Three laurels, a re-release, a Gulf Islands odyssey... our film Snk'mip Dig Deeper is on a roll!
- Lorna Visser
- Apr 10
- 7 min read
Updated: Apr 14
Snk’mip Dig Deeper, our documentary film co-produced with our Indigenous allies the
Autonomous Sinixt, has thus far received two official selection laurels and one Best
Feature Documentary award from international film festivals. And this is still ‘early days’ in terms of our film festival submissions, with most festivals having a once-a-year intake. We’re holding our breaths for the Vancouver International Film Fest and a couple of other promising opportunities.
Our other big news: after a successful series of community screenings last fall, we have now created a revised, streamlined, one-hour re-release of our co-production. It is with considerable pride and excitement that Marilyn James and I as co-directors launched this new version of the film. We’re calling this the Broadcast Version in that very hope: that the film will get distribution and be picked up by a broadcaster.
Gulf Islands Film Tour planned
We’ve been invited to present the film by collegial land trust and conservation organizations based in the Gulf Islands (located between Vancouver and Vancouver Island) in BC. Thus far we’ve had invitations from groups on Mayne, Galiano, Denman, Lasqueti, Thetis and Pender islands. We are looking forward to many scenic ferry rides and to sharing the film with many wonderful people at community screenings. We'll soon be issuing a “Save The Date” poster with all those details so stay tuned, we’ll do a separate post on that.
A personal story about a film-making journey
A lot of my friends and colleagues have asked me why we made this film when our primary mandate as an organization is conservation: the protection of wild places for wild things. It’s true that during the past several years I’ve been pretty much a full-time ‘show-runner’ — the person who makes the production happen.
Fortunately I have colleagues such as biologist Amber Peters and our wonderful board members including biologist Wayne McCrory who have kept all of our other work progressing.
But to answer that question: why make a film? Because it’s not enough to just do the work, you also have to empower and motivate others to do this work -- and film is the most powerful communication medium there is.
For me, the journey of making this film from inception has been an incredible experience, full of twists and turns. The story of the film is literally true: my Valhalla Foundation colleagues and I did not know that Snk'mip was an ancient Sinixt village site when we started the complex task of doing ecological restoration there.
It was a hot day in the summer of 2019 when the heavy equipment rolled in to start digging out compacted road surfaces, using the restoration plan developed for us by wetland expert Robin Annschild. The work was so visually dramatic that I jumped on the phone to my film-making colleagues and lifelong friends stretching back to our journalism school days in the late 1970s: Kerry McArthur and Mark Wolfe. Excited by what I was witnessing, I practically yelled into the phone: "get over here now, you've got to film this” — and bless them, they did just that.
It was a hot and sunny day…
That began the process of filming the wetland restoration work over several summers. That was no easy task given the difficult terrain at the marsh property, not to mention the dust and heat and wildfire smoke we experienced during several consecutive summers.
Then the project took a dramatic turn when my friend and colleague K.L. Kivi told me about that area having been the location of a Sinixt village: we certainly did not know that! That knowledge required a complete re-thinking of our relationship to the land, our work at Snk'mip, and whether we should even be making a film that was just about wetland restoration.
Things take a sharp turn...
With that knowledge, we established closer ties to the First People of this area through Autonomous Sinixt matriarch Marilyn James and her cohort of allies. It became clear this was no longer a film that was just about wetland restoration: it was now about deep history and the compelling need for Indigenous reconciliation.
The film's title, which was originally simply 'Dig Deeper' (in reference to the deep decompaction needed to restore compacted road surfaces) now took on more nuanced meanings as we investigated the deep history and tragic past of our Indigenous allies. Through that relationship-building the film became a co-production with the Autonomous Sinixt; Marilyn James joined me as co-director. Together we crafted a script that served as an editing outline for our very skilled film editor Kerry McArthur, over many months of work we stitched the film together.
Fabulous music enlivens the production...
