Opening night at the Yorkton Film Festival kind of sets the tone for the weekend so organizers generally look for a feature--the only long-form film shown at the festival--that is fun and interesting with a local connection.
Charles Konowal’s It Ain’t About the Money fit the bill perfectly, said Randy Goulden, YFF executive director.
The film chronicles the life of Big Dave McLean interspersed with a trip to Clarksdale, Tennessee, home to the great Robert Johnson and many of Big Dave’s blues heroes. McLean was born in Yorkton and made his name in the blues on the rough and tumble prairie circuit.
Goulden was very pleased with the well-attended event at Painted Hand Casino Thursday night, a lively mix of local videophiles and filmmakers.
Konowal was also pleased.
“I was really happy with the turnout and the response and it makes a filmmaker feel good when their work is appreciated,” he said, adding the crowd reaction was what he anticipated.
“I thought that in the quiet moments they were and then they laughed in the right spots so I think they got all the beats that I intended so that’s good,” he said. “It was very satisfying.”
Konowal’s original intent was a biopic, but when he originally interviewed McLean, he found out the man whose life had been forged by the legends of the Mississippi Delta blues had never travelled south
When I had heard that he hadn’t been, but all his heroes were from the Mississippi Delta and when I did a pre-interview with him, long before I started the film just to get a sense of his story, I thought ‘what would happen if you went down there, and he was almost in tears,” Konowal said.
McLean did not disappoint.
“There is so much history, he was gob-smacked when we went down there, he couldn’t get enough,” Konowal said.
Konowal himself was already a fan of the Chicago blues, but didn’t know a lot about the Delta blues, so it was a great learning experience for him too, he said.
Konowal also had an entry in the festival, which won in the Documentary Arts/Culture category. Visiting Day follows a journey with singer-songwriter Scott Nolan to Folsom Prison where he explores how his cousin, serving life for murder, influenced his songwriting from behind prison walls.
