. There's the court ordered injunctions, the RCMP going in and making arrests, but the nature of the interactions was so different from what happens today. You could even say that the exchanges were friendly and respectful. Would you agree?
Speaker: Oh, totally. Yeah, it's such a stark contrast. And I think all sides need credit on that. The HIDA had a calm, kind of collected nature about them. The Loggers, for the most part, and the RCMP. I was talking with
Speaker: He's the main officer in the film that we see often. His name is Harry Wallace, and I talked to him on the phone. And for his part, he said his first day that he arrived on Lyle Island, they went by boat. It was a really kind of stormy, stormy day. But they went first to the height account.
Speaker: and it was around lunchtime and the Haida had halibut soup on and the Haida gave him and his fellow officers some soup and Harry said he just felt like the soup was delicious and so he asked for some more and he said that he was greeted with big smiles and stuff that he liked the soup and he wanted more so they gave him more and stuff but
Speaker: He said that was just like it seemed like the perfect way to start a difficult situation, you know, having this kind of this this human moment, right, of sharing food and showing respect to each other. And that just carried on throughout and because the officers were staying in the Frank Beben logging camp.
Speaker: But Harry Wallace said to me like he tried as much as he could to also go and visit the Haida camp as well. And, you know, there were some moments where the RCMP were having coffee with the Hidas and just talking about things that were happening and what each other were hearing. So the lines of communication were just open wide. And I think that really made a huge difference in the outcome and in terms of the amount of respect everyone was showing each other.
Speaker: As I said in my introduction, you had almost 100 hours of archival footage to work with. Where did all that come from? Yeah, yeah, I really did have a wealth of footage and audio recordings. Not everything that I gathered was directly related to Lyle Island because when I was trying to get a handle on the story and stuff, I felt I needed to understand as much as I could.
Speaker: what was going on in the time and the years before this moment to try to get an idea of the landscape and the sense of time. But a lot of the footage that we see in the film was filmed by a young filmmaker at the time. Her name was Susan Underwood and Donna Wilson who
Speaker: were filmmakers here in the Vancouver area, and they heard what was happening in 1985 on Haida Guyan. So they flew themselves up and
Speaker: I'm not quite sure how, but they they kind of earned a relationship with the Haida and and Arne Bellis was telling me that they were able to stay with the Haida and be at their camp, live with them at their camp on Lyle Island, just because of the type of people they were like, they weren't phony at all. They weren't overly trying like they were just genuine people and
Speaker: the hide really felt comfortable around them and let them stay in the height of camp with them so we have all this amazing footage that susan and donna captured these just real human kind of
Speaker: like the rehearsal moments. And so we're getting these backstories and we're able to kind of see these beautiful interactions between the height and the more tense ones on the road because Susan and Donna were able to be there capturing it. And then I was able to tell this story in the way that I did in terms of it all unfolding in real time.
Speaker: We don't know what's going to happen next. Yeah, so a lot of it came from them and it was quite a neat moment when I went to visit Susan because that was the first thing I did after I let my uncle know who was a member of the Haida leadership on Lyle Island. My uncle Mike was there so he said I need to talk to Susan Underwood. When I mentioned I'd love to tell this story and
Speaker: So I went out to her home. It's out in the Langley area. And I went with my son. He's about, he was nine years old at the time and COVID had just hit. And so we met outside on these park benches at her beautiful home. It's kind of in the woods and stuff like that. And we had this conversation and she kind of asked what I was thinking for this film.
Speaker: I was telling her and then she went inside and she just kept bringing these boxes out there full of these three -quarter inch tape, beta tape, VHS. It filled my car all these boxes of footage that she entrusted in me and the National Film Board digitized all this footage and yeah that was kind of the start of it and then I got to work kind of reviewing it all and
Speaker: get to see these amazing moments captured on film, amazingly powerful moments. It must have been overwhelming to decide what to use from all that footage.
Speaker: Oh, it certainly was. Yeah, it really was. And I mean, certain scenes, certain moments did stand out. So you know, those would be kind of anchor moments. But that was one of the hardest things about making the film was where do we start?