Last spring, after my film-making colleagues Kerry and Mark delivered a very presentable first-cut of the film, we commissioned composer Noel Fudge to add a custom film score -- that's pretty rare for a documentary (most use canned music, purchased online). Noel created an entire soundscape for the film, adding additional sound effects and a recurring majestic orchestral theme, plus clever musical interludes such as 'frog theme' and squirrel theme' (watch for those moments and listen carefully!).
In the fall of 2024 we held community screenings of Snk'mip Dig Deeper in about a dozen communities throughout Sinixt tmxʷúlaʔxʷ (territory), reaching some 1500 viewers, to excellent acclaim. You can read reviews of that on our film website at: https://www.digdeeperfilm.ca/watch#Reviews
Everyone local enjoyed the 71-minute production which often included footage of people they knew. The lengthy credits roll literally thanked every. single. person. who worked on the project in any way, shape or form. The 'Community Screenings' version of the film has served us well as an outreach and education tool in this geographic area. At that same time we also began submitting the film to film festivals and thus far have received three 'laurels' of which we are justifiably proud (and the film festival submissions continue).
High praise from a film professor...
We were pretty stoked to get this feedback from the very respected Canadian documentary filmmaker and media arts professor Ali Kazimi (who also kindly provided several clips from one of his films for us to use in Snk'mip Dig Deeper). This Toronto filmmaker was awarded the 2019 Governor General's Lifetime Achievement Award in visual and media arts for his cinematic work exploring race, racism, and stereotyping. This is just one of the many complimentary reviews the 'Community Screenings' version of the film received:
“A truly inspirational film about reclaiming, restoring, and rewilding an incredible wetland. I was moved to tears seeing the remote-camera images of wildlife moving back in, after the restoration work was done. I loved the way the complexity of restoration is woven in with the challenges from the community — and how the colonial history is unflinchingly woven in.”
Review by: Ali Kazimi, Associate Professor - Department of Cinema and Media Arts at York University (Author, Media Artist, and Documentary Filmmaker of nine films including Beyond Extinction & Continuous Journey)
Why we made a new version...
Every step of this project has been a learning journey. One of the hard truths we learned was how film festivals work. We naively thought film fest judges would watch every moment of our inspired documentary and, of course, give it full marks! But unfortunately, that’s wrong.
We discovered that hard-pressed film reviewers may only watch a few opening scenes. We realized we needed to grab their attention right off the hop. So, we decided we needed a somewhat shorter film (71 minutes being an awkward length for a broadcaster) and that we needed to enhance the first 5 or 6 minutes of the film.
It was back to the footage to find some additional clips to rebuild and' jazz up' those all-important first six minutes. As well, we carefully edited some scenes that we felt dragged on just a bit too long. Then we completely removed the huge credits roll, replacing it with the much condensed credits one typically sees at the end of a documentary. We added a couple of new illustrations that inject some additional notes of light humour.
Then an incredible amount of fiddly work was done by Noel Fudge to smooth out rough transitions, add subtle sound improvements, add lovely 'pads' of sound under the action, and compose additional music to fit the edited visuals. As well, we completely re-recorded all the voice-over narration -- once more with emotion! Huge thanks to Noel for going beyond the ‘second mile’ in creating this second edition of the film.
I would be remiss if I didn't mention my colleague Yasmín Rodríguez Toro (publicist, graphics designer, illustrator, emotional support) -- her incredible dedication to this project. Most recently, Yasmin worked hard creating another illustration for the new version of the film and, once it was re-edited, had to completely rebuild the closed captions for the deaf and hard of hearing. Doing all that extremely detailed work took many more long hours.
Speaking on behalf of myself, Mark, Kerry, Marty, Noel, Yasmin and all the other talented people who contributed to making this documentary film: we all wanted Snk'mip Dig Deeper to be the best representation of our work that we could possibly achieve. And we feel we've done what we set out to do: made a film that moves people to take positive action for the earth and for social justice. As Ali Kazimi said "this film is an inspiration."
- Lorna Visser, Co-Director, Snk'mip Dig Deeper
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