A year and half ago, the local cultural scene was dealt a significant setback when the Thompson Arts Council folded its tent for a second time.
The Thompson Arts Council folded June 30, 2008 after being re-launched with great fanfare just three years earlier. The last two events the Thompson Arts Council sponsored were bringing in soprano Nancy Argenta and Winnipeg bluesman Big Dave McLean for a sold-out performance in the spring of 2008. The council still had three years to run on their lease at the former Mennonite church on Thompson Drive.During its first incarnation, the Thompson Arts Council had also been volunteer-driven, chaired by Valerie Wilson, a trustee with the School District of Mystery Lake.That earlier arts council was disbanded in 1986 in favour of a paid position devoted to the arts through the City of Thompson's recreation, parks and culture department. The arts and cultural programer position was a liaison and facilitator for the arts.
To council's credit, they stepped into the breach with an new arts and culture advisory body named the "Culture Club." True, we thought (and still do) that it a goofy name - too reminiscent of "Do you want to hurt me" and Boy George's 1982 version of the Culture Club - but at the end of the day the proof will be in the pudding, name aside.
And if one puts aside both the Thompson Arts Council and Culture Club for a minute, cultural endeavours have remained relatively resilient in Thompson. We may not always be so good all the time at keeping arts umbrella groups going, but we're not so bad as a community at actually being cultural.Lisa Evasiuk, co-ordinator of the Reel North Film Festival, working closely with Thompson Public Library administrator Cheryl Davies, and a Reel North Festival Planning Group that this year also included Janet Brady, Doug Krokosz, Richard Smith, Ken Shaw, Simone Krokosz, Norm Martin, Alda Graham and Kevin Forbes, are about to bring the sixth annual three-day Reel North Film Festival to town Nov. 6-8.
Reel North's mandate is to showcase a variety of Manitoban, Canadian and international films, bringing cinema to Thompson, which is rarely accessible otherwise in the North.
The film festival is sponsored by a number of organizations and individuals, including in part by Vale Inco, the City of Thompson and Film Circuit, a division of the Toronto International Film Festival Group, whose mandate includes providing filmgoers in "under-served communities, transformative experiences through access to Canadian and international independent films they would otherwise not have the opportunity to see."
Under Evasiuk and Davies' leadership mainly (but also to some degree that of Corey Redekop, the former library administrator, also active with Reel North) the film festival has grown beyond simply a once a year three-day film extravaganza to something more, although the November festival remains at the core of its being, the raison d'être for its existence.
As well as its annual three-day film festival Reel North Film Festival has also branched out over the last two years with Saturday night movie double features, which usually run from December through May once a month.
The Saturday night movie double features debuted on March 8, 2008 so film buffs wouldn't have to wait an entire year until the following November and the next full three-day festival to see festival genre films. The double feature Saturday nights proved popular when they debuted with Into the Wild and Once, both released to critical acclaim in 2007.
Also, last February, the Winnipeg Film Group, a non-profit founded in 1974, brought five short commissioned films to a Reel North Film Festival Saturday movie night to set the stage for a Thompson showing of Canadian fantasist Guy Maddin's award-winning and critically acclaimed feature-length My Winnipeg.
Now, Evasiuk and Davies have partnered in a new music effort to bring the Winnipeg-based Home Routes Concert Tour to Thompson, again using the Basement Bijou venue. The Thompson component of the tour kicked off last month and last week featured Thunder Bay folk songwriter Rodney Brown, the poet of the fur trade
"I supply a bed and a meal (for free)," Evasiuk says. "Cheryl is supplying the basement Bijou at the library (for free) as our "living room" for the up close and interactive acoustic events (of which there will be six in total). You buy a ticket, supply your time and sit back and totally enjoy the music while visiting with the musicians."
Likewise, the City of Thompson's Concert Series for 2009-10, with the guidance of Chris Sharpe, the city's new culture co-ordinator, is looking sharp, pun intended. Sharpe actually has some sense of marketing and what a slick poster might look like. The series kicked off with Thompson-born violinist Steven Tsitsos Sept. 26 at its home at R.D. Parker Collegiate's Letkemann Theatre.
Everything Fitz, a family band featuring high-energy fiddling and percussive step dancing, with roots in the Canadian old-time fiddle tradition, is here Nov. 1, while the series wraps up Feb. 28 with a Manitoba Theatre Centre (MTC), regional tour performance of Robert Chafe's 2002 play Tempting Providence.
