DIRECTOR: Roger Frappier y Justin Kingsley
CYCLE: PRESENTE Y COMUNIDAD
TÍITLE: CHAAKAPESH
Roger Frappier’s first experience in cinema was as a documentary filmmaker. The first two films he directed were feature-length documentaries: LE GRAND FILM ORDINAIRE, a film on the theatre group Le Grand Cirque Ordinaire during their tour of Quebec, and L’INFONIE INACHEVÉE, the first stereophonic documentary feature on the musical group L’Infonie that had a successful release. After this first experience, he worked at the National Film Board of Canada as a documentary producer and was responsible for initiating many documentaries by prominent filmmakers like Gilles Groulx, Gilles Carle, Denys Arcand and Jacques Leduc. With Leduc, he wrote and directed the docu- drama LE DERNIER GLACIER on the closing of the Schefferville mine by Brian Mulroney and its effect on the Innu people. With a career spanning over forty years and fifty films, Roger Frappier belongs to the elite of Canadian film producers. He’s also the only Canadian producer to have won three Golden Reel Awards for the biggest box-office gross of the year, and four Genies for Best Canadian Film. Two of his films have been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, one of which won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Since starting to pro- duce at the National Film Board of Canada in the 1970s, Frappier has worked with most of Québec’s best-known directors and discovered the talent of numerous young filmmakers. He has contributed to the creation of a major cinematic body of work. Justin Kingsley Justin Kingsley finds the best way of telling the right stories—as an author, strategist, director and photographer. He founded the creative storytelling workshop Makumaku. He has been a reporter for the Canadian Press, press secretary and spokesperson at the Prime Minister’s Office, a partner in strategy and creation at Sid Lee, and an author, photographer and director. He has written two no. 1 national bestselling books—The Way of the Fight (New York Times Bestseller), a look at Georges St-Pierre’s life philosophy, and Weology: How Everybody Wins When We Comes Before Me, a book of ideas on leadership. His third book, Le livre du don, was written in French and was launched in 2017.
An orchestra and its famed conductor go on tour in Quebec’s great northern tundra to visit Cree, Innu and Inuit communities and share an Indigenous chamber opera whose mission is to teach white men how to laugh, and therefore love more.
In fall 2018, the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal created the chamber opera Chaakapesh: The Trickster’s Quest, a lighthearted story of the hero who founded the Innu people narrated in three languages (Innu, Cree and Inuktitut) by Florent Vollant, Ernest Webb and Akinisie Sivuarapik. The opera is an ingenious musical adaptation by contemporary composer Matthew Ricketts of renowned Indigenous playwright Tomson Highway’s wonderfully imagined and written Chaakapesh: The Trickster’s Quest. Maestro Kent Nagano and the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal showed remarkable boldness of vision by programming the opera for opening night of the OSM’s last season in Montreal and then taking it on tour to Nunavik and the Lower North Shore. As Nagano so aptly says in the film, “As artists, we’re used to taking risks.”
Kuujjuaq, Salluit, Kuujjuarapik, Oujé-Bougoumou, Mashteuiatsh, Maliotenam… Much more than just a tour, CHAAKAPESH, the film, puts the audience front row centre in an absolutely unique meeting place for the artists and the community. Poignant testimonies, important discussions and Maestro Nagano as we’ve never seen him before.
