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A stunningly beautiful Canadian feature Mad Ship premieres at the opening screening of the Fall 2013 New Jersey Film Festival.

A stunningly beautiful Canadian feature Mad Ship premieres at the opening screening of the Fall 2013 New Jersey Film Festival. Here is an interview I did with the film’s director David Mortin.

Nigrin: Your film Mad Ship  focuses on an immigrant family from Norway trying to establish themselves in Canada in the 1920s. Tell us a bit about your film and why you decided to make it.

Mortin: Mad Ship is loosely inspired by a true story of a Finnish man who came to the western Canadian prairies in the early 1920s. He had a very eccentric dream of returning to Finland by building a boat, and sailing along the Saskatchewan River, through Lake Winnipeg, up the Hayes River, and out through Hudson Bay. He actually did build a boat and attempted to drag it in three sections from his homestead to the Saskatchewan River, but he never made it to the river. The sections of the boat ended up spread over 26 kilometres, and his neighbours finally committed him to an asylum, where he died a couple of years later. 

Patricia Fogliato (Producer/Co-writer) and I were really captivated by the image of a man dragging a boat across what had become a burnt-out prairie desert. In my mind’s eye, I saw it at full sail, drifting across a sea of sand. It was a very surreal image, and that image then took on huge metaphoric value for Patricia and me. As we developed the story, it also took on more personal layers for us. 

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We thought about that surreal moment, and what kind of back story would lead a man to that situation – not purely out of madness, but driven by a more emotionally accessible motivation.  We approached the story as 'a sane man in an insane situation';  the idea of his motivation being out of love, out of grief, out of a sense of atonement. We built the story, backwards, from there.

We’ve always had an interest in the immigration story, and several of our previous documentaries are based on that theme.  It is a central theme in Canadian culture, and one we wanted to mythologize in a narrative feature. 

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On a more personal level, I’m very drawn to stories that I relate to as an exaggeration of some aspect of my own emotional experience. I can really relate to Mad Ship as a kind of nightmare fantasy; of going through the dark tunnel of imagining the destruction of my own family, all the extreme, black emotions I would feel if all my dreams failed and as a direct result something tragic happened to Patricia (she's also my wife) – if our lives just completely fell apart in this way. I can imagine I’d go mad, and I’d feel compelled to do something extreme and quite possibly destructive.

Nigrin: The cinematography is really a perfect match to the subject matter. Tell us why you decided to shoot this film this way?

Mortin: Part of the approach to the cinematography was thinking of the film in terms of it being a Canadian western, so we really wanted to emphasize the land, the skies, the prairie light, and to utilize big, bold compositions.  It was a very modest budget for a period film, but we still aimed to achieve a 'big' scope through visual storytelling.

The landscape is a very active character in the film, both in the elemental struggle of man vs. nature for Tomas, but also in the juxtaposition of the burnt-out Canadian prairie against the green mountainous shores of northern Norway.  We also wanted to maintain a strong sense of the elemental throughout; the earth, the air (sky and wind), the lack of life-giving water, the fire of the relentless sun in the sky (including the use of sun flares in the lens).  

We invested a great deal of time searching for the location of the farmstead, trying to find a very clean, pristine prairie horizon that suggested both the family's isolation, as well as a visual austerity that felt like it matched the period and Tomas's 'strong & silent' character.

Colour palette and desaturation also played a significant role in creating a sense of the dust bowl era, and in providing an evocative atmosphere of heat and drought. 

Winnipeg-based DOP Michael Marshall is as brilliant as he is fast (it was a 19 day shoot) and is extremely collaborative to work with.  I have to say, also, that Michael and I had a great collaboration and high degree of communication with Production Designer Rejean Labrie, with the kind of forethought and planning in pre-production that allows for great composition and lighting opportunities on set.

Nigrin: The actors in your film are pretty amazing. Tell us more about them and how they were assembled.

Mortin:  It was very important to us that the characters Tomas and Solveig be portrayed authentically, by Scandinavian actors. We did a great deal of research, and discovered Nikolaj Lie Kaas (Tomas), who is very prominent in his native Denmark, but not widely known here.  (He played the assassin in Angels and Demons, and also had a significant role in The Whistleblower.)  Nikolaj is like a force of nature – he has an amazing energy. On screen he’s got that kind of charisma that immediately fill the frame, and makes him an ideal leading man. He almost bursts right out of the frame at you with that incredible energy, which in the context of the story goes from passion to mania, to such a deep demonstration of love and devotion. 

