Two Shorts by Matthew Rankin

Although I quite enjoyed Matthew Rankin's feature debut The Twentieth Century, there was a nagging voice in the back of my head that I couldn't silence, reminding me that Rankin's work seemed a bit too familiar. The Winnipegger's style and subject matter inevitably calls Guy Maddin to mind, since both filmmakers share a passion for the inherent embarrassment that comes with being Canadian, and the various psycho-sexual coping mechanisms that people use to grapple with this hard-wired sense of inferiority. But looking back at two of Rankin's earlier works, I feel I have a clearer idea of who he is as an artist, and exactly how he puts his own particular spin on the shared tragedy of being from Winnipeg.

His 2010 film Negativipeg, which played at several festivals, is something of a forensic documentary, complete with interviews and re-enactments of its central crime. In 1985, a teenager named Rory Lepine was getting rowdy in a 7-Eleven while waiting for his Hot Pocket to heat up. He was asked to leave the store, refused, and another patron stepped in. An altercation ensued -- the details remain sketchy -- and Lepine lobbed a full bottle of beer at the man's head. As it happens, the man in question was local boy / celebrity Burton Cummings, leader of the renowned 1970s rock band The Guess Who.

As Negativipeg details, the incident revealed several things about Winnipeg culture. Depending on one's generation, you either took pride in Cummings having "made good" in the larger world, or you resented his apparent high-and-mighty status and were glad to see him taken down a 'Peg. And Cummings' overreaction to the assault exposed the deep wounds that being a Winnipegger can inflict. No matter how much you manage to achieve, you never seem to feel secure in having "made it out."

An earlier, less well-traveled film, 2006's Kubasa in a Glass: The Strange World of the Winnipeg Television Commercial (1975-1994), was co-made with Walter Forsberg. Comprised entirely of found footage, this may seem like the simpler film, but in fact is considerably more ambitious. Kubasa is a 10-part essay film organized thematically, in which we observe a media ecology of the 1970s and 80s of local Winnipeg TV. While this provides the standard pleasures of documented nostalgia and anachronism -- the old hairdos, dingy buildings, long-gone makes and models of cars, defunct chain stores, etc. -- there is actually quite a lot more bubbling beneath the surface of Kubasa.

For one thing, Rankin and Forsberg show us how a medium-sized market in a nation whose television is partly funded by the government has to make do with considerably fewer resources than its counterparts in the U.S. It is easy to laugh at the wooden "Crime Stoppers" performances, or the cheap video effects in the local furniture ads, although similar productions in the U.S. at the time would probably look just as silly. But throughout Kubasa there is a material record of Winnipeg having less, and knowing it. Canada is simply expected to tolerate chintzy, second-rate production values, and Winnipeg itself knows it has it worse than Toronto or Vancouver.

But the driving force throughout these commercials is a sense of dogged optimism in the face of really lousy odds. The furniture store guys camp it up, because they know their commercials are silly. Or, by contrast, the public servants of local TV do their jobs with integrity and professionalism because they know there is a community out there that matters. As one chapter heading puts it, "Winnipeg is Doing the Best It Can Under Very, Very Difficult Circumstances."

Throughout the course of Kubasa, Rankin and Forsburg show us clips of local TV host Bea Broda, hosting a morning interview show, and then being featured as the inaugural guest on a one-on-one chat show with former politician Russ Doern. As the video cuts between these two segments, there is an increasing sense of discomfort, as Broda is articulating her plans to go to Hollywood and try to become a star, something we of course know did not happen. 

But as the interview goes on, Doern becomes more and more inappropriate, telling her that almost nobody gets to realize their dreams, and asking if she would submit to the casting couch. Broda takes it in stride, but the dynamic has flipped. Broda's willingness to dream of a life beyond Winnipeg, unlikely though it may be, is heroic compared to Doern's bitter admonition to stay in your place. This exchange retroactively changes the tenor of the entire film. A chyron reveals what eventually happened to Doern. For her part, Broda became a host for travel shows -- her entire career became predicated on not being in Winnipeg. 

Way to go, Bea.