Seventh Row

A place to think deeply about movies

Canadian Film - Podcasts

The Seventh Row Podcast prides itself on curating and highlighting the best Canadian films for a Canadian and international audience. These films tend to pass under-the-radar, even in Canada. We especially focus on Québécois cinema, films by women, and Indigenous films.

Past episodes include deep dives on Canadian filmmakers (e.g., Anne Émond, Pascal Plante, Jeff Barnaby), spotlights on Indigenous films (Run Woman Run, Remembering Jeff Barnaby, Indigenous YA Part 1 and Part 2), and other highlights (e.g., Take This Waltz, Paper Year, Sugar Daddy, Mouthpiece).

We've covered several Canadian documentaries, including No Ordinary Man, John Ware Reclaimed, and First Stripes.

Finally, we often do podcasts episodes where we compare an under-seen Canadian film to a more well-known American or international film. E.g., Spinster (Canada) and The Forty-Year-Old Version, My Internship in Canada and In the Loop, First Stripes (Canada) and Boys State.

When we cover the Toronto International Film Festival, we make a point of discussing the Canadian films, as we did in TIFFHighlights of 2022 Fall Festivals, TIFF 2021 Part 1, TIFF 2021 Part 2, TIFF 2020 Part 1, and TIFF 2020 Part 2, and Canadian Cinema at TIFF 2019.

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Creative Nonfiction #3: Philippe Falardeau on Lac-Mégantic: This is Not An Accident and reinventing the true crime doc

In the third episode of our Creative Nonfiction Film podcast season, we interview Philippe Falardeau about his four-part documentary series, Lac-Mégantic: This is Not An Accident, and reinventing the true crime doc.

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Image for Episode 3: An interview with Philippe Falardeau on Lac-Mégantic: This is Not an Accident and reinventing the true crime doc. Top right: a headshot of Philippe Falardeau. Bottom: An image of the deserted streets in Lac-Mégantic from the film.
Episode 3: Philippe Falardeau (top right) on Lac-Mégantic: This is Not An Accident (still at bottom) and reinventing the true crime doc. In this podcast interview, Philippe Falardeau discusses his series Lac-Mégantic: This is Not An Accident

On episode 3 of the creative nonfiction podcast season, Philippe Falardeau discusses Lac-Mégantic: This is Not An Accident is a four-part documentary series about the catastrophic 2013 train disaster in Lac-Mégantic, its inevitability, the aftermath, and the government failure to change safety requirements to avoid another “accident” in future. Lac-Mégantic had its world premiere at the HotDocs Film Festival where all four episodes were screened back-to-back.

The Lac-Mégantic rail disaster was the fourth-deadliest rail accident in Canadian history (47 people died) and the deadliest involving a non-passenger train. The documentary Lac-Mégantic not only chronicles the disaster and its devastating effects on the town Lac-Mégantic, but also how blame was handled and how similar disasters continue to happen.

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The series reclaims the history of the Lac-Mégantic rail disaster by showing how systemic problems lead to a disaster that has been blamed on individuals. The series also reveals how appropriate safety measures have not been taken in the intervening years to prevent a similar disaster from happening (and other, smaller disasters have indeed continued to happen).

At the beginning of the episode, Alex Heeney introduces the series Lac-Mégantic, and why she thinks it’s worthy of discussion. Next, we play your Alex’s interview with Falardeau about the film. Finally, we wrap up with how the film fits into the framework for creative nonfiction that we at Seventh Row created in our ebook Subjective realities, and offer some suggestions for what to watch and listen to next.

Creative Nonfiction Podcast season featuring an interview with Philippe Falardeau on Lac-Mégantic: This is Not An Accident

Listen to the whole Creative Nonfiction season

In this 5-episode podcast season, Alex Heeney interviews four creative nonfiction filmmakers about their latest films and how they are pushing the boundaries of what documentary and nonfiction film can be.

Listen to all the episodes to discover how filmmakers are pushing the bounds of documentary cinema in 2023.

Subscribe To the podcast now

Show Notes for Creative Nonfiction Podcast Season Ep. 3: An interview with Philippe Falardeau on Lac-Mégantic: This is Not an Accident

Get our ebooks on documentary filmmaking and creative nonfiction film

Dive deep into the work of Frederick Wiseman and Gianfranco Rosi and read our initial interview with Penny Lane on creative nonfiction by getting Documentary Masters in a bundle with Subjective Realities: The art of creative nonfiction film.

Get the bundle now
Cover of Subjective Realities, a great introduction to creative nonfiction films that precede Falardeau's documentary Lac-Mégantic

Download a FREE excerpt from Subjective Realities here.