Patricia and I had seen Line Verndal (Solveig) at Norway's Haugesund Film Festival in a film called Limbo, and we were blown away by the power of her performance.  The role had some similarities to Solveig in terms of having vulnerability and femininity, but also real strength.  Line is an embodiment of grace, beauty and elegance, and quiet, deep emotion. She’s absolutely lovely to watch on screen, but she’s also a very intense and forceful actor. She's probably Norway's best-known actress and has starred in many films and television dramas there, but this is her first North American role.

Gil Bellows is one of Canada's best-known and respected actors, having had starring roles in Ally McBeal and The Shawshank Redemption.  His performances are very subtle, layered, deep and thoughtful. In Mad Ship he’s playing a character who would ostensibly be the villain in the film, but he was such an incredible advocate for the character, in terms of seeing the story from Cameron’s point of view, and in a way that surprised even me as one of the writers of the character. He had remarkable insight into what would make a man like Cameron tick from the inside out. The Cameron that he created was much more complex, more real, and more human than even I had imagined.

Gage Munroe (the couple's son, Petter) was suggested to us by our Toronto casting director, who felt he'd be perfect.  As soon as I saw his audition tape, I began to picture him in the role, and even more so when I met him in person.  Gage demonstrated so much maturity, and was so watchful and observant, that I recognized Petter in him immediately.   I’m still in awe of him – as are Nikolaj, Line and Gil, who often felt Gage was the one raising the dramatic bar in scenes. For a 12-year-old boy, he’s very experienced. He is an incredibly mature young man; like a very old soul in a young boy’s body. He was a real gift.

Nigrin: Where did you shoot your film and why did you decide to shoot it there?

Mortin: We shot in the province of Manitoba.  The main farmstead set was about two and a half hours southwest of Winnipeg.  The original story took place in Saskatchewan, and we had intended to shoot there but some funding from the provincial film agency fell through just before pre-production.  So we quickly moved to neighbouring Manitoba, were we were greeted with great enthusiasm by the provincial funder, Manitoba Film and Music, who made everything happen in a very short amount of time.  It also gave us the opportunity to partner with Winnipeg-based Buffalo Gal Pictures, an excellent production company who have a fantastic reputation throughout Canada and internationally.  Winnipeg is also home to first-rate, highly experienced production crew who also happen to be some of the friendliest people in the world.

Mad Ship is intended to take audiences on an emotional journey, without shying away from the more difficult emotions.  There is sadness and despair, but also great expressions of love and devotion, and hope.  There is also moral complexity and ambiguity in the characters motivations and actions.  These aspects, combined with a lesser-known cast, have made it tricky film to market (competing in a theatrical world of one-dimensional blockbusters) and a very difficult process to get it in front of audiences.  So we greatly value the prominence given to the film by NJ FF and the appreciation you've shown for it by selecting it for competition.

Here is the trailer for Mad Ship:
http://vimeo.com/58629244

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Two wonderful short films Just Short of Sidekick and The Portal will be screened prior to Mad Ship. Here is more info on this screening:

Friday-September 6-Voorhees Hall #105-7PM $10; $9; $8

Just Short of Sidekick - Jamison M. LoCascio (Montclair, New Jersey)

In this enchanting short film, an elementary-school kid and a janitor join forces to fight crime and to bring light into a dark world.  2013; 10 min. With an introduction and Q+A session by Director Jamison M. LoCascio!

The Portal - Michael Turney (New York, New York)

Two children trapped in an alternate world must find their way back home in this captivating short film. 2013; 16 min.

Mad Ship - David Mortin (Caledon, Canada)

In this stunningly beautiful and deeply moving feature film, a Norwegian man migrates with his family to the Canadian prairies in the 1920’s with the hope of establishing a wheat farm. But a perfect storm of prairie drought and the economic crash of 1929 bring him to the precipice of ruin. When he loses his wife he vows to return her to her homeland, embarking on a Quixotic mission to build a ship and to sail out of the prairie dust bowl. 2012; 94 min.

 

Friday, September 6, 2013 at 7:00 p.m.
Voorhees Hall #105/Rutgers University,

71 Hamilton Street, New Brunswick, New Jersey
$10=General; $9=Students+Seniors; $8=Rutgers Film Co-op Friends
Information: (848) 932-8482; www.njfilmfest.com


Jimmy Johns of New Brunswick will be providing free food prior to this screening!


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