Speaker: where do we pull out, what do we include, not to include. Our first edit, like my editor was Sarah Hadar, who's the same editor that I worked with for Now is the Time. She's the same editor that did Edge of the Knife. And yeah, our first edit of this film was four hours long. And we had to, you know,
Speaker: And even then, I think that's pretty good when you're coming from over 100 hours of footage and audio, to get it down to four hours on our first crack. But a lot of things, and we just slowly chipped away from there. So it was a real tricky task in terms of what to include and what not.
Speaker: Now you included a few excerpts from the Webster show and including one where Miles Richardson and James Gosnell of the Nishkas stood up to baiting basically by Jack Webster. What role did the Webster excerpts play in the film for you?
Speaker: Yeah, well, Jack Webster became a very important character in the film. As combative as he was, it became critically important because it became like the voice of British Columbia and Canada. And he was asking really
Speaker: tough questions and really coming after Miles Richardson, who is the president of the Haida Nation. When I seen that footage, it became quite clear to me that this really needs to be included as well. One, it's electric to watch. So I knew that that would stick well in the film. But he's also given a lot of
Speaker: like through the conversations and the debating that they're having, they're giving a lot of context and they're touching on a lot of points as to the why. Why are the Haida doing this now? What do the Haida want? Those things were critically important to me in terms of, yeah, why were the Haida there? What do the Haida want? And I didn't want to be the one to be explaining it in the way that I understood it.
Speaker: I wanted the people that were there and living the moment to be the ones to explain it to the audience. Because I thought that was the best way to tell their story is by having them tell it themselves. And I'm letting them tell it themselves by showing them being there, having those intimate conversations around the fire as to why they're there. What do we want? What do we not want?
Speaker: And so Webster was a part of that because he was asking those tough questions that helped answer some of those really important points. And he also became, could be the voice of British Columbia in that he would let the public call into the program and give their opinion, ask a question to Miles and Gosnell as well, or even to Webster.
Speaker: And so that was a great way to capture the temperature in the room in terms of British Columbia and what they were feeling about what was happening on Haida Gwaii, which at the time was called the Queen Charlotte Island. So even the use of the term Haida Gwaii
Speaker: was really a new thing that not a lot of people outside of the Haida community had heard, and even within the Haida community, I think. So yeah, there's a lot of things in this that might kind of slip under the radar, but we're really new terminology that was coming out there for everybody to go, oh, it's actually called Haida Gwaii, not Queen Charles Islands. You chose not to use a narrator for the film. Why did you make that choice?
Speaker: The choice not to use a narrator came from how I wanted the story to unfold. I really thought it would kind of pull the audience in if they could take the story, say like a scripted drama or something like that. And the people in the film are playing the roles of their lives. I just thought that would be compelling. Aside from that also, I had the difficult choices to try to make like, well, if I start interviewing,
Speaker: who am I going to interview and I'm going to leave someone out and that's not going to feel very good. And then also, doesn't matter who I interview, the story they tell is going to be tainted by the sand of time or the fog of time, however you want to say it. Like the story will go through all that experience that this person has experienced from 1985 to present day when I interview them.
Speaker: So it felt I would get the clearest answers if I stick with what was said on the recordings and let the ones that were there explain why they're there. And any kind of interviews that I included
Speaker: It was a rule for the film. That person who's being interviewed by a reporter or something can't know what is happening the next day. They have to be in that moment, and at that point in the film that we are at on that day, that's when they were interviewed.
Speaker: So not even Gu Jiao knows what's going to happen come Wednesday, come tomorrow. So it keeps everything in the present and everything that they know at that moment is what they're explaining to us as to the answers they're giving, as to the why and what this means. I just felt that was the most honest way to tell the film.
Speaker: and the most relatable one too. I was such an interesting choice. And then I didn't even really realize that it was all just people's voices at the time until I was reflecting about what I was going to talk with you about today. And then I read, oh yeah, most films, we go and talk to the people like, you know, what, 40 years later. But this was just, it was just so gripping to watch it all unfold.
Speaker: Yeah. Well, thanks for saying that. And then I felt the responses were just so super honest in that way too. I'm going to refer to a moment in the film just briefly. There's a moment where Theresa O 'Leary speaks to Gu Jiao. And she asked him about, why did you choose to paint your faces? What does that symbolize?