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The Seventh Row Podcast spotlights under-the-radar, female-directed, and foreign films. All of our episodes are carefully curated. Indeed, we only discuss films we think are really worth your time and deserve in-depth critical analysis.

Our episodes that are more than six months old are only available to members. In addition, many of our new episodes are for members only. 

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Related Episodes to the podcast interview with Philippe Falardeau on the documentary Lac-Mégantic: This Is Not an Accident

  • Bonus Episode 25 (Members only): This is Going to Hurt and physician mental health: In this episode, we discuss the systemic issues in British public healthcare and how the best TV show of 2022 revealed these issues.
  • Ep. 41 (Members Only): In the Loop and My Internship in Canada: Political satires: In this episode, we discuss Philippe Falardeau’s political satire My Internship in Canada, perhaps the first political satire about Canada and made in Canada, and compare it to the British-American political satire In the Loop. In our interview with Philippe Falardeau on today’s podcast, Falardeau talks about how his experience in fiction helped him to make a doc.

Related Episodes on creative nonfiction film

Listen to all the related episodes. Become a member.

All of our episodes that are more than six months old are only available to members. Additionally, we have many bonus episodes and in-between season episodes which are also only available to members.

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Credits

Host Alex Heeney is the Editor-in-Chief of Seventh Row. Find her on Twitter @bwestcineaste.

This episode was edited, produced, and recorded by Alex Heeney.

Catch up with the rest of the season

Find out more about the season

Listen to Ep. 1: An introduction to creative nonfiction

Listen to Ep. 2: Sophie Fiennes on Four Quartets and documenting theatre on screen

Episode transcript

The transcript for the free excerpt of this episode was AI-generated by Otter.ai.

[fusebox_transcript]

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E131: Remembering Jeff Barnaby

This podcast episode pays tribute to the great films and enormous impact of Mi’gmaq filmmaker Jeff Barnaby who passed away on October 13, 2022. He directed two landmark Indigenous feature films out of Canada: Rhymes for Young Ghouls (2013) and Blood Quantum (2019).

Listen to the episode

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Feature image for the Jeff Barnaby podcast: in memorial. Still of Mi'gmaq director Jeff Barnaby, a middle-aged Indigenous man with shaved black hair, in a red and black baseball shirt with a red "Indian" cartoon on it.
Mi’gmaq director Jeff Barnaby (pictured) is the subject of this in memorial podcast episode.

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About the episode

Mi’gmaq filmmaker Jeff Barnaby passed away unexpectedly from cancer on October 13, 2022. He was only 46. He is best known as the writer-director of two feature films in colonial Canada: the landmark film about residential “schools” Rhymes for Young Ghouls (2013) and the popular zombie film Blood Quantum (2019). But he has also made three excellent shorts, which we hope to help people discover: From Cherry English (2004), The Colony (2007), and Etlinisigu’niet: Bleed Down (2015).

We’ve been huge fans of Barnaby’s work and activism, and are still very much mourning the loss of this incredible talent who wasn’t given the opportunities he deserved. There are so many films we will never get from him now. But we also wanted to talk about how many roadblocks were put in Barnaby’s way while he was alive, preventing him from making all the films he could have and wanted to make in his time.

This episode is a tribute to Jeff Barnaby — a complicated, difficult, visionary filmmaker — and what his work has revealed about Canada and the film industry. When Barnaby died, we didn’t just lose so much future work from this important filmmaker that we all wanted to see (and he wanted to make), but we also lost a huge resource of cultural knowledge of the Canadian and Indigenous Film Industries.

This episode features Editor-in-Chief Alex Heeney, Executive Editor Orla Smith, as well as Associate Editor Dr. Brett Pardy.

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On the podcast episode Remembering Jeff Barnaby

  • 01:51–3:45 Why are we talking about Jeff Barnaby?

Jeff Barnaby’s accomplishments

  • 3:45–6:26 Jeff Barnaby’s unexpected passing and his huge impact on the film industry
  • 6:26–10:38 Barnaby not only changed filmmaking but effected social change with his work
  • 10:38–16:56 How the Canadian film funding bodies failed to support Barnaby’s work in the ways it should have. We also discuss why they wanted to fund Rhymes for Young Ghouls but not Blood Quantum
  • 16:56–19:44 Making films about colonial trauma without showing gratuitous violence or making trauma porn at the same time
  • 19:44– 24:52 Dr. Brett Pardy on teaching Rhymes for Young Ghouls and its weighty emotional impact on the viewer. We also discuss Barnaby’s use of genre to capture a settler audience and talk about colonialism. Barnaby did this without being didactic or preach. He’s not there to teach; just to provoke.
  • 24:52-30:21 Rhymes for Young Ghouls is so accomplished it doesn’t feel like a first feature.

