Full up

Film collective Loaded Pictures
gears up for a busy 2009

JOINING FORCES: The Loaded gang

by MALCOLM FRASER

A group of Mile-End-dwelling adopted Montrealers joining forces is a typical occurrence in our music scene; production collective Loaded Pictures has applied the model to the film business. Since its formation in 2003, the group worked on each other’s short films before producing two acclaimed feature documentaries, Wal-Town and Roadsworth: Crossing the Line.

2009 will see the production slate continue with H2Oil, a personal take on the impact of Alberta’s oil sands project, and Vanishing Currents, the story of the Caravan Stage Company, a nomadic troupe who’ve spent the last 30 years travelling and performing political theatre. As I sit down in a St-Viateur café with Vanishing Currents director Sebastian Lange and H2Oil producer Sarah Spring—who comprise the collective along with Roadsworth director Alan Kohl, Wal-Town director Sergeo Kirby, writer/composer Matt Tomlinson and “systems administrator maestro” Keith Pattington—they seem calm but excited to be on a roll after putting in some years in the trenches.

“We really felt like we needed to invest our energy and time into our own projects,” recalls Spring of the group’s humble DIY beginnings. Over time, the NFB and various broadcasters got on board with assorted Loaded projects. “It’s kind of like ‘If you build it, they will come,’ in a sense,” she reflects.

In Vanishing Currents, Caravan’s head honcho Paul Kirby goes through a Fitzcarraldo-like ordeal when his troupe takes their travelling river barge to Europe. “This is the story of people who had a certain idealism in the ’60s, and they never gave up,” explains Lange. “It’s a film about what happened to the people who kept going, and what they’ve become.”

H2Oil, meanwhile, focuses on a small native community in northern Alberta, and the challenges posed to their way of life (and health) by the perpetually oil-hungry province’s oil sands extraction. But it’s not your average political reportage. “We wanted to make a film that was told through characters,” says Spring. “It’s got a sort of fiction feel.”

Producing, writing, shooting and editing each other’s films when they’re not directing their own, the Loaded crew isn’t sleeping on the wave of recent interest; they’re already embarking on a new doc about transcendental meditation. Both Vanishing Currents and H2Oil will be released in 2009. “We want to make something beautiful, but also challenging,” says a confident Spring. “You’re gonna be presented with people who are not straightforward characters, and films that are going to really make you think.”