Speaker: And Gujao's answer, he gave her an answer, but it was kind of a quick answer. And she said, well, explain it to me. Explain it further. I don't know. And Gujao took his time to think about it. He asked her, please give me a moment. And then he explained it. And I just thought, wow.
Speaker: Gripping and honest a moment is, because it's so easy when you're asked a question, is to just instantly jump into trying to give the answer. But I just thought it was one beautiful moment that Gujao was taking his time to really think about it and search for the answer, for the why.
Speaker: That's for me felt so relatable and and made me kind of sit in waiting for his response. But that was just an example, I guess, of one of those moments where it spoke to the moment and it was interviewed on that day. So again, like Gujao didn't know what was going to be happening the next day. He didn't know if the police were going to come in, you know, the SWAT team was going to come in or something like that, just or what?
Speaker: And that was the thing like there was a real possibility and nobody knew kind of how if this thing was going to turn violent and how violent it would turn. So that was part of the tension I really wanted to try to hold with this film is we don't know which way it's going to go. So yeah.
Speaker: I totally remember that moment, and I was actually wondering whether or not to ask you about it. And when you haven't given the answer, which is great, but it'll be something for people when they watch the film to listen for, because it really was a tremendous exchange they had there. Yes, yes, totally.
Speaker: Now, this is the third film you've produced with Shirley Villacruzzi of the NFB. You work together on Now Is The Time about the first new totem poles be raised on Heidegger in 100 years and on another film. Tell me about your process of collaboration. Yeah, well, Shirley, she's my champion.
Speaker: I don't know if I'd be a director at all without her. She's really, I guess, that person that believes in me, which feels so good, right? For myself, it just feels so good to have her. And she just gives me so much space to be able to make mistakes, but be creative.
Speaker: and doesn't shut down the ideas that might go a little too far. But I find that sweet spot within those ideas. And I guess a really great example on this film, on The Stand, is Sarah and I had just finished a new edit of the film.
Speaker: you know, still quite a long film. And, but we were really focusing on this particular version of the film was the opening, you know, in terms of how are we going to grab the audience and make them interested enough to not change the channel or just like fully forget about, you know, what's going on in the day. And so Shirley watched it and her comment was later on, she said, well, you know, I'm, I'm here.
Speaker: but I'm not here and she was speaking specifically for the opening of the film like I'm sitting here but I'm not here and watching the film but I'm not here and that was all I needed to hear to kind of
Speaker: I don't know, just a creative light went off in my head and go, OK, that's the challenge. I always knew it was a challenge. But for some reason, when she said it like that, I was like, OK, like I really have to figure out a way to grab you and make you forget that you need to water that plant over there or that you have to pay this bill or something like that. Like just grab you and pull you in.
Speaker: So I wrote kind of the opening dialogue for the film. It was kind of one of the few kind of scripted moments in the film. And I wrote that moment and then I asked Sarah if she could build scenes like this. And this is what's going on. This is what's happening. Like there's something going on in the forest there.
Speaker: and the animals, the wildlife in the ocean and on the land are reacting like something eerie and spooky is going on in there that's disturbing everything. And yeah, she pulled together all these beautiful scenes of sea lions and river otters and stuff like that and bears like all reacting and it just kind of
Speaker: it all came to that moment and yeah, that moment came because of this great comment, this great feedback that she gave me and just allowing for that space to be as creative as possible. I just, yeah, I love working with her.
Speaker: Well, it's a great film. And I told you before we started recording this interview that I actually couldn't stop watching it. I was a bit late for my supper because I couldn't pull myself away to go and cook. Amazing. That's the best thing I could hear. Thank you. Thanks so much for talking with me today, Christopher.
Speaker: You take care as well, and I hope to talk to you again. Likewise. I've been speaking with Christopher Ochter, writer and director of The Stand. It's showing at the Vancouver International Film Festival on Thursday, October 3rd at 8 .45 and October 5th at 3 .15. And you can buy tickets at vif .org. The film is a production of the National Film Board of Canada.
Speaker: The Red Eye Collective is based in Vancouver. You can check us out at coopradio .org -slash -redeye.