How Jeff Barnaby’s experiences reflected the problems with the Canadian film industry

  • 30:21-32:08 Barnaby wasn’t given the opportunities he should have been given in the time that he had, even though everyone in the Canadian film industry knew how talented he was and how important his work was.
  • 32:08-47:58 How Jeff Barnaby was refreshingly honest on Twitter and in interviews when discussing the realities of being an Indigenous filmmaker. Barnaby had a lot of integrity. He also worked to uplift other Indigenous artists. He was one of the most accessible filmmakers on Twitter and would regularly engage (positively) with other film fans and critics.
  • 47:21-49:24 The loss of Barnaby also means the loss of a huge body of knowledge of how the Canadian film industry works to support (or fail to support) Indigenous filmmakers.
  • 49:24-52:54 The lack of critical or academic interest in contemporary Canadian film, let alone Indigenous film, and how we have tried our best to fill the gap.
  • 52:54-57:13 Jeff Barnaby’s short films, as well as why they are worth catching up with
  • 57:13-59:31 Related episodes, what’s coming next on the podcast, and other wrap-up thoughts.

Show Notes on the podcast on remembering Jeff Barnaby

Related episodes

  • Bonus 27: Empathy on film with Dr. Brett Pardy (FREE to everyone) – Dr. Pardy did his PhD research on how films can create empathy, and used Barnaby’s Rhymes for Young Ghouls as a case study for some of his on-the-ground research.
  • Ep. 39: Jeff Barnaby’s Rhymes for Young Ghouls & Blood Quantum (Members only) – In this early episode of the podcast, we compare and contrast Barnaby’s two features, as well as discuss how he uses genre in innovative ways, and more.
  • Ep. 62: Indigenous YA, part 1 (Members Only) – We discuss three recent contemporary Indigenous YA films from Canada: Beans (2020), Monkey Beach (2020), and the TV show Trickster (2020).
  • Ep. 63: Indigenous YA, part 2 (Members only) – A broader survey of Indigenous YA out of Canada from the last decade, including Rustic Oracle (2019), Tia and Piujuk (2018), The Grizzlies (2018), Kuessipan (2019), and Rhymes for Young Ghouls (2013).
The cover of the Canadian Cinema Yearbook which contains interviews with other great Indigenous filmmakers besides Jeff Barnaby whom we discuss on the podcast.

Discover more great films from Canada, including great Indigenous films

2018-2019 was one of the best years for Canadian cinema in history. Discover these great films through conversations with the filmmakers, guided by the Seventh Row editors in our inaugural annual book, The 2019 Canadian Cinema Yearbook.

Get your copy now!

Episode (excerpt) transcript

The transcript for the free excerpt of this episode is AI-generated by Otter.ai.

[fusebox_transcript]

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Ep. 126: Run Woman Run: An Indigenous coming of age after 30 film

On this episode of the podcast, we dig into how the film Run Woman Run explores coming of age in your thirties through an Indigenous perspective.

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Asivak Koostachin, dressed as turn of the 20th century runner Tom Longboat, and Dakota Ray Hebert, dressed in modern running clothing, in Run Woman Run
Asivak Koostachin and Dakota Ray Hebert in Run Woman Run
[Read more…] about Ep. 126: Run Woman Run: An Indigenous coming of age after 30 film

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Ep. 109: TIFF 2021, part 1

On the first of our TIFF 2021 podcasts, we discuss the films we saw before the festival began. This includes the new film from site favourite Joachim Trier, Jack Lowden in Terence Davies’ Benediction, and more.

This episode is a Seventh Row members exclusive, as are all episodes older than six months. Click here to become a member.

Renate Reinsve in The Worst Person in the World; Flora Ofelia Hofmann Lindah in As In Heaven; Jack Lowden in Benediction; Cherish Violet Blood in Scarborough

This episode features Editor-in-Chief Alex Heeney and Executive Editor Orla Smith.

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Click here to become a Seventh Row member and get access to this episode, as well as all other podcast episodes older than six months.

