Sport is on the screen at annual film festival

Highlighted by Roots of Lacrosse and Undeniably Young, there is certainly something for the sports fan at this year’s Forest City Film Festival.

The late Nora Young, a Canadian multi-sport champion who competed in a barrier-breaking 1936 bike race at Maple Leaf Gardens, is the subject of a documentary at this year’s Forest City Film Festival.

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Sport has always played an important role in film, from the first film frames ever capturing a thoroughbred in motion to The Last Dance, which filled our early pandemic evenings. Fiction. Nonfiction. Even animation. The inherent drama of sport provides the perfect platform for amazing storytelling.

This week, the Forest City Film Festival returns to in-person screenings in downtown London with a lineup of nearly 100 films, across seven categories, each with a connection to southwestern Ontario. The festival films run on the big screen from Oct. 19-24 (or you can stream them on-demand from Oct. 25-30).

Among those films are a handful spotlighting the power of sports. Here are a couple of picks and possibilities for the sports fan to catch:

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The Great One just wouldn’t leave her alone. Seriously, this guy won’t shut up. But it was thanks to that chance encounter with Wayne Gretzky at a Pebble Beach, Calif., bar, that Joanne Storkan’s film found a new direction.

“He was so persistent, I thought he was just an angry man trying to get my attention,” Strokan laughed. “But it turns out, he just has this amazing passion for lacrosse and wanted to talk to me about it as soon as he found out I was making this film.”

Co-directed by Storkan and Shelby Adams, The Roots of Lacrosse: A History of the Fastest Game on 2 Feet provides a history of the sacred and cultural aspects of the sport, as well as traces its connections to the health and welfare of Indigenous Peoples. The short film is one chapter of a feature-length documentary.

Inspired by her kids playing the sport, Storkan considered a fictional film – a “coming-of-age story, like a Karate Kid but with lacrosse” – but as she dove deeper into the rich history of the sport for her screenplay, the journalist in her recognized a story that needed a wider scope. At first, she looked to build on an existing documentary, adding just 15 more minutes to that short film to broaden its perspective.

But she couldn’t leave the larger story alone – and then Gretzky butted himself in.

The Gretzky connection encounter opened the documentary up to Canada and its national sport, where the story further expanded into what it is today.

Roots of Lacrosse will play at 10 a.m. Oct. 20 in Wolf Performance Hall, 251 Dundas St. and then be available online Oct. 25-30.

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It was the kind of story that forced her to “release the bounds of documentary” – and nobody was more shocked at doing that than she was.

Directed by Julia Morgan, Undeniably Young tells the story of Canadian multi-sport champion Nora Young and a barrier-breaking 1936 bike race she competed in in Maple Leaf Gardens. The film gives the nearly forgotten athletic hero her rightful place in history and elevates women’s sports history for modern audiences.

Morgan initially set out to create a traditional, feature-length documentary as she conducted interviews with the then-octogenarian Young. But when a stroke robbed the vibrant senior storyteller of her ability to speak, Morgan was forced to pivot. (Young died in 2016 at 98.) The filmmaker was also challenged by a lack of secondary materials – only one photograph and no film from the event. A conversation with a fellow filmmaker, however, sparked an idea.

“He saw I didn’t have any dramatic arc and suggested that I take one of my best stories and blow it out of the water. Try animation. Release the bounds of documentary. Whatever you don’t know or have, make up with your best guess,” Morgan said. “It was a shocking suggestion.”

For her first film as a director, Morgan had to go to her backers and explain she was basically starting over – plus, it was going to be a bit more expensive and take a lot longer. Oh, did she mention it’s now an animated short?

But she knew it would work and accomplish its mission of reviving the memory of this important figure.

There was lots of newspaper coverage from the era that served as a backbone of the factual portion of the narrative and provided inspiration for some of the film’s more creative elements. It all contributed to a reviving of a story fading from popular memory.

And it’s not lost on her how it might not have ever made it to the screen.

“So much had to happen to get this story told. If things had not worked out, Nora’s story would have remained a single line on a plaque at Maple Leaf Gardens that says a women’s race was held. That’s all you have got,” Morgan said. “We’re in a great time for filmmaking now. There’s an acknowledgement that a lot of stories are missing from history. There’s an awakening happening, and I just see what I’m doing as a part of that.”

Undeniably Young will play at 9:15 p.m. Oct. 21 in Wolf Performance Hall, 251 Dundas St. and then be available online Oct. 25-30.

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Zoe Leigh Hopkins might not enjoy running, but the filmmaker understands its transformative power.

“I am taken how when you are in tune with your body, when you are listening to your breath, when you are giving it your all, how healing that is, how you can leave things on the road. We don’t have enough opportunities in life,” she said.

Running – OK, technically streaking – plays a healing role in Mohawk Midnight Runners, the film she wrote, directed, and brings to the Forest City Film Festival this week.

Based on the short story Dogrib Midnight Runners, by Richard Van Camp, Mohawk Midnight Runners tells the story of Grant, a Mohawk man who loses his best friend to suicide and finds his way through his sorrow by remembering his departed friend’s favourite activity: streaking. The short film centres around camaraderie, release, and freedom from the darkness of grief.

At every festival stop, the film has resonated with audiences, including one woman who came up to Hopkins after a screening and shared her personal journey inspired by the film. Grabbing onto the film’s key themes, that woman dedicated herself to honour running in memory of one person in her life every night. The night she told the story to Hopkins was the 360th day in a row she had run for someone.

That year-long feat inspired Hopkins to do the same for a month, each day dedicated to honouring someone in her life, starting with that woman.

“I couldn’t believe that somebody had been inspired to that level by something I made. It just speaks to the power of film as a medium. I have been so inspired by watching a beautiful story or incredible actor. We can be made to feel so much. There is power on the screen. That’s why I make films,” said Hopkins, a Mohawk from Six Nations of the Grand River.

While the short story is based in the Northwest Territories, costs and logistics forced Hopkins to shoot in Six Nations. With the change in location, the director explained, came a need to change the story perspective somewhat.

“I couldn’t imagine shooting Six Nations for the Northwest Territories. It was important to me to be authentic. And if we couldn’t be authentic, then I just wanted to change it, adapt it. Richard was really generous and said, ‘Go for it. Make it your own. Set it in your community. Make it about Mohawk people.’ And that’s OK because the essence of the story is still there.”

Mohawk Midnight Runners will play at 10 a.m. Oct. 23 in Wolf Performance Hall, 251 Dundas St. and then be available online Oct. 25-30.