There’s just something about this place.
The people who live here know what it is, even if they can’t put it into words. And now, a series of stories from Campbell River will try to shed some light on it for the rest of the province.
Spotlight Productions recently came to town to explore what makes us unique for a series entitled, “Why I Love…” which is airing right now in its entirety on Telus Optik TV’s Video on Demand service for their subscribers, as well as on YouTube.
Melinda Friedman, the Spotlight Productions producer who created the series of vignettes, says the series of four short films is part of an annual project by Telus to highlight small communities around the province.
“All television providers with CRTC licences have to contribute a portion of their earnings back to the communities they serve,” Friedman says, “and Telus has chosen to do it through a combination of grants and opportunities for local independent filmmakers and producers and content creators and they also contract us, currently, to create programming from within those communities.”
Spotlight has hubs in Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton, but for the last few years, they’ve been reaching out into smaller communities for their Telus-funded series, “Why I Love….” which looks to explore, as Friedman says, “interesting people doing interesting things, basically.”
Once they selected Campbell River as one of this year’s communities for the series, they had to select four stories to tell.
“First we chose Sybil Andrews, her cottage, her body of work and how she was quite an important artist in the modernist style that many people may not put in connection with Campbell River.”
Ken Blackburn, executive director of the Campbell River Arts Council – which is housed out of the Sybil Andrews Cottage in Willow Point – says it was an honour to be asked to participate in the short film and further share Sybil’s legacy.
“I really do think it’s a story that needs to be told far and wide,” Blackburn says. “So I appreciate that they took it on and I loved having the chance to be involved and provide them with some of the background.”
Then they met up with “That Social Media Guy,” Sean Smith.
“We tagged around with him for the day and talked about how he’s trying to keep kids safe online and helped them understand their digital footprint,” Friedman says. “And then we went into a local high school with him and watched him give a presentation to a class and that was really fun, too.”
And then they met up with local carver Bill Henderson and spoke with him about his work, his connection to the area and his family legacy that he carries forward as an artist and is passing on to his nephews and son, William.
They also did one on Corilair’s Mail Flight, “where you can hop on board with them when they do their daily package delivery run to a bunch of off-the beaten path communities, which was very, very cool,” Friedman says.
That video is not available online yet, but is contained within the Video on Demand offering from Telus.
Friedman says the whole film, containing all four vignettes, will be made available on YouTube in its entirety once its run ends on Optik TV, likely around the end of the summer.