On this episode:

  • Joachim Trier ebook (2:46)
  • Horror symposium (5:04)
  • TIFF 2021 Films covered on other podcasts (6:49)
  • Why we are only covering TIFF remotely (12:51)
  • The Worst Person in the World (Joachim Trier) (19:37)
  • Benediction (Terence Davies) (25:31)
  • What happened to the good Canadian films at TIFF? (37:14)
  • Scarborough (Shasha Nakhai & Rich Williamson) (42:29)
  • Other films Orla saw (46:25)
  • Other films Alex saw (49:49)
  • Wrap-up (52:17)
  • Conclusion (59:39)

Show notes:

  • Read Alex’s interview with Anders Danielsen Lie on Oslo, August 31st
  • Read Alex’s interview with Joachim Trier on Oslo, August 31st
  • Sign up for updates on the first book to ever be published on the films of Norwegian filmmaker Joachim Trier
  • Purchase our new ebook Subjective realities: The art of creative nonfiction film
  • Sign up to get our daily newsletter about TIFF 2021 (until September 19)

TIFF 2021 reviews:

  • Read Alex’s review of Benediction
  • Read Orla’s review of Scarborough
  • Read Orla’s review of Aloners (Hong Seong-eun)
  • Read Alex’s interview with As in Heaven director Tea Lindeburg
  • Read Alex’s review of Yuni (Kamila Andini)
  • Read Orla’s review of Good Madam (Jenna Cato Bass)
  • Ep. 107: Are men OK? Masculinity, mental health, & addiction in Another Round and Oslo, August 31st Redux
  • Ep. 84: Berlinale 2021, Part 2: The Competition
  • Ep. 83: Berlinale 2021, Part 1: The Sidebars
  • Ep. 78: Sundance 2021, Part 1 (Members Only)

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Ep. 103: Pascal Plante’s films: Fake Tattoos and Nadia Butterfly

On this episode of the podcast, we discuss the two features of Quebecois filmmaker Pascal Plante, Fake Tattoos and Nadia, Butterfly. Plante is an expert at depicting turning points in his characters’ lives and how they deal with major upheaval.

This episode is a Seventh Row members exclusive, as are all episodes older than six months. Click here to become a member.

A still from Fake Tattoos in split screen with a still from Nadia Butterfly, which are both covered on this Pascal Plante podcast episode. The number of the podcast, '103', is in the centre of the image.
Left: Katerine Savard in Nadia, Butterfly; Right: Anthony Therrien & Rose-Marie Perreault in Fake Tattoos. Both films are discussed on the podcast on Pascal Plante.

This episode features Editor-in-Chief Alex Heeney, Executive Editor Orla Smith, Associate Editor Brett Pardy, and Contributing Editor Lindsay Pugh.

Want to listen to the episode?

Click here to become a Seventh Row member and get access to this episode, as well as all other podcast episodes older than six months.

On this episode of the podcast on Fake Tatoos and Nadia, Butterfly

  • Subjective realities: The art of creative nonfiction film discussion (1:38)
  • Similar episodes (9:05)
  • Why did we pair these two films (9:49)
  • Fake Tattoos (12:10)
  • Avoiding the manic pixie dream girl trope (24:07)
  • Nadia, Butterfly (37:51)
  • A very Canadian musical interlude (58:28)
  • How the two films depict sex and sexuality (1:02:43)
  • What are the film’s character arcs? (1:07:48)
  • Why are relationship stories good for telling stories about transitions (1:14:57)
  • Conclusion (1:21:28)

Fake Tattoos (Faux Tatouages, 2017)

Set in Montreal, Theo (Anthony Therrien) and the one-year-older Meg (Rose-Marie Perreault) meet on his eighteenth birthday in line at a diner after they both attended the same concert. They talk, have sex, and then negotiate a romantic relationship with an expiration date. Theo is moving away in two weeks, so they decide to make the most of it, and slowly but surely, we learn why it’s so urgent for Theo to leave town.

Fake Tattoos is on VOD in Canada and France

Nadia, Butterfly (2020)

Set during the now fictional 2020 Tokyo Olympics, the film follows elite swimmer Nadia (2016 Olympic bronze medalist swimmer Katerine Savard) during her final competition as a professional athlete, and the aftermath of that loss. The film takes place over just a few days in Tokyo, begins with her final races, and then becomes about what it means for her to be ending this part of her life to go on to become a doctor, and in turn, leaving her best friend and fellow swimmer Marie-Pierre (Ariane Mainville) behind.

