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| Director Alexander Carson |
ALBERTA NUMBER ONE B Canada (83 mi) 2024 d: Alexander Carson
A kind of quirky cross-country road movie following a ragtag group of friends and outcasts on an odyssey through the Canadian province of Alberta, the most westerly of the three Western prairie provinces, and one of only two landlocked provinces in Canada, yet it’s also a region the rest of the world knows next to nothing about, perhaps most renowned for its vast empty space and panoramic landscapes of natural beauty. Painters, photographers, and surveyors from the 19th century lay the foundation of the wildness of the Canadian frontier for the tourist industry and the promotion of a national identity, leading to the development of a heritage industry, where heritage is an elastic term that can be used to emphasize anything from car dealerships to motels to national landmarks, rooted in local place and history, yet that great unknown is what may have inspired this group of friends to collectively explore the region in great detail, avoiding major cities, focusing instead on some of the least visited places imaginable, becoming a humorously ironic and distinctly original exploration. A province rooted in hard-nosed conservatism that dates back to the Depression era of the 1930’s, the longest unbroken run in government at the provincial or federal level in Canadian history, the director was inspired by his own experience coming from a small, rural town, surprised by the sheer volume and variety of regional landmarks to explore, fascinated by the contemporary role of museums, memorials, roadside attractions, historic sites, tourist traps, and other barely known institutions that often perpetuate representations of cultural authority. Exploring the politics of representation at these public sites, some stories are privileged over others while others are marginalized or omitted entirely. Originally from Ottawa, Alexander Carson is a graduate of the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema at Concordia University in Montreal, currently on the faculty at Yorkville University’s Bachelor of Creative Arts program in Toronto, and has previously taught at the Toronto Film School. He is a founding member of the North Country Cinema media arts collective in Calgary, Alberta, which is the production company for this film.
Canada is larger than the United States, making it the second-largest country in the world in total area, however, despite this vast territory for a relatively small population, more than 90% of Canadians live within 150 miles of the United States border. Sometimes viewed as “the Texas of Canada,” Alberta has a large deposit of natural resources, including a heavy presence of the oil and gas industry that makes it a wealthy province, yet it’s a largely unexplored region even to those who live there, as it’s enormous in size, 750 miles from north to south, and 400 miles wide, with its breathtaking mountainous landscapes and its endless arid plains, where that alone is basically an excuse for the filmmaker and his crew to go on a road trip together in search of natural landscapes and unexplored treasures, becoming a time capsule of Alberta as it exists today, while also a document of the changing mindset of the weary travelers, where sharing close quarters with people on the road in vans and motel rooms just wears on you after a while. Western Canadian memorials tend to glorify a sober, hardworking daily life which valorizes entrepreneurship, land domestication, and property acquisition. Even small-town rural communities in Alberta were constructed as service centers, commercial outlets, and exchanges in the railroad and the grain economy. To that end, the West Edmonton Mall is Alberta’s number one tourist attraction, featuring over 800 stores, with more than 22 million guests per year, yet that holds little interest to this group, who are seeking something undefined and unexplored, searching for meaning in the landscapes, questioning the role of interpretive centers and contemporary institutions in perpetuating cultural stereotypes, blurring the lines between fiction and documentary, becoming a witty, multi-dimensional essay on identity as conceived through an existentialist lens.
Some of the eccentric personalities include Bobby (Benjamin Carson, the director’s brother), Clare (Bebe Buckskin from Calgary, of Métis-Cree indigenous descent), Vanessa (Liz Peterson, a theater director and multi-media performance artist), Naomi (Ingrid Vargas), Richie (Randall Okita), and Jerry (Kris Demeanor), where they are simply thrown together, creating odd diversions for themselves, bringing a bit of sarcastic edge to the experience, FNC 2024 | Alberta Number One (Alexander Carson) YouTube (56 seconds). With jazzy music by Joseph Murray and Brodie West, the film has a free association style to it, where the landmarks themselves are never the real focal point, appearing more like oddities or humorous side attractions, while the real interest lies with the ensemble cast themselves, turning inward in their quest, taking account of their own lives, as they each have their own stories and personal connections, where spending time with them allows viewers to get a better idea about what matters to them. At least part of the film experience is opening them up and exposing who they are as people, where each viewer may have their own personal favorites, as they form a kind of Greek chorus collective, while hearing their voices as they move along from day to day provides a narration of sorts, becoming a poetic exposé on changing points of view. Many of the group were present during the screening, and when asked what their favorite destination was, they didn’t choose the oddity of the world’s largest lamp, or the largest collection of oil lamps in a museum across the street, World's Largest Lamp | Canada's Alberta, instead the general consensus seemed to be the World Famous Gopher Hole Museum, featuring 77 stuffed gophers in 44 scenes posed to resemble townspeople, Torrington Gopher Hole Museum. This gives you some idea about the tongue-in-cheek manner in which each of them approached this movie, as they described it as more of a chance to hang out with their friends and make a film along the way, offering a chance to reflect on their own lives while sharing moments of extraordinary tenderness. While there are unexpected surprises, it’s the personalities themselves that seem to matter.
