The Yukon Film Society programs and presents an annual tour of Yukon-made film and media art, the Picturing The Yukon series, to many Yukon communities each summer. This lead to an anthology DVD of Yukon films that have screened at some point in the five-year history of PTY. Animator and Coordinator of the Dawson City International Short Film Festival, Dan Sokolowski, curated the collection. The DVD was sent to subscribers of Geist Magazine in the spring of 2008. You'll find film clips, trailers and artist biography information on this site.

Coming soon: World-wide Cinematheque and public presentation listings of Picturing the Yukon films and collections.

Missed out on getting your free DVD in the Geist subscriber mailout?

For a modest donation, we’ll get one to you. Contact us at or call (867) 393-3456.

Aydaygooay had power nobody knew and he brought the caribou back. A Sayisi Dene legend told through the combination of live action video and hand-drawn animation.

Mary Code

Mary was born in a tent at a caribou crossing on Little Duck Lake, near Caribou Post in northern Manitoba. Her family and community were relocated abruptly by the Federal Government of Canada in 1956. Mary trained as a nurse, raised a family and turned to filmmaking in 1990, co-producing and co-directing Nuhoniyeh: Our Story, a Gemini Award winning documentary history of the Sayisi Dene. Today, Mary lives in Whitehorse, Yukon and Tadoule Lake, Manitoba. Aydaygooay, her first animated production, was created to help reclaim language and culture.

Tormented by a recurring nightmare, an old man turns to home movies as a form of therapy. His wheelchair-bound wife inspires and disturbs his reminiscences as he wrestles with his infirm equipment.

Richard Lawrence

Richard arrived in the Yukon in 1978 to work as a reporter with the Yukon News. Journalistic stints included writing and performing comedy sketches for CBC Radio and articles for Maclean's Magazine and the Globe and Mail. After a hiatus to complete postgraduate studies in English and Drama, Richard formed Elsa Entertainment, a film production company. Smallfilm is his eighth project and third short drama.

elsaentertainment.com

Yeah, it is true . . . most First Nations have flat bums. So what of it?

Kerry Barber

Born and raised in Dawson City, Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in filmmaker and media artist, Kerry Barber, has created 5 short films and is currently studying filmmaking full-time in Winnipeg.

Live-action and animation combine to tell the Southern Tutchone story of how a First Nations family in the early 1800s survives when a volcanic eruption in Indonesia throws Canada’s north into an extended winter.

Carol Geddes

Born in Teslin, Yukon, of the Inland Tlingit people, Carol’s first major film, Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief, won a Silver Medal for Educational Documentary in San Francisco. Geddes is now an internationally acclaimed filmmaker and writer who has produced 25 films. Her second major film, Picturing A People, won an Outstanding Achievement Award and a Gemini nomination for the Best Canadian Documentary in 1997. Whether writing, producing or directing, her prolific output has highlighted the stories and struggles of Aboriginal life in Canada. Carol’s current project is the creation of an animated live-action series called Anash and the Legacy of the Sun Rock.

anashinteractive.com

The harmony and dynamics of a team of sled dogs is portrayed from their own perspective. This distinctively crafted film explores the movements and sounds of a truly northern experience.

Werner Walcher

Werner’s goal is to combine the beauty of the North with socially relevant stories. Werner has a strong sense of the North and is very comfortable and experienced in working outdoors. River of Life, a one-hour documentary, is his second film as a director with the National Film Board of Canada. Werner was director, cinematographer and writer of Follow Your Dreams, a one hour documentary for OMNI.1 television, and of the award-winning NFB short film, Dogs in Concert. Werner is developing two new documentaries: Herschel Island, and Last Journey to Wilderness Paradise.

yukonimages.com

Unique combinations of sound and image create a rhythmic mosaic in this split screen video.

Paul Henderson

Paul Henderson lives and works in Sackville, New Brunswick where he helps artists make things better. He also coordinates a sloppy music festival and fondly recalls his days working towards a brighter Yukon Territory.

Mike Yuhasz

Mike Yuhasz lived in Dawson City from 1996 to 2007 and worked as Odd Gallery and Residency coordinator for the Klondike Institute of Art and Culture. He maintains a multi- disciplinary practice, which explores and provokes a rethinking of the familiar romantic images of the North, and presents an alternative vision of our relationship to the land and the activities that signify it.

greatnorthdev.com

“A town of 1300 people and 2000 dogs. Why did you move to Dawson City, Yukon?” Lulu Keating tries to answer that question in this playful romp through her new hometown. Cold in the winters. Worse in the summers. A few hours from the Arctic Circle.

Lulu Keating

Lulu has been making waves with her work since her 1980 critically-acclaimed animated film. Lulu wrote and directed many short dramatic films, a documentary - Rita MacNeil in Japan, a National Film Board of Canada film - Enterprising Women, and the experimental documentary The Moody Brood, during her 30-years based in Halifax, NS. A feature drama, The Midday Sun, which Keating wrote and directed in Zimbabwe, was released theatrically in 1989. Keating makes her home in Dawson City.

redsnapperfilms.com

A young man awakens the spirits of his grandfather’s youth when he discovers the remnants of his unspoken life as a hard rock miner, and travels to an old mining town in search of his grandmother.

Andrew Connors

Andrew is a film and media artist living in Whitehorse. Artifacts, is a distillation of his fascination with the social history of the Keno Hill mining region and a companion piece to the experimental live performance documentary, luckyburden: songs + film, he presents with singer-songwriter, Kim Barlow. luckyburden is a song cycle about 20th century life in the silver mining towns of Keno City and Elsa, and the story of Keno resident, Mike Mancini, whose family immigrated from Italy to the Yukon in the 1950s. Andrew directed and co-wrote the social documentary, Shipyards Lament (2001), for CBC Newsworld, and two television documentaries about the artists George Sawchuk - Hands, Head, Heart (1998), and Neil Graham - Facing Miles Canyon (2004).

andrewconnors.ca