Nadia, Butterfly is on VOD in Canada

Episode notes

  • Pre-order our newest ebook, Subjective realities: The art of creative nonfiction film
  • Read Alex’s interview with Pascal Plante on Nadia, Butterfly
  • Read Orla’s interview with Nadia Butterfly cinematographer Stéphanie Anne Weber Biron
  • Visit Lindsay’s website, Woman in Revolt
  • Ep. 101: Magnus von Horn’s Films: The Here After and Sweat
  • Ep. 66: Francis Lee’s God’s Own Country and Ammonite (Members Only)

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Ep. 95: No Ordinary Man and John Ware Reclaimed: Reclaiming history in documentary

We discuss two of the best films of 2021, No Ordinary Man and John Ware Reclaimed, documentaries that use creative techniques to reclaim lost history. We touch on why nonfiction is such a great medium for telling historical stories, because it’s uniquely equipped to connect those stories to our lives today.

This episode is a Seventh Row members exclusive, as are all episodes older than six months. Click here to become a member.

Left: Billy Tipton, the subject of No Ordinary Man; Right: Fred Whitfield as John Ware in John Ware Reclaimed

This episode features Editor-in-Chief Alex Heeney (@bwestcineaste), Executive Editor Orla Smith (@orlamango), Associate Editor Brett Pardy (@antiqueipod), and special guest Courtney Small (@SmallMind).

Want to listen to the episode?

Click here to become a Seventh Row member and get access to this episode, as well as all other podcast episodes older than six months.

On this episode

  • 0:00:00, Introduction
  • 0:03:10, Creative Nonfiction Workshop
  • 0:06:55, Related episodes
  • 0:08:45, A deep dive on No Ordinary Man
  • 0:27:56, A deep dive on John Ware Reclaimed
  • 0:45:30, Comparing how both films use nonfiction to reclaim history
  • 1:21:35, Outro and next week on the podcast

No Ordinary Man (Aisling Chin-Yee and Chase Joynt)

No Ordinary Man’s subject is Billy Tipton, an influential jazz musician who worked between the 1930s and 1970s. It wasn’t until 1989, when Tipton died in the arms of his son, Billy Jr., that Tipton’s family and the public discovered that he was assigned female at birth. After his death, Tipton’s story was twisted: Tipton was unequivocally a trans man, but the cis-dominated media presented him as a woman who dressed as a man in order to get a foot in the door in the music industry. Even the most cited text about Tipton’s life, Suits Me: The Double Life of Billy Tipton by Dianne Middlebrook, framed his story around this harmful narrative. In the film, directors Aisling Chin-Yee and Chase Joynt interview experts and family members of Tipton. They also audition transmasculine actors to play the part of Billy, and discuss with them the impact of Billy’s legacy on their own lives.

John Ware Reclaimed (Cheryl Foggo)

Cheryl Foggo’s John Ware Reclaimed is part of her ongoing project of research into the story of John Ware, which has included a book and a play. John Ware was a successful Black Albertan rancher who began his life as an enslaved American before moving to Canada in 1882. What little was known about him before her work was compiled in Grant MacEwan’s book John Ware’s Cow Country, which is full of racist stereotypes about Black masculinity. Through interviews, newspaper clippings, original songs, animation, and reenactments, Foggo creates a new mythology around John Ware and illuminates the stories of members of his family, as well. The film follows Foggo through her research process, which involves talking to academics, people who knew Ware’s family, people who have succeeded him on the land, and personal friends, she reveals how Black history has been obscured in the prairies. She also relates John Ware’s story, and its erasure, to her experience — and the experience of people she talks to — as a Black woman in the prairies.

Episode notes

  • Pre-register for the 2021 Creative Nonfiction Workshop, featuring the directors of John Ware Reclaimed and No Ordinary Man
  • Read Orla’s interview with Aisling Chin-Yee and Chase Joynt on No Ordinary Man
  • Read Brian Tallerico’s rogerebert.com review of No Ordinary Man
  • Read Alex’s interview with Cheryl Foggo on John Ware Reclaimed
  • Read Courtney’s POV Magazine review of John Ware Reclaimed
  • Watch the documentary By Blood
  • Watch Chloé Galibert-Laîné’s desktop documentaries
  • Read Courtney’s publication Cinema Axis
  • Read Courtney’s reviews on his Rotten Tomatoes page
  • Buy the latest issue of POV Magazine to read Courtney’s feature on Black trailblazers in documentary, and to read the cover story interview with the great Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers

Both of these episodes are older than six months, and thus they’re only available to Seventh Row members as part of the Premium Podcast feed. Membership is cheap and comes with a ton of benefits. Click here to find out more.

Explore the spectrum between fiction and nonfiction

Subjective realities: The art of creative nonfiction is a tour through contemporary creative nonfiction, aka hybrid or experimental documentaries. Discover films that push the boundaries of the documentary form.

Download a FREE excerpt from the book